Auxiliaries and Analyticity in Northwestern Bantu

Northwestern Bantu (NWB) languages differ from Eastern/Southwestern Bantu languages in that their verb forms are more often analytic, with pre-stem inflectional material appearing in a complex that may be unbound from the main verb. This has resulted in NWB languages being described as having Aux V word order, where ‘Aux’ stands for ‘auxiliary’. At the same time, some verb forms are analysed as synthetic, and authors vary widely in their use of terminology and their orthographic representation of pre-stem material, even for the same language. In this paper, I first review the different terminology used for NWB predicates, highlighting the corresponding variation in wordhood analyses. I then review the structure of the pre-stem ‘auxiliary’ complexes. First, I discuss the internal structure of NWB pre-stem complexes, with regard to the order of elements. Secondly, I discuss the external structure of these complexes, reviewing diagnostics for considering them as independent from the main verb (analytic) or as bound to it (synthetic). The results show variation in the degree of separation between the pre-stem material and the lexical verb across NWB Bantu languages and constructions, consistent with them being in intermediate stages of a recurrent diachronic change between analytic and synthetic verbal predication.