Augments in Ihanzu

Augments in Ihanzu are a set of nominal prefixes which are extremely common, but whose function is rather unclear. This talk presents progress from ongoing collaborative research on the Ihanzu augment, and provides some hypotheses on the precise morphosyntactic characteristics of this grammatical category. Following a brief introduction to the Ihanzu language, and following a helpful organisational framework laid out in van de Velde (2019), the formal properties of the augment in Ihanzu are presented, followed by its functional properties. Occasionally, brief typological summaries are given, placing Ihanzu in a larger cross-Bantu context. It will be shown that the Ihanzu augment does not seem sensitive to distinctions of definiteness or specificity, nor to nouns which are semantically inherently referential. Instead,  and through examining the augment’s behaviour with nouns used to refer, the augment in Ihanzu seems best characterised as interacting with "aboutness topicality”. Specifically, augments in Ihanzu cannot occur on constituents which cannot be aboutness topics. Conversely, augments are permitted (and in at least one case, obligatorily present) on constituents with topic status. Further research is necessary to confirm this “topicality hypothesis”, but these observations provide a useful basis for beginning to understand these pervasive, but difficult-to-define morphemes. Note: This talk has not gone through a process of peer review, and findings should therefore be treated as preliminary and subject to change. Acknowledgement and citation: Harvey, Andrew, and Jutta M. Hartmann. 2025. Augments in Ihanzu. Talk given at the Afrikanistisches Kolloquium, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt-am-Main. 31/01/2025. DOI: <10.5281/zenodo.14741691>