Rangi za Kiswahili

Swahili has a larger inventory of (more or less \"basic\") colour terms than most Bantu languages. The aim of this article is to present this colour terminology and to point out semantic, syntactic and morphological divergences. We also look at the etymology of the various colour terms and try to establish a chronology of the growth (and decline?) of Swahili colour terminology

John Vanderelst, A Grammar of Dagik

Dagik is a Kordofanian language of the Talodi Group spoken in the Nuba Mountains (Sudan) in a handful of villages lying south of the Kadugli-Talodi road. The language has previously been known in the literature under the ethnonym “Masakin Gusar, including Masakin Buram and Dagig” (Stevenson 1956‑57: §71). Since Masakin has pejorative connotations, meaning ‘poor’ in Arabic, speakers prefer the name Nuba Dagik, probably from Sudanese Arabic dagiig ‘small’. Dagik speakers also refer to themselve..

Uo mmoja hautiwi panga mbili: aina za yambwa na maana zake

`Kinds of objects and their meanings´ deals with objecthood in Kiswahili. From a syntactic point of view, there is but one kind of object: the distinction between `direct´ and `indirect´ object has no syntactic properties, and one verb can have only one object. Of course, objects can have different semantic roles. This raises questions about the syntactic and semantic functions of `naked´ non-objects, and some of these are approached by inspecting fifty examples of the verb kutia `to put [sth] [into]´ from Sacleux´s dictionary. Three syntactic and semantic frames are distinguished and the respective roles of the arguments are described. Finally, there is a brief discussion about the meaning of the object as such and how it is influenced by the presence of the applicative extension

Nguo-nyingi Mkoti: Mwanzishaji wa mji wa Ngoji (Angoche)

The title of this paper gives three variants of what historically is the same name: Koti = the present-day indigenous name of Koti Island; Ngoji = the older form of the same name; Angoche = the official name of the town, adapted from the name of the AKoti people EKoti is the language of Angoche, a town on the coast of Nampula Province, in Mozambique. EKoti is in most respects very similar to the neighbouring coastal varieties of Makhuwa, but it also has many lexical and morphological items that are derived from Swahili. My colleague F. U. Mucanheia, co-author of our forthcoming grammar of EKoti, has recorded a story about the origin of Koti Island and its people. In the present paper, I summarize the text of this oral tradition, and I compare it to the dynastic traditions from Angoche and to those found in the Kilwa chronicle, pointing out differences but also establishing links

Kiinimacho cha mahali: kiambishi tamati cha mahali -ni

The locative suffix -ni: In this article we discuss two hypotheses about the origin of the locative suffix -ni. The better known hypothesis (Raum 1909; Meinhof 1941/42) assumes that the suffix -(i)ni developed out of a class 18 demonstrative, though the details of the assumed phonological changes have never been made clear. The competing hypothesis by Sacleux (1939) suggests that locative nouns with -ni started out as compounds with the noun ini `liver´. We think that this second hypothesis is phonologically more plausible and that it also accounts for the specific link with the meaning of class 18 `inside´. Comparison of the spread of the locative suffix -(i)ni and of the word ini `liver´, together with other historical considerations, point to Kiswahili (or Sabaki) as the most likely origin of this locative suffix

Movement from the double object construction is not fully symmetrical

A movement asymmetry arises in some languages that are otherwise symmetrical for both A- and A-bar movement in the double object construction (DOC), including Norwegian, North-West British English, and a range of Bantu languages including Zulu and Lubukusu: a Theme object can be A-bar-moved out of a Recipient (Goal) passive, but not vice versa. Our explanation of this asymmetry is based on phase theory, more specifically a stricter version of the Phase Interpretability Condition proposed by Chomsky (2001). The effect is that, in a Theme passive, a Recipient object destined for the C-domain gets trapped within the lower V-related phase by movement of the Theme. The same effect is observed in Italian, a language in which only Theme passives are possible. Moreover, a similar effect is also found in some Bantu languages in connection with object marking/agreement: object agreement with the Theme in a Recipient passive is possible, but not vice versa. We show that this, too, can be understood within the theory that we articulate

Nguo-nyingi Mkoti: Mwanzishaji wa mji wa Ngoji (Angoche)

The title of this paper gives three variants of what historically is the same name: Koti = the present-day indigenous name of Koti Island; Ngoji = the older form of the same name; Angoche = the official name of the town, adapted from the name of the AKoti people EKoti is the language of Angoche, a town on the coast of Nampula Province, in Mozambique. EKoti is in most respects very similar to the neighbouring coastal varieties of Makhuwa, but it also has many lexical and morphological items that are derived from Swahili. My colleague F. U. Mucanheia, co-author of our forthcoming grammar of EKoti, has recorded a story about the origin of Koti Island and its people. In the present paper, I summarize the text of this oral tradition, and I compare it to the dynastic traditions from Angoche and to those found in the Kilwa chronicle, pointing out differences but also establishing links

Rangi za Kiswahili

Swahili has a larger inventory of (more or less \"basic\") colour terms than most Bantu languages. The aim of this article is to present this colour terminology and to point out semantic, syntactic and morphological divergences. We also look at the etymology of the various colour terms and try to establish a chronology of the growth (and decline?) of Swahili colour terminology

Legislative Documents

Also, variously referred to as: House bills; House documents; House legislative documents; legislative documents; General Court documents