Transitivity in Bantu: Event-oriented constructions

Bantu languages are considered accusative languages, due to their person-marking alignment system. This typology accounts for a specific view on transitivity, strongly based on a subject/object distinction and its mapping to the semantic roles of the participants in an event. Consequently, some constructions found in Bantu challenge theoretical analyses on transitivity and syntax because they present a mismatch between grammatical relations and semantic roles. In this article, I present an approach to transitivity inspired by Hopper & Thompson’s (1980) parameters for a gradual view, instead of a sharp dichotomy between transitive and intransitive sentences. Linguistic constructions are, therefore, analyzed as being more transitive or less transitive, based on semantic features. I also suggest that, when features other than the subject-object relation are more prominent in licensing participants in a given construction, it means the construction is event-oriented, following the parameters of an “active structure” proposed by Klimov (1974) and Wichmann (2007). I discuss three constructions in Bantu that might be thought of as event-oriented: inversion constructions, valency-changing extensions, and the verbal expression of properties. The advantage of approaching these constructions through an event-orientation analysis is that it addresses the relation between participants and events as morphosemantic features instead of challenging syntactic operations.