Shona metaphors created during the Zimbabwe crisis: A cognitive grammar analysis

Shona is a Southern Bantu language that is spoken by about 75% of Zimbabweans. This article discusses the nature of metaphors that were created by Shona speakers in speaking of the Zimbabwean political and socio-economic crisis. The data for this study were collected from August to December of 2008 and their analysis derives from Cognitive Grammar theory, which considers metaphor as a conceptual and linguistic phenomenonthat involves a mapping relation between the source domain and the target domain of language. We adopt the cognitive view of metaphor as one of the basic human strategies in conceptualizing our environment using concrete phenomena such as moto ‘fire’ and kudhakwa ‘to drink’ to represent abstract concepts such as difficulties and confusion. This type of metaphorical extension is worth examining as it plays an important role in the development of the language’s lexicon.Le shona est une langue bantoue du sud qui est parlé par à peu près 75% des habitants de Zimbabwé. Cet article discute des métaphores qui ont été créées par les locuteurs du shona dans leurs références à la crise socio-économique et politique de Zimbabwé. Les données linguistiques proviennent des enquêtes faites entre août et décembre 2008 et sont analysées dans le cadre de la théorie de la Grammaire cognitive, qui traite la métaphore comme un processus de créer des liens ‘cartographiques’ entre les domaines de source et de cible linguistiques. La métaphore est un stratège de base intellectuel qui sert à représenter le monde en employant des notions concrètes comme moto ‘feu’ et kudhakwa ‘intoxication’, et kurova ‘être battu’ pour représenter des conceptes abstraits comme les difficultés et la confusion. Cette sorte d’extension métaphorique mérite l’analyse car elle joue un rôle important dans le développement du lexique

Hiatus resolution in Xitsonga

Vowel hiatus is dispreferred in many languages of the world. Xitsonga, an understudied cross-border Southern Bantu language spoken in South Africa, Mozambique, Swaziland, and Zimbabwe, employs a set of four hiatus resolution strategies: glide formation, secondary articulation, elision, and coalescence. Glide formation is the primary repair strategy, as it shows a least violation of faithfulness. In glide formation, /i/ and /u/ correspond to [j] and [w], respectively. It is blocked when V1 is preceded by a consonant, as this would incur a fatal violation of *COMPLEX. When glide formation is blocked, secondary articulation is the next preferred option. One of the interesting features of Xitsonga is that it allows secondary articulation involving mid-vowels /o e/. The Obligatory Contour Principle (OCP) is often the trigger for elision, the least preferred strategy. Vowel coalescence can take two forms in Xitsonga, namely /a + i/ → [e] and /a + u/ → [o], both of which incur a non-fatal violation of UNIFORMITY. When coalescence is blocked due to an impermissible sequence of /a/ and another vowel (excluding /i/ and /u/), the /a/ is elided. We argue that a single constraint hierarchy is responsible for these seemingly disjointed repair strategies. The overall significance of this paper lies in the fact that it is the first consolidated description and formal analysis of vowel hiatus resolution in Xitsonga.Keywords: Xitsonga, hiatus resolution, Optimality Theory, repair, glide formation, elision, coalescence, secondary articulatio

The Shona Subject Relation: Some Selectional Principles

This article presents some selection principles of the subject relation in Shona, a southern Bantu language spoken in Zimbabwe. The selectional principles are based on the morphological and semantic characteristics of the preverbal noun phrase (NP). The data for this investigation came from the authors who are native speakers of two main Shona dialects, namely, Zezuru and Karanga. Data was analysed using the projection principle, a branch of government and binding (GB) theory, as well as the seven selectional principles established in well researched languages. It came out that no single selectional rule can cater for all the possible Shona sentences. We demonstrate that seven selectional principles are required for a holistic account of the subject relation in Shona. We also show that there are instances where the selectional rules contradict. As a result, we suggest a hierarchy of reliability to cater for this: namely, thematic or semantic reasons > PAH selection > morphological reasons > topicality in word order > intransitivity assumption > dummy subject. As there are few descriptive and theoretical studies on Shona syntax, this research recommends more studies on this subject. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n27p159

Hiatus contexts and hiatus resolution strategies in Zezuru

This article examines the morphosyntactic environments in which vowel sequences occur in Zezuru and explains the synchronic hiatus resolution strategies that are employed in this language. The findings of this study show that Zezuru relies on glide formation, glide epenthesis, vowel elision and vowel coalescence to resolve hiatus. This investigation demonstrates that the major motivation for resolving hiatus in Zezuru is to maintain its preferred consonant–vowel (CV) syllable structure. The data used in this study are both intuitive and naturalistic and their analysis is mainly couched within the generative CV-phonology model of syllable structure. This study is expected to broaden and deepen our understanding of hiatus resolution strategies in Zezuru and Southern Bantu languages in general.Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 2010, 28(1): 1–1

When two vowels go walking in Bantu: A comparative analysis of vowel hiatus resolution in chiNambya and chiZezuru

Vowel hiatus is inadmissible in many languages. ChiNambya and chiZezuru rely on coalescence, glide epenthesis, elision, glide formation and secondary articulation to resolve vowel hiatus. This article presents a comparative analysis of three hiatus-avoidance methods, namely, glide formation, secondary articulation and vowel elision in chiNambya and chiZezuru, using Optimality Theory (hereafter OT). These repair strategies operate within nominals and occur in a phonologically conditioned complementary distribution. Two interlinguistic differences are noticeable: (i) when the first vowel (henceforth V1) is /i/ and is preceded by a consonant, chiZezuru deletes V1 regardless of the quality of the preceding consonant because it does not allow palatalised consonants. In contrast, chiNambya, which allows some palatalised consonants, employs secondary articulation with all other consonants except when the preceding consonant is palatal; where V1 is deleted; and (ii) when V1 is /u/ and is preceded by a labial consonant and followed by a labial vowel, chiZezuru employs secondary articulation while chiNambya which does not allow labialised labial consonants followed by labial vowels, employs elision. These interlinguistic differences allow for an OT analysis where a factorial typology accounts for the differences.Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 2014, 32(1): 55–7

Zimbabwean English: A sociophonological exploration1

The worldwide emergence of new Englishes and their subtypes known as African Englishes has been a subject of considerable theoretical and descriptive discussion. Although the variety of English that is spoken in Zimbabwe has distinct linguistic features and displays the key properties of new Englishes, it has not received significant attention from both theoretical and applied linguists. This study addresses this issue by presenting a sociophonological exploration of the hypothesis that the variety of English that is spoken in Zimbabwe is a type of new Englishes. This article starts by examining the sociolinguistic status and ‘ownership’ (Widdowson, 1994:384; Chisanga & Kamwangamalu, 1997:90) of the English language in Zimbabwe. This is followed by an exploration of the phonological processes that are operative in the spoken English of L1 Shona speakers such as substitution and underdifferentiation of monophthongal vowel phonemes and monophthongization of diphthongs and triphthongs through glide epenthesis and glide formation. The results reveal that these processes reduce the 25 English vowels to five monophthongs [i, e, a, o, u]. These processes are part of the hallmarks of African Englishes, which have not yet been comprehensively studied. This study fits well within the context of increasing interest in the description of African Englishes.S.Afr.J.Afr.Lang., 2010,

The indigenisation of English in Chenjera Hove’s novels Bones and Ancestors: A case of lexical and semantic features of chiShona-English

The issue of the indigenisation and ownership of the English language in southern Africa has been a subject of considerable empirical and theoretical discussion in current linguistic and sociolinguistic literature. One of the domains in which English has been ‘Africanised’ is in creative writing. This article presents a linguistic and sociolinguistic analysis of the indigenisation of English in Chenjerai Hove’s novels, namely, Ancestors (1996) and Bones (2001). It specifically discusses the use of lexico-semantic borrowing and transcreation of proverbs and idioms in these novels. The main argument of this article is that the purpose of using indigenised forms of English in Hove’s novels is to communicate Shona cultural values and sensibilities by means of a variety of English that has assimilated to the cultural realities of the Shona people. While the language used in the novels remains accessible to the outside world it also attempts to do justice to the experiences of the chiShona-speaking people. Like Chinua Achebe, and many other postcolonial writers, Hove indigenises the English language by implanting some ‘Africanisms’ in his novels in a bid to convey culture-specific realities such as indigenous foods, traditional games, flora and fauna, traditional dances and rituals. The article identifies the socio-cultural domains in which chiShona lexical items are used. In addition, it discusses the socio-cultural meanings of selected proverbs, idioms and metaphors used in the novels under investigation.South African Journal of African Languages 2012, 32(1): 11–1