Doctoral Degrees (African Languages)
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Browsing Doctoral Degrees (African Languages) by Author "Malete, Elias Nyefolo"
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- ItemNegation in Sesotho(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2001-03) Malete, Elias Nyefolo; Du Plessis, J. A.; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences. Dept. of African Languages.English Abstract: This research project examines the syntax of negative sentence constructions in Sesotho and explores implications of the empirical data on negation within the framework of the Minimalist Program. According to Minimalist Program, language consists of a lexicon and Computational System where the operations Merge and Move generate sets of structural descriptions, it is driven by the principle of economy, which entails that movement should take place only when necessary for the purpose of Case feature checking. It is also concerned with the expansion of syntactic structures in terms of X-bar theoretic properties, where functional category gives full categorical status. This project further considered the morphology of negation in Sesotho where Sesotho data is refined within the Lexeme-morpheme base morphology, where bound grammatical morphemes such as the negative morphemes in Sesotho are defined in terms of morphological spelling operations. Within these two theoretical frameworks, sentence constructions which realize negation by means of negative morphemes over a full range of tense, aspect and mood distinctions were examined, including sentence construction that realize negation in subordinate clauses as well as those that entail issues of topic and focus, and scope of negation. Constituent negation, with constituents such as subjects, objects and adjuncts is also investigated. Various ways of negating constituents in Sesotho were examined: they are cleft sentences, pseudo-cleft sentences, sentence construction with locative AgrS [ ho ] and sentence constructions with subject inversion as well as sentences where constituents are negated within the VP. All these methods were considered with regard to noncopulative and copulative verbs. The issue of focus which entails plain focus, restrictive and contrastive foci, the issue of topic, which entails stage topics, modified topics and multiple topics are investigated and interpreted within the Focus Structure theory, a theory which assigns focus structures to sentences of the language. Negative sentences are assigned two focus structure viz. main focus structure and the subordinate focus structure. Finally, this study also looks into the scope of negation in Sesotho, where negative criterion (Neg-criterion) stipulates various positions of negative morphemes or words which in turn determines the scope of negation. Scope of negation is also examined in terms of focus, with constituents such as NP's, NP Lac's and NP's in subordinate clauses.