Comparative Studies of the Extended Verb Forms in Bantu Languages

这个项目的目的是描述班图语的扩展动词形式，这是典型的具有派生动词形式的粘合语言。我们研究了动词的各种扩展形式，特别是“应用形式”，它被认为是给动词增加了额外的论元。我们从田野调查和参考文献中收集了班图动词形式的数据，从中我们发现，应用形式的主要功能不一定是增加一个额外的论元，而是一个重要的语义角色，如受益人、男方、接受者/接受者、目标、来源、位置、路径、体验者、工具/手段、内容、动机/原因，并在句法上与动词联系起来。应用形式的这种句法性质与动词在习语用法中的变义功能之间的关系还有待进一步研究。

The aim of this project is to describe the extended verb forms of Bantu languages, which are the typical agglutinative languages having derivative verb forms. We studied various extended verb forms especially focusing on the "applicative form", which are considered to add the extra arguments to the verb. We gathered data from field works and references which contain data of Bantu verb forms.From the data, we found that the main function of the applicative form is not necessarily to add an extra argument ; rather, one of its important functions is to take an argument of various semantic roles like Beneficiary, Maleficiary, Recipient/Addressee, Goal, Source, Location, Path, Experiencer, Instrument/Means, Content, and Motive/Reason, except Agent and Patient, and relate it to the verb syntactically. Much investigation would be expected on the relation between this syntactical property of the applicative forms and the function of changing meanings of the verb in idiomatic usage.