The Evolution of NA in Bantu Languages (original) (raw)
English The link word na in Bantu languages has been identified as one of the forms inherited from the ancestral language, commonly known as Proto-Bantu (Guthrie, 1971; Greenberg,1948; Meeussen, 1969). This form has been reconstructed in Proto-Bantu with the meaning of “and” and “with”. Its main role has been recognized as to link together two syntactic units in a coordinative or associative manner. This paper examines the two original functions of na as a marker of coordination or association of syntactic units in Bantu languages. It shows how some languages have extended its use through the process of grammaticalization to assume other functions. Thus, the paper concludes by observing that the evolution of the na form is one of the cases in which words in Bantu languages have evolved to acquire other functions (Polome, 1977; Guthrie, 1971). However, there are also cases in which units belonging to one grammatical category change to other categories. Francais Le mot lien «na» dans ...
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LiBRI Journal - The Evolution Of NA in Bantu Languages
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<br>The link word na in Bantu languages has been identified as one of the forms inherited from the ancestral language, commonly known as Proto-Bantu (Guthrie, 1971; Greenberg,1948; Meeussen, 1969). This form has been reconstructed in Proto-Bantu with the meaning of "and" and "with". Its main role has been recognized as to link together two syntactic units in a coordinative or associative manner. This paper examines the two original functions of na as a marker of coordination or association of syntactic units in Bantu languages. It shows how some languages have extended its use through the process of grammaticalization to assume other functions. Thus, the paper concludes by observing that the evolution of the na form is one of the cases in which words in Bantu languages have evolved to acquire other functions (Polomé, 1977; Guthrie, 1971). However, there are also cases in which units belonging to one grammatical category change to other categories. <b>...
1 The Bantu Grammar: Description and Theory Network
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The collection of papers in this volume presents results of a collaborative project between the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, the Zentrum für allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Typologie und Universalienforschung (ZAS) in Berlin, and the University of Leiden. All three institutions have a strong interest in the linguistics of Bantu languages, and in 2003 decided to set up a network to compare results and to provide a platform for on-going discussion of different topics on which their research interests converged. The project received funding from the British Academy International Networks Programme, and from 2003 to 2006 seven meetings were held at the institutions involved under the title Bantu Grammar: Description and Theory, indicating the shared belief that current research in Bantu is best served by combining the description of new data with theoretically informed analysis. During the life-time of the network, and partly in conjunction with it, larger ext...
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Reconstructing morpheme order in Bantu : The case of causativization and applicativization
The morphological ordering relationships among a set of valence-changing suffixes found throughout the Bantu family have been of theoretical interest in a number of synchronic studies of the daughter languages. However, few attempts have yet been made to reconstruct the principles governing their ordering in the parent language. Based on a survey of over thirty Bantu languages, this paper proposes a reconstruction wherein the order of suffixes marking causativization and applicativization was fixed in Proto-Bantu. This reconstruction runs counter to approaches to morphosyntax where semantic scope is taken to determine the order of morphemes but is consistent with templatic approaches to morpheme ordering in the Bantu family.
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