Negative concord and nominal licensing in Xhosa and Zulu

Xhosa and Zulu nominals have restricted distributions when lacking an outer class prefix known as the augment. We argue that in negative contexts augmentless ([−A]) nominals bear negative concord features, uNeg, which must Agree with a negative licenser iNeg (Zeijlstra 2004). This accounts for the fact that some of them can be used as negative sentence fragment answers, and at the same time cannot appear in sentences without c-commanding negation. It also explains a clausemate requirement [S ...Neg...[−A]...] consistently reported by speakers of both languages in our study for all but subjunctive and (occasionally) neg-raising environments. We demonstrate that further distributional constraints attributed by Halpert (2012, 2015) to special Case-licensing needs of Zulu [−A] nominals are shared by [+A] DPs modified by kuphela–'only', and [+/−A] wh-phrases are subject to near-identical restrictions. This is a state of affairs that Halpert's approach would not predict and cannot explain. We build on Sabel and Zeller (2006), and Zeller (2008) in attributing the pattern to incompatibility between [+focus] features characteristic of negative concord items, 'only'-modified DPs, and wh-phrases, and [−focus] features of certain Zulu and Xhosa clausal positions. Thus all aspects of [−A] nominal distribution reduce to independently motivated features of the class of expressions to which they belong.