In proceedings of Northwest Linguistics Conference 29, University of British Columbia Working Papers in Linguistics, Zoe Lam and Natalie Weber (eds.), 2013. Wh-in-Situ in Nata Joash Gambarage Hermann Keupdjio University of British Columbia Abstract: This paper sets out to investigate WH-constructions in Nata, a lacustrine Bantu language spoken in Northwestern Tanzania. There are two forms of WH-phrases in Nata: the simple form and the complex form. The complex form occurs at the left edge of the clause and the simple form is used in a post verbal position. While the complex WH-forms in Nata, are similar to WH-forms in other known Bantu languages (Sabel and Zeller 2004 on Nguni; Biloa 1995 on Tuki), no systematic study of simple WH-phrases have been reported in the studies of Bantu languages. This study wants first to bring these forms to light by investigating their status and reporting on their syntactic, semantic and prosodic properties as well licensing conditions of such forms. We then compare how they can fit into the cross-linguistic theoretic-account of in-situ WH-phrases (Pesetsky 1987; Demuth and Harford 1999; Cheng 2009). 1 Introduction Nata exhibits an SVO word order. The standard analysis places the subject in [Spec, IP] and the verb in I 0 . No object marking is exhibited in WH-constructions. We encounter two types of WH-phrases in Nata. Type I is comprised of what we refer to as the complex form which is composed of the copular ne- or ni-, plus the WH-word (Keupdjio forthcoming) 1 . The complex forms are exemplified in (1). (1) a. Ne-we Maria a-a-rooč-é? COP-WH Mary 3SG.SM-PST-see-FV ‘Who did Mary see?’ b. Ne-ke Maria a-a-ɣor-íre? COP-WH Mary 3SG.SM-PST-buy-PRF ‘What did Mary buy?’ c. Ní-hɛ Maria a-a-ɣiir-é? COP-WH Mary 3SG.SM-PST-go-FV ‘Where did Mary go?’ d. Ne-βwe Maria a-a-ɣiir-é? COP-WH Mary 3PL.SM-PST-go-FV ‘How did Mary go?’ 1 According to Gambarage’s (2013) analysis of vowel harmony in Nata nouns, the copular prefix only surfaces with a high vowel, ni-, if it immediately precedes a [-ATR] vowel in the root, but surfaces as ne- elsewhere.