Ingestive Verbs, Causatives, and Object Symmetry in Lubukusu

Research into object symmetry compares the grammatical function of two objects in a ditransitive predicate. Of particular interest are derived ditransitives where a valency-changing morpheme increases the valency of a transitive verb. The central question is whether an object licensed by the base verb and an object licensed by, say, an applicative morpheme have the same grammatical function. Several aspects of grammar have been proposed to account for object (a)symmetries: for example, syntactic differences, especially the height of argumentlicensing heads (Baker 1988, Ngonyani 1996, McGinnis 2001, Harley 2002, McGinnis and Gerdts 2003, Jeong 2007); differences in thematic role (Bresnan and Moshi 1990, Alsina and Mchombo 1993); and the animacy and person features of the two objects (Morolong and Hyman 1972, Aranovich 2009, Baker, Safir, and Sikuku 2012). In this squib, I make the novel claim that...