Use of the Augment in Negatives and other Irrealis Contexts in isiNdebele

The paper examines the use of the augment in isiNdebele, a Nguni language spoken in South Africa. Inspired by typological work on the effects of negation on the marking of noun phrases, special attention is paid to the use of the augment under negation and in other irrealis contexts. It is hypothesized that the augment is connected with the marking of referentiality and might therefore be more readily omitted in negatives and other irrealis contexts. The paper is based on data collected in the field with a questionnaire designed for this study. The results show that the augment is dropped only in negated existential and possessive predications expressed with the associative copula. Thus, the absence of the augment is much more restricted in isiNdebele than it is in other Nguni languages.