Tense-mood concordance and clause chaining in Mankon (a Grassfields Bantu language)

In this article we explore the ways in which Mankon, a Grassfields Bantu language, links clauses together to form certain sentences by using four distinct verbal constructions – the successive, exhortative, non-future and future consecutive. These constructions encode the syntactic and semantic links between clauses. After a brief typological survey of the language we present the affi rmative perfective conjugation. Sections 3, 4, 5 discuss sentences whose constituting clauses are not linked by coordinating or subordinating morphemes, or where such links are optional. Even when one such morpheme is required, this does not indicate the status of the clause it marks. Section 6 deals with fixed constructions relating to the sentences examined in the preceding sections. The conclusion briefly reviews research on the topic for other Grassfields languages.

• Affiliations: 1: Université Paris Descartes, Laboratoire des langues et Civilisations à Tradition Orale, Fédération Typologie et Universaux Linguistiques-CNRS