Non-verbal predication in Cuwabo (Bantu)

International audience Cuwabo, a Bantu language spoken Central Mozambique, has a rich system of non-verbal predicative constructions which includes two verbal copulae (li and kála), a non-verbal class-inflected pro-copula (historically derived from demonstrative pronouns), predicative inflection through tone deletion, and predicative inflection involving the cliticization of subject indexes + copula a. Most copular constructions based on li and kála also imply predicative tone deletion on the following noun or adjective. Whereas verbal copulae may be used in all types of non-verbal predication, the other strategies appear in distinct (and often complementary) contexts. Overall, Cuwabo does not exclude or constrain the usage of a specific word class in predicative position. In addition to the most common semantic types of non-verbal predication – inclusion and identity, verbless clauses in Cuwabo also serve to convey typologically neglected types, such as quantification, possession, existence, location, and temporality. More particularly, Cuwabo has both plain-possessive predication (I have a knife) and inverse-possessive predication (the knife is mine). Distinction between plain- and inverse-locational predication is also relevant in the language. In addition to negating the copula verb li ‘be’, Cuwabo has two dedicated non-verbal negators, namely kahíyo ~ kahíye and ka-sp-hí=loc, both translated as ‘(there/it) is not’, but the latter is limited to the context of locational-existential predication.