The Linker in Kinande Re-examined

Selected proceedings of the 44th Annual Conference of African Linguistics. - Somerville, MA., 2015. - pp. 264-276.In this study, I have introduced novel data that demonstrate that previous accounts of the syntax of the linker in Kinande are empirically inadequate. Specifically, I have established that neither Case theory, nor a linearization requirement that identically labeled phrases not be too close to each other can account for the distribution of the linker. I have proposed that the linker can be fruitfully analyzed as a copula. This accounts for the occurrence of the linker when a nominal co-occurs with an adverb within the verb phrase. It provides a way of interpreting a number of puzzling properties of the linker construction. In particular, the view that the linker is a copula reveals that Kinande offers no evidence that the MLC is parameterized.