Talk:Agreement in coordinated noun phrases in Runyankore-Rukiga

Dear author,

Some brief comments on the article:

The author does not properly distinguish between the expression of noun classes and noun-class agreement in Bantu languages in general and Runyankore-Rukiga in particular. There is no mention of the ‘augment’ or the ‘pre-prefix’ which is generally used in Bantu languages as subject a marker, instead this is erroneously presented as an anomaly. In several cases they coincide, but they are still markers of different classes. Further, observations by Ashton (1944) and Schadeberg (1992) in 5), 8), 9) & 10) for example are about the Swahili rules of agreement and not about Runyankore-Rukiga; however they can be used as examples for comparison, not to prescribe rules for Runyankore-Rukiga. In 3(a), the addition of a VP (yàágwa) to get a complete sentence would distinguish the agreement of Cl 1 from Cl 3 in example 2(a) (gwágwà) 3(b) is the same as 2(a). Generally. there would be no “misleading” in identifying the class of nouns with mu-marker since in Cl 1 there are human/animate nouns whereas in Cl there are others of a variety (including human/animate). but human/animate would not have the same agreement as inanimate nouns. In 6(c) it would be better to use the expression ‘preferred’ instead of ‘most natural’. In 7 – Why the plural agreement marker is from Cl8 (-bi-) when both the nouns are from Cl 9 ? Wouldn’t it be “most natural” to use Cl 10 plural of Cl 9 ?! In 8) and 9) What happens if we extend the sentence with the adverb ‘together’ ie. ‘A hunter and a dog have gone together.’ and ‘The hunter and the dog have gone together.’ Respectively ?! In 9) the agreement is of Cl 2, it does not “agree with embwa ‘dog’ ….” as you say with reference to Ashton. Here the rule is about animacy getting Cl 2 subject marker. The agreements may be different in other cases such as in the construction of genitive/associative and possessive pronouns of animate nouns in Cl 3/4 and other classes as it is in Swahili for example.

--Abdulaziz Lodhi, 16 February 2011 (Uppsala, Sweden)

Allow me to briefly comment on the examples given under (2):

You write that the most natural way to express (2) is (2c), and you continue with:

 "where now instead of a 'na' as coordinating conjunction, it is used as preposition".

It looks to me as if coordination is avoided when we have two conjuncts where the nouns belong to the same noun class, but nevertheless these nouns are perceived as quite different things in real life.

In the latter case speakers prefer to use a different construction altogether, namely a construction where one introduces the second participant in a prepositional phrase rather than through a coordination. Could you perhaps comment on this?

--Dorothee Beermann 09:35, 23 November 2010 (UTC)