In search of prosodic domains in Lusoga

In this paper I raise the question of whether Lusoga, a Bantu language of Uganda, recognizes syntactically determined prosodic domains, which have been extensively described in near-mutually intelligible Luganda. I first briefly recapitulate the syntactic constructions that give rise to the tone group (TG) and tone phrase (TP) domains in Luganda and then consider the same constructions in Lusoga. Whereas the expectation is that pre-verbal constituents will be treated prosodically differently than post-verbal constituents in SVO Bantu languages, Lusoga treats both pre- and post-verbal constituents the same, including both left- and right-dislocations. While certain clitics do form a TG with the preceding word, perhaps forming a recursive phonological word, there is nothing corresponding to the multiword TG or TP of Luganda. Lusoga either fails to distinguish phonological phrases or if they do exist in the language (as universally claimed), Lusoga fails to mark them. I conclude that linguistic typology should not only determine how universal linguistic properties can be reflected in the grammar of a language, but also in how well a grammar can get along without signaling them at all.