Although Chichewa systematically lacks an overt disjoint affix on the verb, this paper shows that the conjoint/disjoint alternation is still active in Chichewa grammar. It is argued that the disjoint morpheme has gradually lost its segmental phonology in history and become a defective one. In phonology, the silent disjoint marker, being phonologically weak, requires that the postverbal DP complement of the verb not be an unpronounced copy. This gives rise to a number of interesting cases involving lower copy pronunciation, including wh-in-situ, which is surprisingly sensitive to island effects in Chichewa, and discontinuous object DPs, which are shown to involve scattered deletion of phonological features. In syntax, the defectiveness of the disjoint form is reflected by the unavailability of L to project independently, L being the probe responsible for the alteration. Instead, L is always bundled with the highest agreeing head in the verbal domain. This explains why the disjoint effects in Chichewa are only attested in transitive verbs, as it is shown that an intransitive verb does not agree in Chichewa, in which case L is simply absent.