Ekegusii Verbal Extensions: A Minimalist Approach

Abstract

The study uses the Minimalist approach to analyse different types of Ekegusii verbal extensions. Three objectives guided the study viz: to explain the Ekegusii verbal extension markers with the Minimalist Program, to describe the individual occurrence of Ekegusii verbal extensions, to account for the individual co-occurrences of Ekegusii verbal extensions within the Minimalist Program. Although, there are many types of verbal extensions, this study set to investigate three types of Ekegusii verbal extensions namely: applicative which is an argument increasing affix, reversive which is a neutral affix and passive considered as an argument decreasing affix. The incentive for this study is derived from the supposition that the Minimalist Program can account for all world languages syntactic operations thus also referred to as a universal theory. Content analysis research design was used. Ekegusii already existing written sources supplemented by introspection were the main sources of the data used in the study. Purposive sampling was used while choosing four Ekegusii competent speakers believed to be reliable to verify the data. Purposive sampling was also used when selecting the Ekegusii written sources. The data obtained was analysed using the Minimalist Program. The findings showed that Ekegusii has a number of verbal extensions though the study could not exhaustively deal with all. The Ekegusii verbal extensions were accounted for in the Minimalist Program. As a source of reference it is anticipated that this study will be resourceful for scholars interested in Bantu linguistics.