Object marking in four Mozambican Bantu languages

Object marking in Bantu is an area which has received substantial attention (e.g.Marten & Kula 2012, Riedel 2009, Marten et al. 2012, Zeller 2014). In many languagesof this group, a morpheme which is co-referential with the object can also be incorporated into the verb structure. The present chapter, which looks at data from fourMozambican languages, aims to document and describe the situation in these languages with respect to object marking. The data show that the languages analyzedin this paper can be divided into three groups: Group 1, composed of Cinyungweand Ciwutee, in which object marking is not obligatory with particular object NPs;Group 2 comprising of Citshwa, in which the object marker and the objectargument cannot co-occur, object marking is not obligatory with particular object NPsand there is no locative object markers; and Group 3, Ciyaawo, in which objectmarkers are not obligatory with particular object NPs and only the benefactiveobject can be expressed by an object marker in double object constructions. Takinginto account the data from the four languages, we suggest that the obligatoryrequirement for an object marker [+OM] associated with some transitive verbs andstructures should be added as a seventh parameter to the six parameters of variation in object marking in Bantu put forward by Marten & Kula (2012). Due to theexistence of transitive verbs subcategorized as [+OM], we further encouragescholars to examine these parameters of variation in other Bantu languages in light ofthese features of variation.