Papers by Philothe Kabasele
This paper tests the claims of Cumulative Enhancement Model, the 'l2 status factor', and ... more This paper tests the claims of Cumulative Enhancement Model, the 'l2 status factor', and the<br> Typological Primacy Model in investigating how l1 Lingala, l2 French speakers express in<br> English an event which took place and was completed in the past. The linguistic phenomena<br> understudy informs us that English uses the simple past in a past-completed event while<br> French and Lingala use the 'passé composé' and the remote or recent past, respectively. The<br> study circumscribes the tense similarities and differences between the three languages.<br> The paper strives to answer the questions on which previously acquired language between<br> the l1, l2, or both l1 & l2 overrides in l3 syntactic transfer. The paper aims to determine<br> whether the l2 is the privileged source of syntactic transfer even when the l1 offers syn-<br> tactic similarities with the l3. Finally, the study purports to determine whethe...
This paper addresses the empirical question of whether left-dislocation is base-generated or deri... more This paper addresses the empirical question of whether left-dislocation is base-generated or derived by syntactic movement. The paper is interested in both Contrastive Left Dislocation (henceforth, CLD) and Clitic Left Dislocation (henceforth, CLLD) and provides illustration and evidence from Bantu languages.
This study investigates the influence of previous languages in the acquisition of an L3. It tests... more This study investigates the influence of previous languages in the acquisition of an L3. It tests the claims of Cumulative Enhancement Model, the ‘L2 status factor’, and the Typological Primacy Model on how L1 Lingala, L2 French speakers acquire the L3 English. I circumscribe two linguistic phenomena: the past completed events (PCE), and the past until now events (PUNE). The PCE context offers the scenario in which the morphosyntactic similarity between the L1 and the TL expectedly results in positive transfer, while the morphosyntactic similarity between the L2, and the TL results in negative transfer. English uses the simple past in the PCE, while French, and Lingala use the passé composé, and the remote or recent past, respectively. The study further investigates the case of the absence of any morphosyntactic similarities between the previous languages and the TL in the context of PUNE. Data were collected in both implicit (interview), and explicit (Written Elicitation Task and t...
This research tests the claim that the perceptual contrast between the vowels /ɔ/ and /o/, and /ɛ... more This research tests the claim that the perceptual contrast between the vowels /ɔ/ and /o/, and /ɛ/ and /e/ have been neutralized in Kinshasa Lingala (KL). Previous studies have claimed that the vowels /ɔ/ and /ɛ/ have merged into /o/ and /e/ respectively (Campbell and King 2013, Montingea 2006, Bokamba 2012). This assumed merger has resulted in the claim that KL has 5 vowels as opposed to Makanza Lingala (ML), which has 7. However, this claim has never been tested empirically, that is, no study has ever empirically demonstrated the merger of those vowels through robust findings. Also, it has never been specified whether this merger is perceptual or articulatory. Most studies, which have formulated the aforementioned claim on the vowel system in KL were conducted without any support of the new technology in linguistics. None of those studies have used any phonetic software to analyze those sounds in order to back their claims. In most of those studies, researchers relied upon their i...
South African Journal of African Languages, 2020
This study investigates the syntactic configuration of wh-questions in Kinshasa Lingala (KL) with... more This study investigates the syntactic configuration of wh-questions in Kinshasa Lingala (KL) with a minimalist approach. It clarifies the view on information questions which classifies Bantu languages on the basis of whether they allow movement of the wh-word or not. Unlike the findings of most research in the 1970s and 1980s on wh-questions which categorised Bantu languages' wh-question derivations as in-situ, this article attests that KL allows both ex-situ and in-situ derivation. Internal arguments are constrained to be derived in-situ because the complementiser (C) has weak features, which cannot trigger movement. However, movement becomes possible only by the presence of the nde particle in the numeration which loads the wh-question with contrastive focus interpretation. The syntactic configuration of KL shows that the fronted wh-word in KL occupies the specifier (Spec) position of the Focus Phrase (FocP) as a result of the movement triggered by the presence of the nde particle at the head of FocP in focus-driven movement derivation. The wh-word moves because it has been attracted by the [+Foc]-feature on the head of FocP. The wh-word checks its [+Foc]-feature prior to landing at its final site, which is the Spec position of the FocP.
My thesis investigates the universality of the Matrix Language Frame model developed by Myers-Sco... more My thesis investigates the universality of the Matrix Language Frame model developed by Myers-Scotton (2002). The work tests the model by using bilingual data which display code-switching between French and the low variety of Lingala. The main concern of the work is to test the constraints that are posited in terms of principles of the model and which claim that the Matrix Language dictates the morphosyntactic frame of a bilingual Complementizer Phrase (CP). In the light of the findings of this study, it was shown that the ML model failed to account for a number of situations; and such was the case of the Morpheme Order Principle and double morphology, specifically with the outsider late system morphemes
1024x768 This paper seeks to account for the synchronic sound changes observed in joining of noun... more 1024x768 This paper seeks to account for the synchronic sound changes observed in joining of noun class prefixes to nouns in Swahili, Lingala, Ciluba, and Zulu. The noun class prefixes of these Bantu languages were compared with the Proto-Bantu noun class-forms to identify sound changes the languages have undergone over time. It was observed that some sound changes did not obey synchronic rules. The aim of this study was to elaborate on diachronic rules, specifically telescopic rules, to explain why some sound changes in Bantu language evolution stand out as exceptions, giving the impression of violating the neo-grammarians’ claim about the regularity of sound change. A special focus is placed on the nasal place of articulation assimilation, which in some conditioning environments, is favourable for assimilation, but fails to occur in Swahili. The findings of this paper provide robust evidence for why the nasal phoneme of some noun classes does not assimilate in place of articulatio...
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Papers by Philothe Kabasele