The syntax of reported speech in Kafire (Senufo, Côte d’Ivoire): a Lexical-Functional Grammar account

Abstract

This paper explores the syntax of reported speech in Kafire, an underdescribed Senufo language of northern Côte d’Ivoire. In Kafire, whether interpreted as direct or indirect speech, the reported segment is neither embedded in the reporting segment nor functions as an argument of the speech verb. This raises the question of how to account for its syntax. I argue that a manner demonstrative pronoun is the actual argument of the speech verb, while the reported segment restricts the referent of this pronoun, regardless of its position, i.e., it specifies the semantic content that the pronoun requires. I further show that, similarly to manner demonstratives, indexicals in general and metalinguistic categories also require their referent to be restricted, independently of their grammatical function. Finally, I propose that, beyond the reported segment, the restriction function can also be fulfilled by a set of categories that form a grammatical class with it, namely ideophones, onomatopoeias, and representational gestures. The analysis is developed within the Lexical-Functional Grammar framework, which captures the relation between the reported segment and the restricted category at f-structure, independently of c-structure configurations. This allows the account to address several problems faced by similar proposals and to extend straightforwardly to data from other languages.