Some Aspects of the Semantics and Syntax of Adverbial clauses in Lozi: A corpus-Based Study

Abstract

This study has explored some aspects of the semantics and syntax of the eight Lozi adverbial clause types studied. Using syntax and semantic analyses, the study sought to find out whether or not the semantics and syntax of the eight studied adverbial clauses in Lozi had a formal regular pattern and rule governed. In the semantic analysis, adverbial clauses were first grouped according to type and functions. Conjunction words, the order of adverbial and main clauses in sentences and determination and modification were discussed too. The syntactic analysis discussed different types of subordinating conjunctions and their position in subordinate clauses. Preprefixes and irregular auxiliary verb roots as subordinating conjunctions and cases of adverbial clauses following each other in a sentence have been discussed. How adverbial clauses could be viewed in ST and GB theories has been illustrated. The data were collected from four sources namely; introspection as the researcher was a native speaker of Lozi, content broadcast material, content of published texts and from oral conversations. The instruments used were a radio and a tape recorder. A notebook for taking down notes was another instrument used by the researcher. Additionally, seven published texts were used of which two were English texts and the rest were Lozi texts. The data from all these sources were picked at random in order to avoid bias. After collecting the data, it was put into categories of relevant and irrelevant data. The relevant data were then put according to adverbial clause types and analysed syntactically and semantically. The results of this study in relation with the objectives of the study indicate that the eight Lozi adverbial clause types have a formal regular pattern and are rule governed. In relation to the theoretical framework, the indication is that both ST and GB do apply to the Lozi adverbial clauses studied in this document although some changes had to be made to fit them in the theories. In view of these results, one suggests that new theories be generated or the existing ones specifically formulated for English be refined to account for Bantu linguistic items