47 research outputs found
An Analysis of the Verbal Marker tsa in Luguru
This paper deals with a morphosyntactic phenomenon found in the under-described Bantu language Luguru, spoken in central Tanzania: the verbal marker tsa. This marker encodes shared knowledge or shared reference. The meanings conveyed by the marker stretch from âat a specific timeâ or âat that placeâ to âas we knowâ, or even âfor that reasonâ. In Mkudeâs grammatical description of Luguru from 1974, there is a mention of a marker (zaa) signalling what he calls ârecollected referenceâ, which restricts the event to one specific moment in the past; this marker is believed to have developed into todayâs tsa
Three Kagulu Stories: Annotations, analysis, and word lists
This article presents three linguistically analysed and annotated stories in the Kagulu language, together with a word list. Kagulu is a Bantu language, classified as G12, spoken by approximately 240,000 people in the Morogoro region of Tanzania. The objective of the article is to make these stories public for several reasons. First, there is very little published material in the Kagulu language at all. Second, the few anthropological stories that are published do not come with annotations, glossing or even a word-for-word translation into Swahili or English, which do not make these texts very meaningful from a linguistic perspective. Thirdly, these stories tell us about Kagulu life and Kagulu traditions and can thus be a tool in helping us to understand the culture and identity associated with the language. Finally, it is important that every language is written down, described and published. Undescribed languages run the risk of disappearing, while documenting a language forestalls its loss
Linguistic variation and the dynamics of language documentation: Editing in âpureâ Kagulu
The Tanzanian ethnic community language Kagulu is in extended language contact with the national language Swahili and other neighbouring community languages. The effects of contact are seen in vocabulary and structure, leading to a high degree of linguistic variation and to the development of distinct varieties of âpureâ and âmixedâ Kagulu. A comprehensive documentation of the language needs to take this variation into account and to provide a description of the different varieties and their interaction. The paper illustrates this point by charting the development of a specific text within a language documentation project. A comparison of three versions of the text â a recorded oral story, a transcribed version of it and a further, edited version in which features of pure Kagulu are edited in â shows the dynamics of how the different versions of the text interact and provides a detailed picture of linguistic variation and of speakersâ use and exploitation of it. We show that all versions of the text are valid, âauthenticâ representations of their own linguistic reality, and how all three of them, and the processes of their genesis, are an integral part of a comprehensive documentation of Kagulu and its linguistic ecology.National Foreign Language Resource Cente
Svenska Akademiens ordbok pÄ nÀtet
NÀtutgÄva av Svenska Akademiens ordbok (<saob.se>). Testad och recenserad i mars 2017
Structure building and thematic constraints in Bantu inversion constructions
Bantu inversion constructions include locative inversion, patient inversion (also called subjectâobject reversal), semantic locative inversion and instrument inversion. The constructions show a high level of cross-linguistic variation, but also a core of invariant shared morphosyntactic and information structural properties. These include: that the preverbal position is filled by a non-agent NP triggering verbal agreement, that the agent follows the verb obligatorily, that object marking is disallowed, and that the preverbal NP is more topical, and the postverbal NP more focal. While previous analyses have tended to concentrate on one inversion type, the present paper develops a uniform analysis of Bantu inversion constructions. Adopting a Dynamic Syntax perspective, we show how the constructions share basic aspects of structure building and semantic representation. In our analysis, cross-linguistic differences in the distribution of inversion constructions result from unrelated parameters of variation, as well as from thematic constraints related to the thematic hierarchy. With some modification, the analysis can also be extended to passives
Transfer of Swahili âuntilâ in contact with East African languages
Swahili has transformed the noun mpaka âboundary, borderâ into a function word âuntilâ, which has successfully spread to many other East African languages with locative and temporal readings. The grammaticalisation originated in a N-N construction without an associative âofâ interpreted as limiting the action adverbially. The main function is in the time interpretation of âuntilâ. I provide an overview of this transfer in East Africa by looking at a large number of languages and argue that parallel independent grammaticalisation is not what is at stake but rather transfer of the function word and the preposition-like function.Descriptive and Comparative Linguistic
African Linguistics in Central and Eastern Europe, and in the Nordic Countries
Non peer reviewe