The typology of tonal systems in the Kinande complex verb

Ngessimo Mutaka

Rutgers University and University of Yaounde 1.

The status of auxiliary verbs in Bantu languages with a highly concatenative morphology has remained up till now a conundrum for linguistic theory. It is not always clear whether the auxiliary verb and the main verb form two maximal projections or a single maximal projection in a syntactic tree structure. Despite the fact that the structure of the simplex verb is relatively well understood, the unit called INFL still poses problems, especially when the auxiliary is considered part of this INFL. This paper seeks to provide a typology of tonal systems used in the auxiliary and in the INFL of the complex verb in Kinande, a language of eastern DRC (former Zaire) in order to provide a phonological argument that certain kinds of auxiliary should be considered as part of a higher syntactic unit that encodes the tense. It is shown that tonal processes that are assigned as suffixal tones in the simplex (i.e. non complex) verb typically surface in the auxiliary. At the same time, it is also shown that the auxiliary forms an intonational phrase that is phonologically distinct from the main verb.