Aspects of Keiyo Morphology and Syntax

Abstract

This thesis presents a description of selected aspects of morphology and syntax of Keiyo, a Southern Nilotic language spoken in Kenya. These aspects demonstrate complex patterns of inflection and derivation and motivate varied interactions between morphology and syntax that can be used to account for morphosyntactic parameters such as null subjecthood. The research problem centered on three main objectives: to identify and describe the form and relevance of selected inflectional and derivational processes in Keiyo; to describe the structure and interaction of morphology and syntax within phrasal and clausal categories in Keiyo, and to describe and explain the classification of Keiyo in a specific null-subject system. The study adopted the Principles and Parameters framework to account for the structure and variations in the language. A descriptive design was adopted and the data used was largely self generated based on native speaker intuitions on the structure of Keiyo morphology and syntax. The data was also checked against the intuitions of eight adult native informants who were selected through purposive sampling. Analysis was done using descriptive techniques where it was established that inflectional morphemes affix to major word categories to express particular inflectional values. Number and definiteness morphemes are suffixed to the noun, whereas gender marking is done through prefixation. As a marked nominative language, Keiyo marks case using tone. Also, adjectives adjust their forms to agree with the number value of the head noun; while verbs attach morphemes to indicate number/person values, past/non-past tense, perfective/imperfective aspect, negation and mood. The processes used in deriving new lexemes in Keiyo include affixation, compounding, base modifications, reduplication and borrowing. Furthermore, morphological operations like the applicative, the causative, the reflexive, the stative and the passive can change the valence of a verb by either increasing or reducing the number of the verb’s arguments. The study evinced that Keiyo is both a head-initial and a head-marking language and that the morphological and syntactic structures are dependent due to the complexities of the Keiyo verb morphology. Lastly, Keiyo portrays the classical properties that define a consistent null subject language. The study recommends further investigation especially on the application of the Minimalist Program on the structure of phrasal categories other than the nominal and verbal categories that were analyzed in the present study.