Distribution of Anaphoric Elements in Lutsotso

Abstract

In Bantu languages, the distribution of anaphoric elements can be influenced by several factors, including grammatical, syntactic, and pragmatic considerations. In addition to addressing issues surrounding the anaphoric event, the study of anaphora involves creating, maintaining, and altering subject continuity, which has an impact on discourse coherence. This paper looks at the strategies used by Lutsotso speakers to disambiguate anaphoric references. The study used data elicited from Lutsotso native speakers and texts written in Lutsotso. Given that the sentence is the linguistic unit of analysis for this study, the researcher purposively selected only sentences with anaphoric elements. The data was analyzed using the content analysis approach, applying Halliday and Matthiessen’s Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) theory. In addition to the SFG theory, Bauer’s (2001) and Haspelmath’s (2002) theory of inflectional morphology was employed to analyse the morphemics of the Lutsotso anaphor. The study reveals that anaphoric elements must agree with their antecedents in qualities such as noun class and gender. The reciprocal marker (REFL) and the reflexive marker (RECP) are governed by verb transitivity, which means they can only occur in verbs that allow an object within their verb phrase. The object can appear as either the object marker (OM) or a free nominal form, but the two cannot coexist. Generally, context and pragmatics are important factors in shaping the distribution of anaphoric elements in Lutsotso discourse. These findings will advance our understanding of linguistic structures, pragmatic principles, cross-linguistic diversity, and cognitive processes in language use.