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Abstract

Bantu languages have a robust structure, which is usually stated to be agglutinative, accommodates affixations of a wide range of morphemes both as prefixes (to the left of the root), as well suffixes (to the right of the root) before placing the terminal vowel. In their verbal morphology, the reciprocal is one of the many derivational affixes that have, however, not gained similar prominence as the study of the applicative and the causative construction. The thrust of this study is to investigate the syntax and semantics of reciprocal constructions in ChiBarwe, a marginalised cross-border language spoken in Zimbabwe and Mozambique. This study argues that ChiBarwe reciprocals take different forms, and perform various syntactic and semantic functions. It further argues that ChiBarwe reciprocal constructions can be classified as symmetric vs asymmetrical, and continuous vs discontinuous, depending on a variety of factors. Theoretically, the study is guided by the tenets of the Lexical Mapping Theory (LMT), as explained by Bresnan (2001). The data for this study were collected through in-depth interviews, focus group discussions (FGDs), questionnaires, the ChiBarwe Language Database, and discourse analysis. The study results are analysed and presented qualitatively. The findings revealed that ChiBarwe reciprocal construction manifests in a vowel-consonant form of the biphonemic (VC) affix -an-, and its polyphonemic (VCVC) allomorph -anan-. It also encodes mutual action and reduces verbal valency by merging participant roles, and triggers subjectivisation through the promotion of object NPs to subject position.

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