Auxiliary stacking in southern Bantu languages

Abstract

Auxiliary constructions in Southern Bantu exhibit a feature in which two or more auxiliaries appear alongside a single lexical verb. We term this construction ‘auxiliary stacking’. The goal of the paper is to outline the phenomenon of auxiliary stacking in Southern Bantu and raise questions about its features and limits. We focus on what we currently know in terms of features of variation associated with auxiliary stacking, namely a) ordering of stacked auxiliaries, b) number of auxiliaries permitted, c) subject marking properties, and d) the semantics of these auxiliary stacking constructions. We also look at other features such as tense-aspect-mood, as well as modality and negation. The article then sets out areas for further investigation via a systematic study of auxiliary stacking constructions in Southern Bantu and serves as a call for future targeted research on these constructions.