The Neuter Suffix -Ik- In Bantu (original) (raw)
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Introduction - Valency-decreasing derivations and quasi middles in Bantu: A typological perspective
Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 36.3 (Special issue: Valency-decreasing derivations and (quasi-)middles in Bantu), 2018
In this introductory article we give a general and broad characterisation of the concept ‘middle voice’, and elaborate briefly how we envision it as auseful concept for the analysis of derivational verbal morphology in Bantu. Further, we present an overview of the contributions of the special issue through a state-of-the-art discussion of the neuter suffix *-ɪk.
The neuter in Bantu: A Systemic Functional analysis
2014
KIGA (JE14) (Taylor 1985: 147) a. Rutafa y-aa-yat-a amate. Rutafa SM-PST-spill-FV milk 'Rutafa spilt the milk.' b. amate g-aa-yat-ik-a. milk SM-PST-spill-NT-FV 'The milk (got) spilt.' The neuter thus encodes an alternation between a two-participant and one-participant clause in which the Goal (Undergoer, Patient) of the basic, underived clause (1a) becomes the sole participant of the derived clause (1b), and the agent-like participant of the basic, underived clause becomes inexpressible. 1 This has been called the ergative or anticausative alternation, depending on the framework in which the phenomenon is studied. It has been shown that there are generally five ways in which the alternation is encoded cross-linguistically (Haspelmath 1993). These are summarised below. Table 1. The five alternation types (based on Haspelmath 1993) Alternation type Examples from Haspelmath (1993: 91-92) 1. Causative alternation a. One-participant basic/underived 2 b. Two-participant derived Georgian a. duɣ-s 'cook' (intr.) b. a-duɣ-ebs 'cook' (tr.) 2. Anticausative alternation a. One-participant derived b. Two-participant basic/underived Hindi-Uru a. khul-naa 'open' (intr.) b. khol-naa 'open' (tr.) 3. Equipollent alternation Both verbs derived from the same basic verb stem Japanese a. atum-aru 'gather' (intr.) b. atum-eru 'gather' (tr.) 4. Labile alternation Same verb root used for one-and twoparticipant member English a. open (intr.) b. open (tr.) 5. Suppletive alternation Two different verb roots used for one-and two-participant member Russian a. goret' 'burn' (intr.) b. žeč' 'burn' (tr.) Map 1. Guthrie's classification of the Bantu languages, with the addition of zone J (
Nicodemus and Mallya, 2021
This paper describes the morphological evolution of-ile suffix across four Bantu languages selected from the Nyasa-Tanganyika corridor. The suffix-ile which is traditionally an aspect (perfective) marker is changing and becoming amenable to different roles across Bantu languages. This poses a challenge in specifying its roles as a tense and/or an aspect marker unless attention is paid to an individual language. The findings presented in this paper indicate that in the languages under study, the suffix-ile functions as both a tense and an aspect marker. It co-occurs with pre-root formatives to mark different past tenses. In Nyakyusa, in particular, the suffix marks different categories of aspect, namely anterior, non-progressive and indefinite conditional aspect. However, in Ndali, Malila and Nyiha, the suffix-ile marks only the non-progressive aspect. In this view, this paper concludes that the-ile suffix is gradually vanishing in the forms for aspect meanwhile it extends its roles into marking different tense categories.
1 The Bantu Grammar: Description and Theory Network
2006
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...
LiBRI Journal - The Evolution Of NA in Bantu Languages
2017
<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>...