| 1. |
- Bernander, Rasmus, 1986, et al.
(författare)
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Relative constructions and the Bantu Relative Agreement Cycle in Western Serengeti
- 2023
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Ingår i: Studies in African Linguistics. - 2154-428X .- 0039-3533. ; 52:1, s. 50-84
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article offers the first comprehensive study of relative constructions among the members of the Western Serengeti (WS) group, a group of closely related Great Lakes Bantu language varieties spoken in the Mara region in northern Tanzania. The study has both a synchronic and a diachronic angle. First, we offer a systematic description of the various relativization types found in these varieties with regard to the phonological (prosodic) and (morpho-)syntactic traits of both subject and non-subject relativization. Next, we situate our findings within a historical-comparative framework, with particular reference to Van de Velde’s (2021, 2022) Bantu Relative Agreement (BRA) Cycle. Linking the source of the main relative marker to the proximal demonstrative, we offer a fine-grained reconstruction of its development into a relativizer. We propose that the WS relative constructions instantiate Stage 1b of the BRA cycle while simultaneously showing remnants of what is either the direct reflex of the relative construction reconstructed for Proto-Bantu (Van de Velde 2022) or the final Stage 3b of an earlier cycle. In this endeavor we are able to zoom in to the processes at play at the turning point where an old and a new relative cycle intersect.
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| 2. |
- Bloom Ström, Eva-Marie, 1967
(författare)
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The existential in Xhosa in relation to indefiniteness : The existential copula in Xhosa in relation to indefiniteness
- 2020
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Ingår i: Studies in African Linguistics. - : University of Florida George A Smathers Libraries. - 0039-3533 .- 2154-428X. ; 49:2, s. 213-239
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Bare nouns in languages without articles can be semantically ambiguous between definite and indefinite interpretations. It is assumed here that speakers of such languages can still signal to the hearer when such nouns refer to unique and identifiable referents. This paper contributes to the long-standing cross-linguistic question of how bare nouns are interpreted and what means languages without articles have to disambiguate between definite and indefinite readings. This question is largely unexplored for Bantu languages. The answer is sought in the use of different word orders and morphosyntactic constructions, with a focus on the existential, in this paper. In many languages of the world, there is a restriction on definites as pivots in existential constructions, which serves as a motivation for exploring these constructions in Xhosa. Xhosa makes use of a non-verbal copula -kho(na) in prototypical existentials as well as in presentationals. The combination of a long and a short version of the copula, together with a choice between expletive and subject agreement, gives rise to four different forms which express the existence or presence of a referent. The aim of this paper is to answer the question of how these different forms map onto a difference in meaning and function, based on examples from a corpus of natural speech and checked in follow-up elicitation. It is shown that Xhosa has a dedicated existential which is used when the coda, rather than the pivot, is the perspectival center. The existential takes expletive agreement on the copula, and the copula plus pivot have a fixed word order. When the same copula agrees with the theme argument, which can be pre- or postverbal, it functions as a presentational. The existential is used with new referents, which are overwhelmingly indefinite. However, there is no strict definiteness effect. The presentational takes a wider range of referents, which are also mostly indefinite. When it comes to the use of the short and long forms of the copula, the paper reveals an unexpected analogy with the use of the so-called conjoint and disjoint forms in Xhosa tense-aspect paradigms.
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| 3. |
- Zahran, Aron, 1995, et al.
(författare)
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Against expectations – the rise of adverbs in Swahili phasal polarity
- 2022
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Ingår i: Studies in African Linguistics. - : University of Florida George A Smathers Libraries. - 0039-3533 .- 2154-428X. ; 51:2, s. 294-322
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article provides a first analysis of the expression of phasal polarity in Swahili. Phasal polarity (henceforth PhP) refers to linguistic concepts which express the phase of a given situation in relation to a prior and/or subsequent phase, as well as expressing whether a certain situation holds or not. These concepts, represented here in English as a meta-language with already, no longer, still and not yet, are interrelated in interesting ways and form a semantic sub-system. In contrast to many other Eastern Bantu languages, we show that the dedicated expressions for PhP concepts in Swahili are mainly adverbs, with limited use of verbal affixes. It also stands out in the area by not having any gaps in the expressibility of PhP concepts, and by making use of internal negation. In order to target present-day spoken Swahili, the results are based on speaker interviews, through the use of carefully introduced contexts. The main strategy for expressing already was through the verbal affix sha-. There is also an adverb tayari ‘ready’ to express this concept, which occurs not infrequently in our results. We show that there are differences in their distribution, and hypothesize that this could be related to an ongoing change in the use of (me)sha- in relation to perfective me-. For all other PhP concepts, adverbs are used as the main strategy. There was variability in speaker responses in the use of constructions which we have considered contextual paraphrases rather than dedicated PhP expressions. The current work is inspired by a recent increase in interest in PhP systems in languages of the African continent, previously relatively unexplored (Kramer 2021). The analysis is based on the parameters for cross-linguistic comparison as presented by Kramer (2017)
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