The grammatical, pragmatic, and social motivations of variation in relativisation strategy in Nairobi Swahili

This thesis investigates the grammatical, pragmatic, and social motivations of variation in relativisation strategy in Nairobi Swahili. Using natural data collected in sociolinguistic interviews, this study employs both Bayesian and frequentist methods of statistical analysis to reveal the motivations of variation between three relativisation strategies used in Nairobi Swahili, one null strategy and two featuring a relative marker. The first of these markers is amba-, a strategy also found in Standard Swahili, while the second of these is -enye, which is an innovation in Nairobi Swahili, closely associated with the Nairobi youth language Sheng, and found in other mainland varieties of Swahili. This thesis shows that whether or not the relative clause is marked by either strategy is motivated primarily by pragmatic and structural considerations, namely the topic status of the head noun and the length of the relative clause, while also considering animacy, number, polarity, and grammatical function. Across all of these variables the inclusion of a relative marker can be conceived of as signalling to the addressee that greater attention is required for parsing the coming construction either because of increased processing complexity or for discourse pragmatic reasons, reflecting cross-linguistic findings on relative marking constraints. Then looking at all three strategies individually, the choice of specific strategy is found to be more socially motivated, with -enye associated with the solidarity functions of Swahili in Nairobi and its status as a more modern, urban, language, and carrier of culture, amba- associated with Standard Swahili, higher socioeconomic status, and formal education, and the null strategy associated with Nairobi Swahili’s historical function as a language of wider communication and contact variety. A deeper look at -enye in particular also reveals its function as a marker of style or youth identity and charts its potential origins as a women-led innovation.