Definiteness and specificity in the isiXhosa determiner phrase

Abstract

The article investigates questions relating to the morphosyntactic realization of (in)definitenessand (non-)specificity in isiXhosa. The interaction of syntax, semantics and pragmatics is exploredin establishing the interpretation of noun phrases as regards (in)definiteness and (non-)specificityin isiXhosa, with particular attention to the object noun phrase. Properties of the noun phraseinterpretation relating to the correlation between the (non-)occurrence of an object agreement prefixin the verb morphology and the preprefix of the object noun is invoked as evidence for the view thatthe noun class preprefix is an instantiation of the functional category Determiner. (In)definiteness and(non-)specificity readings of noun phrases containing nominal modifiers that are inherently neutral asregards (in)definiteness, namely the adjective, nominal relative and clausal relative, are invoked toargue for the syntactic status of the morpheme a-, which occurs in the inflectional morphology of thesemodifiers, as a determiner category heading a Determiner Phrase (DP).