Suffix ordering in Bantu: a morpho centric approachl

Within recent years there has been considerable interest in multiple affixation, particularly in explaining why strings of prefixes and suffixes occur in the orders in which they do. The explanations given have been of either a semantic or syntactic nature, as seen in two influential publications that appeared in the same year. Noting cross-linguistic tendencies to fix certain affix orders, Bybee (1985) attributes the most widely attested orders to the semantic function and scope of each affix (those having greater 'relevance' to the action of the verb root appear closer to it). On the other hand, Baker (1985), focusing on cases where affix ordering is not strictly fixed, argues for a 'Mirror Principle' (MP) by which contrastive affix orders (AB vs. BA) directly correlate with and hence are explained by the order of syntactic operations. Although seeking different motivations (and to some extent covering a different data base), Bybee and Baker have in common that they seek to find a morphology-external explanation for why affixes occur in the observed orders. While Bybee's semantic characterization of inflectional affixes is presented as a tendency, which "was found to be a valid prediction with very few exceptions" (p. 34), Baker's (1985) theory is generally interpreted as a necessary formal property of grammars: "Morphological derivations must directly reflect syntactic derivations (and vice versa)" (p. 375). Since derivational affixes marking causative, passive, reciprocal etc. are each affiliated with a syntactic operation, their specific ordering with respect to other affixes is said to reflect the order in which the corresponding syntactic operations have applied. Some researchers have expressed this morphology-syntax relationship as an inviolable universal: " ... the Mirror Principle is an exceptioniess generalization, with strong empirical cpntent given the constraints on word formation" (AI sin a 1999: 6). Standing in opposition to both of the above characterizations is the possibility that affix ordering or at least certain aspects thereof is directly determined by the morphology proper. That is, languages can impose specific morphotactic constraints for which there is no synchronic extra-morphological explanation. If correct, one would expect cases where equivalent affixes arbitrarily appear as AB in one language, but as'BA in another. The so-called morpho tactic constraints might represent a relation between pairs of specific morphs, or they might define an overarching 'template' by which multiple affixes are automatically ordered, e.g. ABeD. The possibility of morphologically-determined templates has been questioned in the literature, most recently in a major work on Athabaskan affix ordering: ' ... template morphology is highly marked in languages of the world .. " As pointed out by Myers 1987, if