Dr Jenneke van der Wal - Publications

PhD dissertation
My dissertation Word order and information structure in Makhuwa-Enahara investigates the grammar of Makhuwa-Enahara, a Bantu language spoken in the north of Mozambique. It contains a description of the grammar of Makhuwa as well as an analysis of the influence of the information structure. The information structure is an influential factor in this language, determining the word order and the use of special conjugations known as conjoint and disjoint verb forms. The dissertation is published in the dissertation series of LOT and can be found online.

Contributions to books
‘Go’ on a rare grammaticalisation path to focus (with Maud Devos). 2010. In R. Nouwen and J. van Kampen, Linguistics in the Netherlands 27, p. 45-58. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Agreement in thetic sentences in Bantu and Romance. 2008. In C. De Cat and K. Demuth (eds) The Bantu-Romance Connection. A comparative investigation of verbal agreement, DPs and information structure, 323-350. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Predicative tone lowering in Makhuwa. 2006. In J. van de Weijer and B. Los (eds), Linguistics in the Netherlands 23, p. 224-236. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

International (refereed) journals
(Inter)subjectification and demonstratives as pragmatic particles. 2013. Journal of Historical Pragmatics, 1-44. 

Location, time, condition: grammaticalisation of a demonstrative in Makhuwa. 2012. Africana Linguistica XVIII, 235-259. 

Tone cases in Otjiherero: head-complement relations, linear order, and information structure (with Lutz Marten and Jukura Kavari). 2012. Africana Linguistica XVIII, 315-353. 

Focus excluding alternatives: conjoint/disjoint marking in Makhuwa. 2011. Lingua 121(11), special issue ‘Focus marking strategies and focus interpretation’, edited by Malte Zimmermann and Edgar Onea, p. 1734-1750. 

What the Bantu languages can tell us about word order and movement (with Leston Buell and Kristina Riedel). 2011. Lingua 121 (5), introduction to special issue ‘Movement and word order in Bantu’.

Functions of demonstratives in Makhuwa narratives. 2010. Africana Linguistica XVI, p. 183-213.

The Makhuwa non-subject relative as a participial modifier. 2010. Journal of African Languages and Linguistics  31 (2), p. 205-231. 

Other
Subject agreement and the EPP in Bantu Agreeing Inversion. 2012. Cambridge Occasional Papers in Linguistics.

Movement and word order in Bantu. 2011. Special issue of Lingua 121 (5), edited by Leston Buell, Kristina Riedel and Jenneke van der Wal.

Review of ‘Information structure, meaning and form’, by Kerstin Schwabe and Susanne Winkler. 2010. Linguistische Berichte 222, p. 253-256.

Leiden Working Papers in Linguistics 4.2. 2007. Edited by Pepijn Hendriks, Felix Rau, Kateřina Součková, and Jenneke van der Wal.

Leiden Working Papers in Linguistics 4.1. 2007. Edited by Pepijn Hendriks, Frank Landsbergen, Michaela Poss, and Jenneke van der Wal.

The disjoint verb form and an empty Immediate After Verb position in Makhuwa. 2006. In L. Downing, L. Marten and S. Zerbian (eds). ZASPiL 43:233-256.

Leiden Working Papers in Linguistics 3.2. 2006. Special issue, edited by Marjo van Koppen, Pepijn Hendriks, Frank Landsbergen, Mika Poss, and Jenneke van der Wal.

To appear
Subordinate clauses and exclusive focus in Makhuwa. To appear in Van Gijn, Rik; Jeremy Hammond; Dejan Matić; Saskia van Putten & Ana Vilacy Galucio (eds), Information Structure and Reference Tracking in Complex Sentences.

Submitted
How ‘person’ got into focus (with Jacky Maniacky).

The long and short of verb alternations in Mauritian Creole and Bantu languages (with Tonjes Veenstra).

What is the conjoint/disjoint alternation?

In preparation
Information structure, (inter)subjectivity and objectification.

‘Come’ and ‘go’ off the beaten grammaticalisation path (edited volume with Maud Devos).

Parameterizing Case: other evidence from Bantu.

Diagnosing focus.

Presentations
Incomplete subordinate clauses and exclusive focus in Makhuwa. 13-14 July 2013. Workshop on Interfaces at the left periphery, LSA Summer Institute, University of Michigan.

A typology of Bantu subject inversion (with Lutz Marten). 12-15 June 2013. Plenary lecture, Bantu 5, Paris.

Parameterising Case: other evidence from Bantu. 12-15 June 2013. Poster, Bantu 5, Paris.

Diagnosing focus. 24-25 May. Second Graz Workshop on Information Structure, Graz.

Features of discourse-configurationality. 9 May 2013. Pre-conference presentation, CamCoS Cambridge.

Subordinate clauses and exclusive focus in Makhuwa: no independent information structure? 5 March 2013. Invited at the Institute for Linguistics and Language Studies, University of Manchester.

Tests for focus. 9-10 November 2012. Workshop ‘Categories of information structure across languages’, Max Planck Institute, Nijmegen.

Makhuwa grammar: how to link description and theory? 23-10-2012. Invited at SOAS, London.

Why languages don’t like expletives (with Theresa Biberauer). 1-4 October 2012. Syntax of the World’s Languages V, Dubrovnik.

Parameterising Case: other evidence from Bantu. 4-6 September 2012. 53rd meeting of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain, Manchester.

Why does focus want to be adjacent to the verb? 28-29 August 2012. Workshop ‘Parametric variation in discourse configurationality’, meeting Societas Linguistica Europaea, Stockholm.

Unpronounced locatives in inversion constructions. 28-29 June 2012. Manchester symposium on existentials, Manchester.

Subordinate clauses and focus in Makhuwa. 15 February 2012. Invited at Newcastle University.

Focus on conjugations: conjoint and disjoint verb forms in Bantu. 29 October 2011. Invited at the 6th South of England LFG meeting, London.

From ‘there’ to ‘if’: marking conditionals in Makhuwa. 29-31 August 2011. Colloquium on African languages and linguistics, Leiden.

Focus encoded in grammar: the case of Bantu verb forms. 3 August 2011. Invited at Nagoya University, Nagoya.

Gradualness in function shift and reanalysis: grammaticalisation of clefts in Lingala and Kikongo areas. 25-30 July 2011. Joint work with Jacky Maniacky. 20th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Osaka.

What lexical semantics tell us about the grammaticalisation of COME and GO in Bantu. 25-30 July 2011. Joint work with Maud Devos. 20th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Osaka.

Different functions here and there: grammaticalisation/pragmaticalisation of locative demonstratives. 7-9 April 2011. Fourth International Conference on Bantu Languages (B4ntu), Berlin.

The development of demonstratives in Makhuwa. 11-13 November 2010. International conference ‘Grammaticalization and (Inter)Subjectification’, Brussels.

The long and short of verbal alternations in Bantu and Mauritian Creole (poster presentation). 30 September–2 October 2010. Joint work with Tonjes Veenstra. 6th International Contrastive Linguistics Conference (ICLC6), Berlin.

On the complicated relation between the Bantu verb and its devoted followers. 23-26 September 2010. International conference ‘Syntax of the World’s Languages’, Lyon.

How ‘person’ got into focus: grammaticalisation of clefts in the Lingala/Kikongo area (with Jacky Maniacky). 23-25 August 2010. Colloquium on African Languages and Linguistics, Leiden.

Long and short verb forms in Mauritian Creole and Mozambican Bantu languages (with Tonjes Veenstra). 23-25 August 2010. Colloquium on African Languages and Linguistics, Leiden.

Grammaticalisation and pragmatic strengthening of conjugations in southern and eastern Bantu languages (a diachronic perspective on conjoint and disjoint verb forms). 6-8 May 2010. Annual Conference on African Linguistics, Toronto.

‘Go’ on a rare grammaticalisation path to focus (with Maud Devos). 6 February 2010. TiNdag, Utrecht.

Subject inversion in some Bantu languages. 6-9 September 2009. 50th meeting of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain, Edinburgh..

The conjoint/disjoint alternation in Makhuwa and Zulu: syntactic parallels and semantic divergence. 9-11 April 2009. Joint work with Leston Buell, Annual Conference of African Linguistics, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Textual functions of Makhuwa demonstratives. 24-27 March. Third International Conference on Bantu Linguistics, Tervuren.

What kind of focus does Makhuwa mark morphologically? 4-6 March 2009. Workshop ‘Focus marking strategies and focus interpretation’, Osnabrück.

 VS word order in Makhuwa and Sesotho. 29 July 2008, Potsdam University, and 26 August 2008, Colloquium on African Languages and Linguistics, Leiden.

To what extent is word order in Makhuwa determined by information structure? 7 December 2007. Invited at the Seminar for African Languages and Cultures, Tervuren.

The Makhuwa non-subject relative as a participial modifier. 4-6 October 2007. Conference ‘Bantu languages: analysis, description and theory’, Gothenburg.

De syntactische structuur van de objectrelatief in Makhuwa. 3 February 2007. TiNdag, Utrecht.

VS constructions in Makhuwa and Sotho. 6 December 2006. Round Table meeting SIL Mozambique, Nampula.

The relative that had no morphology. 30 August 2006. Colloquium on African Languages and Linguistics, Leiden.

How object-like is the postverbal subject? 26/27 May 2006. Poster presentation at the workshop ‘The Bantu Romance Connection’, Leeds.

The disjoint verb form and an empty IAV position in Makhuwa. 20-22 april 2006. Conference ‘Bantu Grammar: Description and Theory’, SOAS, London.

Predicative Lowering in het Makhuwa. 4 February 2006. TiNdag, Utrecht.

The Makhuwa disjoint verb form, focus and syntactic phrasing. 11 November 2005. Friday afternoon lecture, Leiden University.

The distribution of conjoint and disjoint verb forms in Makhuwa. 9 October 2005. Conference ‘Focus in African Languages’, ZAS, Berlin.