The Structure of Noun Phrase in Kipangwa

This paper analyses the structure of the noun phrase in Kipangwa (G.64, Guthrie, 1967/71), a Bantu language spoken in southern highlands zone of Tanzania. The paper employed a qualitative approach and the data for this study were collected through elicitation and text collection methods. The researchers collected sentences with NPs from a sample of 18 Kipangwa native speakers obtained through snowball sampling. Also, the researchers selected 3 Bible story books written in Kipangwa to gather data. The findings revealed that a Kipangwa NP is made up by the head noun with or without dependents. The dependents that can constitute the Kipangwa NP are possessives, demonstratives, adjectives, numerals, quantifiers, associative constructions, relative clauses, interrogatives and distributives. The findings also show that these dependents follow the head noun, except the distributive, which precedes the head noun. Regarding the recurrence of dependents in NPs, the findings revealed that in Kipangwa NPs, three dependents, namely adjectives, numerals, and relative clauses have been observed to demonstrate this feature in an NP. With respect to co-occurrence possibilities and constraints, the findings show that possessives and demonstratives can co-occur, also, associative constructions and relative clauses can occur together while the distributive is restricted to co-occur with demonstratives and possessives.