Beyond word order: Rangi in comparative perspective

Rangi has come to the attention of linguists due to a number of features which are unusual from a comparative perspective, a typological perspective, or both. Features which have received in-depth examination to date include the verb-auxiliary word order (Mous 2000, Stegen 2002, Dunham 2005, Gibson 2019) and negation (Gibson and Wilhelmsen 2015). A number of other features have also been identified, i.e. the presence of deictic particles and the inclusive/exclusive distinction (Gibson and Marten 2019). The present talk combines the in-depth examination of a number of these features, with a broader comparative approach made possible by the Bantu Morphosyntactic Variation (BMV) database. The BMV (Marten et al. 2018) contains data points relating to 142 surface-level parameters of morphosyntax for over 100 languages, with 80%+ coverage for approximately 40 languages. Using this as a comparative tool, the talk examines the ‘position’ of Rangi within a broader comparative perspective and seeks to gain a better understanding of the markedness of these features and the language more broadly. 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: Gibson, Hannah. 2020. Beyond word order: Rangi in comparative perspective. Talk given at the Rift Valley Network Webinar Series. 04/11/2020