Alternância conjuntivo/disjuntiva em Shimakonde

Abstract

This dissertation aims to analyze some aspects of the morphosyntax of Shimakonde. The data were collected through fieldwork activities. The main objective was to investigate the alternation of morphologically distinct verb tense pairs known as conjoint and disjoint. In each pair of these tenses there is no noticeable temporal semantic distinction. In terms of typology, the conjoint/disjoint alternation is usually related to two other phenomena on the languages in which it was reported; information structure or syntactic constituency. Languages that fit the first type encode narrow focus by conjoint verbal morphology and broad focus by disjoint verbal morphology, whereas in languages that fit the second type, disjoint morphology is expressed when the verb is final in a given syntactic projection and conjoint morphology when a XP follows the verb in this projection. I assume that the conjoint/disjoint alternation in Shimakonde is not directly related to either of those phenomena. Conjoint tenses differ from disjoint tenses only prosodically, since the former but not the latter form a single phonological phrase with the adjacent XP on its right. Thus the greatest occurrence of conjoint forms to express narrow focus is due to strong relative prominence in the element to the right of the verb.