Occurrence and Co-occurrence of Verbal Extensions in Lulogooli

Abstract

This article examines four verbal extensions and their order of co-occurrence in the same verbal unit in Lulogooli, a Bantu dialect of the Luhyia language spoken in Western part of Kenya. A verbal extension refers to a suffix attached to a verb to effect a given meaning. The verbal extensions under this study include passive, reciprocal, applicative and causative. A Minimalist perspective is employed to determine the extent to which the extensions fit within the Pan-Bantu default template by Hyman (2002). The position of the suffixes in the template is directly determined by either syntactic or semantic considerations and the order of the verbal derivations is determined by the morphotactic constrains. Findings reveal that the Lulogooli verbal extensions fit within the Pan-Bantu default template by Hyman (2002), save for the Causative₂-Applicative co-occurrence and their order is as a result of attraction and feature-driven movement constrained by the Minimal Link Condition.