Prenasalisation in Tonga (M64): A Morphosyntactic Perspective
In this study I explore the influence/use of the morphemen- in Tonga. This morpheme is mainly viewed and/or regarded as the first person singular pronoun in many Bantu languages. In this study, I argue that in addition to being a first person singular morpheme, n- can also be used as a second person pronoun in Tonga. It is shown in the study that the morpheme is in fact part of the discontinuous morpheme, the other part of the discontinuous morpheme being the terminal vowel – e. Further, I demonstrate that the tone on all the syllables succeeding ndetermines the semantic out-put of the syntactic unit, resulting from prefixing n- to a verb. I end by positing a rule for the phenomenon, which I have suspected is endemic in other Bantu languages.
