Locatives in Runyankore-Rukiga

Abstract

The locative expressions in Runyankore-Rukiga consist of nouns that can refer to both places and spatial relations, whether they are inherent or derived. Instead of focusing solely on the morphological properties and presentation of locative words, our attention is directed towards locative phrases. These expressions resemble prepositional phrases in terms of their configuration since the locative particle appears before the noun as a separate word. Despite describing spaces rather than objects, these phrases function as nominal expressions and exhibit morpho-syntactic behaviour akin to noun phrases. To support this assertion, we examine Locative Inversion, arguments of negative verbs, and Alternate Locative Agreement patterns in detail. By utilizing type-semantic concepts alongside structural representations, we propose a revised version of the two-layered noun phrase approach initially proposed by Bresnan and Mchombo (1989).