Bantu verbal extensions: a cartographic approach

In this work I am going to discuss the nature, productivity and combinatory possibilities of verbal extensions in Bantu languages, considering some Tshiluba data. I will argue that this phenomenon is best accounted for within a cartographic approach to sentence structure. Though verbal extensions are generally treated as a unitary phenomenon in the literature on Bantu, several important differences can be observed; hence I will argue that extensions should be divided into two main groups, ‘syntactic’ and ‘lexical’ extensions, and the latter into two sub-groups. I will assume that syntactic extensions are merged under specialized functional heads in the predicative domain, while truly lexical extensions are merged with the verb stem in the lexicon. Finally, the analysis of the so-called ‘lexical-argumental’ extensions will lead to the assumption of a second vP projection immediately above VP, in whose head these extensions are merged. Therefore, the two phase heads, C° and v°, will exhibit a similar behaviour, in that they both consist of two separate heads, between which other functional projections are generated.