Properties of Arguments and Predicates of Weather Events in Kinyakyusa

Abstract

The encoding of weather events reveals a tripartite division of argumenttype, predicate-type, and argument-predicate-type. I argue in this article that speakers of Kinyakyusa underscore the predicate-type and partially the argument-type although the predicate-type predominates. Compared to other Bantu languages, Kinyakyusa resembles Sepedi and Sesotho, which are spoken in South Africa, and Kiswahili, which is spoken in East Africa, as regards the properties of the cognate arguments of weather events. Kinyakyusa reveals that the arguments of weather events occupy the subject and/or object position; however, the post-verbal cognate objects do not trigger the affixing of object prefixes on to verbs, which is an indicator of less properties of objecthood but much predominance of the predicatetype. Furthermore, each predicate selects a specific weather event and the assignment of the nominal prefix of the specific weather event helps speakers to provide a proper semantic interpretation of the argument. This makes the language predominantly predicate-type.