The verb final suffix /-m/ in Ikwere: a rare case of agreement in a language with no agreement system (original) (raw)
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Verb Inflectional Morphology in Ikwere
Studies in Linguistics, 2018
Although some work has been done on Ikwere verb inflectional morphology, no comprehensive description of this aspect of the language exists. This paper aims at providing a fairly comprehensive description of the verb inflectional morphology of Ikwere, an Igboid language (Niger-Congo) spoken in southern Nigeria. It notes that the marking of inflectional categories of tense, aspect, mood and polarity in Ikwere is a combination of affixes, auxiliaries and tone. The paper identifies -kata and -li as markers of resultative and potential respectively. It also identifies the combination -ká and -lâ as marking emphatic prohibitive, in addition to -rV, -ga, -lV/-nV, -bè, -kọ̀, dè/dà and -V identified by Alerechi (2015), which respectively mark factative/assertive, progressive, perfect, inceptive, habitual, future and prohibitive. The paper further establishes that in addition to root-controlled vowel harmony noted by Alerechi (2007, 2009), affix-controlled vowel harmony is also attested in Ikwere. Finally, the paper demonstrates that although tense, aspect, mood and polarity are different in theory, in practice they criss-cross themselves in verb forms in Ikwere, thus resulting in such combinations as ‘resultative past’ and ‘future potential’.
Suffixed plurals in Baïnounk languages: Agreement patterns and diachronic development
JALL, 2017
This paper re-evaluates hypotheses about the agreement behaviour of nouns using plural suffixes in the Baïnounk languages (Niger Congo/ Atlantic/ North Atlantic). Although these languages dispose of a large and complex prefixing noun class systems which are involved in expressing number distinctions , a subgroup of nouns uses a suffix for pluralisation. It is shown here that plural-suffixing nouns do not engage in the typologically rare process of pho-nological agreement copying as has been claimed previously. Instead, they are prefixed nouns, triggering alliterative agreement. Several scenarios about the origin and further development of the plural suffixes are presented. Synchronic data suggest that plural suffixes are older than the split of Nyun-Buy languages from a common ancestor. It is highly unlikely that it is borrowed from Mandinka, a regionally influential lingua franca which does not have noun classes. Instead, it seems plausible that plural suffixes have arisen through internal processes in which animacy and collective semantics have played a role. Potential candidates for a source morpheme for the plural suffix include a plural morpheme from the verbal domain or alternatively an associative plural. The role and impact of language contact and large scale borrowing on the extent of plural suffixation in the various Baïnounk languages is discussed.
Morphological Coding of Verb-Object Agreement in African Languages
2012
The aim of the paper is to demonstrate the structures of some African languages that mark agreement between the verb and the object. The means of coding agreement are rich and differentiated and include pronominal affixes on verbs for objects but not for subjects, verb endings and tonal contrast as well as some other modifications of verb when used with object. Morphological devices tend to code for the grammatical properties of the object, such as gender and number, or – in languages with class systems – the noun class attributed to the object. Some other languages mark the agreement with either nominal or pronominal form of the object. The languages may also denote a semantic distinction between ‘single’ and ‘many’. With reference to marking properties of semantic Patient rather than syntactic object, it is postulated to relate the presented system of marking verb-object agreement as traces of an ergative concord system in African languages.
Suffixed plurals in Baïnonk languages: Agreement patterns and diachronic development
Journal of African Languages and Linguistics
This paper re-evaluates hypotheses about the agreement behaviour of nouns using plural suffixes in the Baïnounk languages (Niger Congo/ Atlantic/ North Atlantic). Although these languages dispose of a large and complex prefixing noun class systems which are involved in expressing number distinctions, a subgroup of nouns uses a suffix for pluralisation. It is shown here that plural-suffixing nouns do not engage in the typologically rare process of phonological agreement copying as has been claimed previously. Instead, they are prefixed nouns, triggering alliterative agreement. Several scenarios about the origin and further development of the plural suffixes are presented. Synchronic data suggest that plural suffixes are older than the split of Nyun-Buy languages from a common ancestor. It is highly unlikely that it is borrowed from Mandinka, a regionally influential lingua franca which does not have noun classes. Instead, it seems plausible that plural suffixes have arisen through in...
Semantic verb classes in Tima (Niger-Congo)_Dissertation_2023_Nataliya Veit
Semantic verb classes in Tima (Niger-Congo), 2023
This study represents a linguistic analysis of verbs in Tima, a Niger-Congo language spoken in Sudan. The aim is to establish coherent semantic classes of verbs based on their common morphosyntactic behavior, the underlying hypothesis being that the commonalities in the morphosyntactic behavior may be accounted for by common semantic components shared by verbs that behave similarly. The participation of verbs in valency-changing operations is taken as a pattern of common morphosyntactic behavior. Valence and, concomitantly, argument structure alteration is signaled in Tima by the employment of derivational suffixes. Extension by particular derivational suffixes is available to particular groups of verbs, i.e. the productivity of a given derivational morpheme is restricted by the lexical semantics of verbal roots. Tima has a rich derivational morphology, particularly in its postverbal elements (affixes and clitics). Yet two suffixes are most relevant in terms of valency-changing operations in that they show specific compatibility constraints and depend on the meaning of the verb. The distribution of these two suffixes, -ʌk/-ak, which is used in detransitivizing constructions, and -Vk, which can serve in both intransitivizing and transitivizing functions, is the major concern of the present dissertation. Both morphemes are multifunctional; their specific reading depends on the semantic class of the verb extended by the suffix. The dissertation is structured around these two morphemes and their distribution across the Tima verbal lexicon. The general background, including theoretical issues and general linguistic information on the Tima language, is presented in Chapter 1. Chapters 2 and 3 describe the functional scope tied to the verbal semantics of the morphemes -ʌk/-ak and -Vk, respectively.
On the verbal system in Langi a Bantu language of Tanzania (F. 33)
Computer Systems: Science & Engineering, 2005
This paper presents the Langi verbal system and the various ways in which tense, aspect and mood are encoded. Through the description of the structures and uses of the various forms, it attempts to demonstrate how the different conjugations fit together to form a coherent whole, morphologically and semantically, and how in some cases the system has been influenced by surrounding Cushitic languages. RESUME Cet article présente le système verbal du langi et les différents moyens mis en oeuvre pour encoder le temps, l'aspect et le mode. A travers la description des structures et emplois des diverses formes, il tente de démontrer comment les conjugaisons diverses forment un système cohérent, sur les plans morphologiques et sémantiques, et comment, dans certains cas, le système a été influencé par les langues couchitiques environnantes. * I thank the following for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper: Christiane Paulian, Zlatka Guentchéva, Denis Creissels, Dave Odden and an anonymous reviewer at SAL. I am also indebted to Derek Nurse and Maarten Mous for pointing out (as well as providing) various articles of interest for this study. 2 This language is relatively unknown to linguistics: when I began studying it in 1996, the only published work dated from 1916 (by Otto Dempwolff). The data presented here is all first hand, and was gathered during fieldwork I carried out in Tanzania during my doctoral studies, the funding for which was provided by the LACITO-CNRS. Oliver Stegen of SIL has started working on the language recently; so far he has presented a paper on the vowel system at CALL (Leiden) in 2000, and has published a paper on derivation (2002). A monograph on Langi is in press: Dunham (forthcoming).
The present article is dedicated to the syntax, morphology, and phonetics of ideophones in Arusa Maasai. After examining the compliance of 69 ideophonic lexemes with the typologically driven prototype of an ideophone, the authors conclude that Arusa ideophones may range from canonical to non-canonical even within a single language module. When syntax, morphology, and phonetics are considered jointly, holophrastic and asyntagmatic ideophones are more canonical than ideophones used as verbal modifiers and parts of complex predicates, which are, in turn, more canonical than predicative ideophones. The extent of canonicity is inversely correlated with the systematicity and integration of ideophones in sentence grammar and their diffusion into other lexical classes: predicative ideophones have been fully incorporated into the category of verbs; for ideophones employed as verbal modifiers, a comparable incorporation into the category of adverbs has not been completed; for all the other types, especially holophrastic and asyntagmatic, ideophones still maintain their categorical individuality. Overall, ideophones constitute an "old" category in Arusa, one that is well advanced on its grammaticalization cline.
Person-marked quantifiers in Kinyarwanda
Agreement from a Diachronic Perspective
Person agreement is usually restricted to verbal categories. However, Bantu languages permit person agreement on certain adnominal quantifiers. We propose an account of the evolution of person agreement that constrains the cliticization of pronominals to specifier-head relationships. This diachronic view captures the presence of person agreement in Bantu on adnominal quantifiers as well as verbs. 1 Introduction Cross-linguistically, syntactic domains of agreement differ with respect to the kinds of agreement features they can show. Nominal-internal agreement rarely involves person, but often involves number, gender, and case features (Greenberg 1978, Lehmann 1988). Agreement on predicates, on the other hand, can involve number, gender, and-crucially distinct from nominal-internal agreement-person. French is illustrative of this point; it exhibits only gender and number features on adjectives, but the person feature is reserved for verbs, as illustrated in (1), where the verb sommes 'are.1pl' agrees in person (first) and number (plural) features with the trigger nous 'we.' The adjective pauvres 'poor' agrees in number (plural). 1 (1) Nous we sommes are.1pl pauvre-s. poor-pl 'We are poor.' French also shows number and gender features inside the nominal, as in (2). Here, similar to what was seen in (1), the adjective agrees in number (plural) with nous.