KUBantu

KUBantu
Bantu linguistics at the University of Kansas

We are a collaborative research group documenting Bantu languages. We work with the resettled African community in and around the Kansas City area. Our focus has primarily been on the Lacustrine languages (particularly those in Zones JD and JE) spoken around the Great Lakes in East Africa. We have a number of on-going projects looking at theoretical and descriptive issues. Click below to see some of our recent work. Please reach out to John Gluckman (johnglu @ ku.edu) if you'd like access to any work not available through this site.

This project is currently funded by grant #2140837, A linguistic microvariation approach to complementizers and complementation, from the National Science Foundation.

Predication

Previous work has identified a wide range of morphological, syntactic, and semantics variation in how predication is expressed across Bantu languages.

Morphological variation in predication strategies. In on-going work, we have been looking at how Eastern Bantu languages realize the various types of non-verbal predicational sentences.
- Wegner, Owen, and John Gluckman, Angela Feng, Adam An, Same Curnes, Jamie Hudson, Oday Hayajneh, Neha Sridhar. In prep. Variation in Gĩkũyũ copulas.
- Finholt, Aron. 2024. Non-verbal predication and copular variation in Eastern Bantu. PhD Thesis, University of Kansas.
- Gluckman, John, Stephanie Born, Aron Finholt, Jack Foster, and Lucy Ann Whittington. In prep. Nonverbal Predication in Kihavu (JD53).
Possessive predication. Led by Aron Finholt, this project looks at the parallels between possessive predication and "pure" predication in some Bantu languages.
- Finholt, Aron. 2021. States and Possession in Mashi: Novel Evidence for Decomposing HAVE, presented at the Linguistics Society of America, Washington D.C.
- Finholt, Aron. 2021. Decomposing HAVE: Evidence from Possessive Predication in Mashi, presented at the 52nd meeting of the North East Linguistic Society, Rutgers University.
Copulas in embedded contexts. In some cases, copular distinctions collapse in embedded environments. Why? This work bridges the investigations of copulas and complementizers below.
- Gluckman, John. In prep. Copular as Complementizers.
- Gluckman, John, and Cyprian Vumilia. 2023. Predicate Focus in Embedded Clauses in Kisubi. BaSIS Workshop on Information Structure at the University of Leiden. [See our supplementary handout for more examples and discussion.]
- Gluckman, John. 2022. Copulas and Complementizers in Kinyamulenge. DGfS Workshop: Long distance dependencies and the structure of embedded clauses in African languages

COMPLEMENTIZERS

Many Bantu languages have a variety of complementizers used to introduce finite embedded clauses.

Complementizer meaning. Across East Bantu, there is a variety of ways that a finite embedded clause can be introduced. We have been documenting and analyzing the differences in a few different languages.
- Gluckman, John. In prep. Manner Deixis and Complementizer Meaning.
- Gluckman, John. Accepted. Bantu Complementizers: Forms and Functions. In Proceedings of ACAL 54 at the University of Connecticut
- Gluckman, John. 2024. Proleptic Objects as Complex-NPs in The Linguistic Review. (Online early access)
- Gluckman, John. 2024. Copular Complementizers. Bantu 10. University of Dar Es Salaam. August 12-14.
- Gluckman, John. 2024. Prolepsis and Complementizers in Tshiluba. Annual Conference of African Linguistics 55. McGill University. May 2-4
- Gluckman, John, 2024. Proleptic Objects are Identificational Subjects. LSA 98 in New York, NY. January 4.
- Gluckman, John. 2023. Towards a Typology of Bantu Complementizers. Annual Conference of African Linguistics 54. University of Connecticut. June 12-13.
- Gluckman, John, and Cyprian Vumilia. 2023. Predicate Focus in Embedded Clauses in Kisubi. BaSIS Workshop on Information Structure at the University of Leiden.
- Gluckman, John. 2022. Copulas and Complementizers in Kinyamulenge. DGfS Workshop: Long distance dependencies and the structure of embedded clauses in African languages
Swahili's complementizer system. Led by Aron Finholt, we have been interested in the ways in which Swahili speakers (particular Tanzanian Swahili speakers) utilize the complementizers kwamba and kuwa to introduce an embedded clause. Using both corpus data and speaker judgments, we find that the complementizer differ in subtle "evidential" ways.
- Finholt, Aron, and John Gluckman. 2023. A corpus analysis of Swahili's dual-complementizer system. Journal of African Languages and Linguistics 44(1), 25-48. https://doi.org/10.1515/jall-2023-2005
- Finholt, Aron, and John Gluckman. 2024. A Corpus Study of Swahili's Dual Complementizer System. Proceedings of ACAL 51/52
- Finholt, Aron. 2021. Attitude Reports and Relative Belief: A New Perspective on the Swahili Dual-Complementizer System. MA Thesis

CAUSAL CLAUSES

Typologically, subordinators that introduce reason-clauses and purpose-clauses. We've been exploring both the meanings underlying different types of causal clauses, and the typological distribution of causal clauses within Bantu languages.

Gluckman, John, and Finholt, Aron. In revision. A Preliminary Typology of Causal Clauses in Bantu Languages.
Gluckman, John, and Finholt, Aron. 2021. Reason and Result in Kinyamulenge. Presented at TripleA 8 at the National University of Singapore. June 25, 2021.