Are languages context-sensitive in their syntax or in their morphology? Revisiting the case of Bambara

A central research question in the history of generative grammar has been whether natural languages fall within the class of context-free languages or occupy a higher position in Chomsky’s hierarchy for formal grammars. This research regained attention in recent years because grammatical abilities of non-human species have been investigated to evaluate the (alleged) uniqueness of human language. In this context, identifying the locus of complex grammatical abilities is particularly important. Out of the four papers that proved human language to be context-sensitive, three built their demonstration on clearly syntactic constructions. A fourth paper (Culy, 1982) focused on Bambara and claimed that this language is context-sensitive in its morphology. In this note we systematically investigate whether context-sensitivity indeed lies in the morphology in Bambara, conclude for a positive answer and discuss this finding at the light of the debate between lexicalist and non-lexicalist approaches.