Suffix Ordering in the Ikalanga Verb Stem: a case against The Repeated Morph Constraint

Abstract

The complex agglutinative morphology of the verb in the Bantu languages has long caught the attention of many linguists working on these languages. What has been found to be even more interesting is the fact that the many verbal suffixes that occur in these languages do not occur in just any order, but are subject to some sequential constraints making it possible to have certain orderings but not others. Ikalanga is one such language. This paper explores the different orderings of verbal suffixes in Ikalanga, highlighting those that are permissible and those that are not. Ikalanga is shown to be one of those languages which permit the repetition of the same morph within the same verb, which goes against the Repeated Morph Constraint of Menn and MacWhinney (1984). This therefore leads us to conclude that the ranking of this constraint differs according to the language: while in some languages it is ranked high, in other languages such as Ikalanga, the constraint is ranked low.