Valency and saliency in Bantu applicatives: A diachronic reanalysis

This chapter examines apparent competing functions of applicatives, prepositions and locative-marked phrases in a number of Bantu languages, focussing on the interaction of these types of categories in various applicative constructions. We show that in a number of Bantu languages, prepositional constructions compete with applicatives. The interaction between the two construction types revolves around valency (the licensing of an additional object) and saliency (the encoding of pragmatic effects), two hallmarks of applicative constructions more widely. Evidence from this interaction, we propose, helps to better understand the diachronic development of applicatives. We further observe a diachronic reanalysis of the applicative marker from expressing both syntactic and pragmatic effects to a pure pragmatic marker of saliency, in the context of functionally and structurally ambiguous locative phrases.