Zulu Noun Classes Revisited: A spoken corpus-based approach (original) (raw)
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Lexical categories in African languages: The case of adjectives word-class in Nyakyusa
An endeavor to establish typical lexical categories in individual languages as well as a typology of word-classes yields contradictory conclusions. In this paper we provide evidence to substantiate the existence of an independent and indispensable open category of adjectives in the Bantu language Nyakyusa. An argument that Bantu languages possess a closed class of adjectives (Dixon 1982; Rugemalira 2008; Segerer 2008) is called to question by the large number of adjectives in Nyakyusa, which provide almost all Dixon's core semantic types. In addition, adjectivization permits establishment of a vast number of adjectives which designate various property-concepts in the language. Such derived adjectives fit well the Dixon's semantic types.
International Journal of Language and Linguistics, 2014
Noun classification is one of the prime markings of any Bantu language. It is characterized by the categorization of nouns into noun classes which often pair into singular and plural pairings. These classes are often marked with a numbering system. Suba language being a Bantu language has a noun class system typical of the other Bantu languages and because the language has hardly any evidence of a description of any aspect of its grammar this study seeks to describe this significant aspect of it, laying emphasis on the role of syntax in the morphological structure of the noun. The study took a qualitative approach with the descriptive research design. It was guided by the theory of distributed morphology introduced in 1993 by Morris Halle and Alec Marantz. The theory demonstrates the inter-relatedness between the various components of grammar (phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics). Data was collected in Mfangano Island, which is a homogeneous set up of Suba indigenous people. A sample of forty elders was purposively selected to provide the data. Focus group discussion and elicitation methods were used to collect a corpus of the Suba language which was recorded through audio taping and field notes. The recorded data was then analyzed using the item-and-arrangement approach of morphological structure analysis. This revealed that the classification of the Olusuba noun into a class is motivated by both the morpholosyntactic realization of the noun and the semantics of the noun.
Noun classes in African and Amazonian languages: Towards a comparison
Linguistic Typology, 2004
Many Amazonian systems of nominal classification have been perceived as constituting a descriptive and typological challenge. The proposal presented here is to consider many of them as emerging noun class systems rather than as a-typical systems that defy integration within an overall typology of nominal classification, at the opposite end from the Niger-Congo systems on a continuum of grammaticalization. First the African noun class systems are reviewed, with an emphasis on the sociolinguistic context of their descriptions and on their common deviations from a prototypical image of them projected in the general linguistic literature. Then a recapitulation of various proposals of atypicality of the Amazonian systems is given, followed by the presentation of a typology of nominal classification systems that integrates the dynamic dimension of grammaticalization. The application of this typological framework is illustrated with a case study from the Miraña language of Colombia.
Studies in African Linguistics, 2010
In his book on gender Corbett observes that establishing the number of genders or noun classes in a given language ‘can be the subject of interminable dispute’ (1991: 145). Jóola like Gújjolaay Eegimaa (bqj, Atlantic, Niger-Congo) have noun class systems exhibiting irregular singular-plural matchings and complex agreement correspondences between controller nouns and their targets, resulting in endless disagreements among authors in Jóola linguistics. This paper addresses the issues surrounding noun class assignment in Gújjolaay Eegimaa (Eegimaa henceforth) and other Jóola languages. It provides a critical evaluation of the noun class assignment criteria used for those languages and proposes cross-linguistic and language-specific diagnostic criteria to account for the noun class system of Eegimaa and other related languages that exhibit a similar system.
Meaning or morphology: Individual differences in the categorization of Kinyarwanda nouns
Unlike the gender-based systems of noun categorization in many European languages, numerous semantic categories contribute to Bantu noun class systems. Kinyarwanda, the focus of our study, has a rich inventory of noun class prefixes, but it is unknown the degree to which the semantic and morphological systems underlying these noun classes influence how speakers mentally categorize nominals in their language. To investigate this, speakers of Kinyarwanda (n = 46) were recruited to take part in an online triadic comparison experiment. Across 144 trials, participants were asked to identify the item most different from a written list of three nouns. These lists were constructed based on morphological similarity (from noun classes 3, 5, 7 or 9), semantic overlap (from the domains of 'mammals' and 'tools'), or both. Results show an overall preference for semantic grouping in the triads, although the strength of these preferences differed across individuals. This variation turned out to be systematic and predictable: speakers of Kinyarwanda who spoke Kiswahili as an additional language generally preferred categorizing on the basis of noun class, while those who did not speak Kiswahili as an additional language were more likely to base their decisions on the shared semantic domains of the nouns. These data suggest that noun categorization choices in Kinyarwanda can be influenced by knowledge of other linguistic systems, highlighting the impact that learning additional languages may have on first-language lexical knowledge.
Cognitive Linguistics, 2012
This paper investigates the semantic bases of class membership in the noun class system of Gújjolaay Eegimaa (Eegimaa henceforth), a Niger-Congo and Atlantic language of the BAK group spoken in Southern Senegal. The question of whether semantic principles underlie the overt classification of nouns in Niger-Congo languages is a controversial one. There is a common perception of Niger-Congo noun class systems as being mainly semantically arbitrary. The goal of the present paper is to show that physical properties and culture-specific factors are central principles of semantic categorisation in the Eegimaa noun class system. I argue that the Eegimaa overt grammatical classification of nouns into classes is a semantic categorisation system whereby categories are structured according to prototypicality, family resemblance, metaphorical and metonymic extensions and chaining processes, as argued within the framework of Cognitive Linguistics. I show that the categorisation of entities in th...
Word Categories in African Languages the Case of Ideophones in Swahili
Despite the fact that ideophones represent a group of words with distinct features which have specific sensory-oriented functions, previous classification of ideophones in Bantu languages had not treated this group of lexical entries equally thus creating a linguistic gap in the various grammars. This work discusses representations and usages of ideophones in Swahili with focus on the manifestations of spoken texts in written texts, ideophonic representation of reality and not just imitation of sounds, and orthographic representations of ideophones. The intention is to establish ideophone as an independent word category in the language. I argued from findings that ideophones, as an independent open word category in Swahili, is not strictly distinct from other word categories phonologically but typically on morphological and syntactical parameters. Also, I showed that the ideophones in the language are both onomatopoeic and lexical (symbolic). Syntactically, they function to modify adjectives, verbs and adverbs. Pragmatically, they involve final vowel lengthening as well as extended reduplications to signal the magnitude of the features they describe or modify.