Perspectival domains in nouns and clauses

Using data from Nyala East (Luhia, Bantu), I argue that both clauses and nouns are “perspectival domains.” This study primarily focuses on novel cases of what I call epistemic marking on nouns, analyzed here as deriving from a perspectival operator in the DP left periphery, by analogy to well-known studies of similar effects in the clausal domain (Koopman and Sportiche 1989 ; Speas and Tenny 2003 ). This study therefore confirms the noted parallels between clauses and nouns (Rosenbaum 1967 et seq.), and introduces a new line of analogy based on transparent morphological evidence. I further situate these findings within the broader function of perspective in Nyala East, showing the three distinct morphological reflexes of perspectival information—found on nouns, clauses, and verbs—reduce to only two distinct perspectival loci in the nominal and clausal domains, again highlighting the commonalities shared across nouns and clauses, to the exclusion of the verbal domain.