The Silozi Clause: A Study of the Structure and Distribution of its Constituents

This work provides a study of the structure and distribution of constituents of the clause in Silozi, a Bantu language which is spoken by about 450,000 people in the Western Province of Zambia. The work also describes the morphological structure of Silozi. In addition, it investigates the hypothesis that there is a correlation between the internal structure of a constituent (length and structural complexity) and the position it occupies in the clause or sentence. Using a database of spoken and written Silozi texts, the work employs both qualitative and quantitative methods to investigate the distribution of constituents in their functional profiles. It thus considers the parameters of constituent ordering in discourse.

The work concludes that there is a strong correlation between the internal structure of constituents and the position in which they occur in a clause or sentence. This is so especially in constructions that place the subject in the initial position (SVX) which constitute the bulk of the data. There is also evidence for this hypothesis in some focusing constructions. The work has also found that in constructions which place constituents other than the subject in the initial position (e.g. left dislocations), the ordering significantly contradicts the predictions of this hypothesis.