Pronouns and Pronominalizations in Kiswahili Grammar

Kiswahili grammar distinguishes between self-standing pronouns and dependent pronouns. Some self-standing pronouns, such as personal pronouns, are noun referring pronouns that function exclusively as argument elements of predication-sentences or clauses. They have a limited set of agreeing concords or pronominal concords in dependent possessive pronouns and in predicate verbs in the grammar. In all other cases, they borrow concords from common and proper nouns that they may be in apposition with or stand in for. Thus, only the concords of pronouns may be called 'incorporated pronouns' in Kiswahili. If all agreeement concords of common and proper nouns in the classes were pronoun or pronominal concords, as stated in Kiswahili descriptions, the grammar would be forced to distinguish between pronoun nouns, including pronoun proper nouns, on the one hand, and non-pronoun nouns, on the other hand. The book also illustrates that dependent modifiers, such as adjectives, demonstratives, dependent interrogatives, etc. of common and proper nouns, described in traditional grammars as pronouns, are not pronouns but rather pro-nouns. For it is self-evident that the syntactic head of a pronominal concord or incorporated pronoun that is a common or proper noun must itself be a pronoun in order to be able a) to generate its pronoun concords and b) to assign pronominal features of person, number, and class to the morphemic elements it generates. There is no language in the world in which pronoun nouns exist as it is implied by the incorporated pronoun hypothesis of traditional and modern linguistics. Kiswahili also has question pronouns. They are divided into two types, namely themtaic WH elements and non-thematic WH elements. The former are argument pronouns that have no pronominal concords of their own but borrow concords from common and proper nouns that they stand in for in syntax. The latter may be described as A´ elements of syntax. The book further draws attention to the semantic paradox of classifying noun referring pronouns as 'personal pronouns' in Kiswahili and in other African languages, e.g. Buli. In Kiswahili and some African languages, so-called person pronouns may refer to or be in apposition to animate denoting nouns as well as inanimate denoting nouns without changing their class matrices. Noun referring pronouns and thematic WH pronouns, consequently, do not support the animacy sub-rule of the semantic assignment rules of Bantu class systems. Finally, the book points out that Kiswahili makes use of covert concord markers and ghost concord markers. As a result, any linguistic model that asserts that an object marker (OM) cannot be omitted in a predicate verb if its NP is not overt in syntax is, in principle and theory, an indequate grammar of Bantu. It overlooks, for example, the place of context in language use among native speakers of African languages.