The Role of Discourse in Kihehe Object Marking

Abstract

The study analyses the role of discourse in Kihehe object marking (henceforth, OM). Specifically, the study focuses on how the discourse features such as animate, definiteness, deictic expression, proper nouns, and titles influences the post verbal NP to occupy the verb object slots. Only secondary data extracted from Kihehe written sources and recorded conversations were used. From the data, it was found that discourse features such as specificity, person, and definiteness are essential in Kihehe OM. However, animate feature does not command OM in Kihehe. Animate NP will be object marked as long as they are definite and specific or can be retrieved from the context. With definite and specific features, even inanimate NPs command object marking. Proper nouns, kingship terms, titles, and person pronouns (first and second) are compulsorily object marked because they have higher rank in the person hierarchy system of object marking.