Syntactic object marking in Tapo

Abstract

This paper describes syntactic object marking in Tapo, a Nilo-Saharan language, with original fieldwork carried out in Wanke village in Ethiopian, border of Sudan. The data collected through elicitation and analysis of documentation corpus of the language. Tapo has relatively flexible word order in both the transitive and intransitive clauses. The basic word order is Agent-Verb-Object in transitive and, Subject-Verb in intransitive. The other orders are Verb-Object-Agent and Object-Agent-Verb in transitive verbs and Verb-Subject in intransitive verbs. These syntactic constituents are marked by shifting the constituent order. Consequently, the language does not have a major morphological case system, except the comitative that marks mainly oblique case. Tapo marks object based on semantic feature of entities belong to +HUMAN, +ANIMATE and -ANIMATE. The most dominant  semantic feature is +HUMAN as a beneficiary following the verb, followed by animate and inanimate entities that would take secondary object position whenever the object constituents are composed of animate and inanimate entities, +HUMAN > +ANIMATE > -INANIMATE. A predicate incorporates indirect and direct OBs constituencies, +HUMAN followed by in +ANIMATE. If this order changes to +INANIMATE > +HUMAN, it becomes a possessive clause. Similarly, +ANIMATE follows the verb as a benefactive, and inanimate entities follow the benefactive as a direct OB. In cases where both objects are inanimate, the consumer as a beneficiary proceeds the consumed. Reversed indirect OB and direct OB yields a Noun-Noun phrase.