Foreign Linguistics

The issue of pronoun dropping has widely been established amongst Romance languages. While it is generally claimed that most morphologically agglutinative languages have pro-drop properties, there is a need to investigate and establish how different languages fair with this notion and note if there are any language peculiar idiosyncratic properties. This paper analyses pro-drop properties of the chiShona language, making comparisons to the well documented and prototypical pro-drop Italian language. The paper is largely comparative and descriptive in nature with Italian and English as our reference points for pro-dropping and non-pro-dropping respectively. Our findings are that chiShona is clearly a pro-drop language, characteristics of which tally with most properties that identify with this phenomenon in Italian. However, chiShona has its own idiosyncratic properties that differ from Italian, for instance the wh-word can freely occupy the position immediately after the complementizer and also the post sentential position without vitiating the intended questioning. The wh-word in chiShona has much free play to the extent of occupying the final position in the sentence. In terms of subject omission in weather verbs, the difference between chiShona and Italian is that in Italian, the existence of the subject pronoun makes the sentence ungrammatical whereas in chiShona it remains a grammatical option. Our findings support the pro-drop phenomenon as a universal language parameter that however exhibit language internal idiosyncratic differences.

This paper analyses the semantics of causative constructions in Shona, employing the Event structure Approach (Davidson, D. (1967). "The Logical Form of Action Sentences."). We argue that Shona can be accounted well through the neo-Davidsonian approaches particularly because of the need to accommodate the agglutinative nature of the language. In this paper, causative constructions are taken as accomplishment verbs whose predication is a complex one. The causative is a complex event construction that is made up of subevents that are constrained through time-participant connectedness, making sure that the complex event is a sum of different subevents, which upon their union, form a single complex predicate that has its own combinatorial capacity, subcategorizing for its own arguments.

This article purveys a linguistic exegesis of the 'decade of crisis' in Zimbabwe. The crisis period spans the years 2000 to 2009. During this period, the Zimbabwean economy reached a nadir while life in general became very precarious. Against this backdrop, this article adopts a panoramic gaze at the universe of names and labels on buildings at the University of Zimbabwe (henceforth UZ). It utilises these linguistic labels or signage as primary data for hypothesising on the 'decade of crisis'. The general observation is that most of the linguistic signs (which are in English) on buildings at Zimbabwe's premier institution of higher learning had undergone imponderable linguistic hemorrhage and abrasion by losing one or more letters. The degradation of the signs reached a point where some of them became completely meaningless by English standards. This occurred during the crisis years. Thus, we marshal the argument that the broken down state of the signage serves as a symbol of the state of the nation during those horrendous years. Because these are supposed to be direction signs as well, ensuring easy movement, identification, functionality and location, they epitomise, at least during that period, a dislocated nation; one incapable of defining its operational and directional agenda. At the endpoint of the crisis, the linguistic labels are fixed, marking a gradual return to normalcy in the nation and its institutions. The UZ is quite ideal for the purposes of our discussion because it is entirely dependent on government for its operations such that any malfunctioning of government quickly reflects on its human and physical infrastructure.

The Zimbabwean sociolinguistic situation has for long been dogged by the lack of a holistic and well-articulated language policy. This situation is not peculiar to Zimbabwe, but common throughout Africa. This article examines the implications and complications of the new constitutionally enshrined national language policy in Zimbabwe. To a larger extent, the new policy is a result of protracted activism by minority ethno-linguistic communities in Zimbabwe. However, the shift from recognising three official languages to sixteen would be an end itself if stakeholders do not proactively engage with the policy and develop effective strategies for successful implementation. Adequate financial resources, political will and stakeholder buy-in are needed for the successful implementation of this policy. This article maps the way forward for Zimbabwe's language policy and planning efforts.

Pragmatic vagueness is a common language phenomenon in verbal communication; more exactly speaking, it is an important pragmatic strategy. Hedges, as the most typical representative and the most universal phenomenon of vagueness, are widely used in advertisement discourse, for the expression makes things fuzzy, indeterminate, and ambiguous. Based on functional grammar, it explores the interpersonal function of hedges in advertisement discourse through modality. It is hoped that the study may serve to prove that the use of hedges can make the advertisement revealing as well as convincing, and it can help to project advertisers' good image as well as establish good relationship between advertisers and consumers and thus it can realize the commercial aims of advertisers.