The locative‐applicative in Eleme¹

Abstract

The Eleme locative-applicative =ru  is a non-canonical applicative that demonstrates morphosyntactic properties commonly associated with clitics. It is

Intra-paradigmatic variation in Eleme verbal agreement

“…27 CONTROLLERS of agreement (i.e. elements that determine agreement) are 28 typically either a clause internal NP or a discourse determined argument. In 29 CANONICAL AGREEMENT (Corbett 2003(Corbett , 2006 features shared by the controller 30 and target have matching values and agreement occurs within a local domain.…”

“…because it partly concerns the use of epenthetics that do not occur 26 under similar conditions in Eleme) it is not possible at this stage to provide 27 any additional support in favour of extending or validating their proposal. 28 While Eleme and Gokana show some similarity in that they both employ a 29 second-person plural suffix as part of their participant reference systems, 30 Eleme differs from both Kana and Gokana in the marking of third-person 31 arguments. As indicated in the paradigms in (31) and (32), Kana and Gokana 32 have distinct independent singular and plural third-person forms and no 33 additional morphology is employed to mark the number of the subject.…”