The sociosyntax of verb-second and verb-third placement in Manenberg Kaaps

Abstract

The primary goal of this study is to provide a detailed and sharply focused sociosyntactic description and analysis of an aspect of clausal word order variation in Kaaps. Kaaps is a grammatically understudied, historically rich and marginalised variety of Afrikaans. Special attention is given to the use of verb-second (V2) and verb-third (V3) in relation to sociolinguistic variables such as location, language background and age. V2 and V3 refer to the position of the verb in a sentence and are typical properties of West Germanic languages. The study aims to understand possible variations in V2 and V3 and to locate this variation in relation to sociolinguistic intricacies. Syntactic patterns gathered from this research will contribute to the documentation and description of Kaaps grammar, to our understanding of word order variation in Kaaps and in Afrikaans more generally, and they will also provide insight into how Kaaps fits into the West Germanic language family.