Building Meaning in Context: A Dynamic Approach to Bantu Clause Structure (Publications of the Philological Society) - Tapa blanda

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Hannah Gibson is Lecturer in Linguistics at the University of Essex, UK. Prior to this, she was a postdoctoral researcher at Osaka University and a British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Linguistics at SOAS, University of London. Her research is concerned with the description and analysis of linguistic variation - this includes work within the Dynamic Syntax theoretical model, as well as in the fields of syntax, morphosyntax and language contact, with a particular focus on the Bantu languages. 

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Building Meaning in Context: A Dynamic Approach to Bantu Clause Structure uses the tools of the Dynamic Syntax framework to explore morphosyntactic phenomena in a number of Bantu languages.

There is broad consensus that humans process linguistic input in real time. However, the dynamic nature of this process is not reflected in most formal models of linguistics knowledge. Dynamic Syntax (DS; Cann et al. 2005, Kempson et al. 2001, 2011) represents a radical shift in perspective in this regard. DS is a grammar formalism that seeks to capture the online nature of the parsing/production process.

This innovative study applies the tools of the Dynamic Syntax framework to data from a number of Bantu languages – a family of some 450 languages spoken across sub-Saharan Africa. It examines word order alternations, inversion constructions and negation in Bantu, showing the incremental nature of the build-up of meaning in context. It also highlights cross-linguistic parallels, drawing on data from Japanese, Korean, Romance languages and varieties of Greek. Offering a radical new perspective on the nature of human language, Building Meaning in Context shows the centrality of the concepts of underspecification and update which lie at the heart of the DS structure building process.