Common tense-aspect markers in Bantu
| Autor: | Gérard Philippson, Derek Nurse |
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| Rok vydání: | 2006 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | Journal of African Languages and Linguistics. 27 |
| ISSN: | 1613-3811 0167-6164 |
| DOI: | 10.1515/jall.2006.009 |
| Popis: | We have two aims here. One is to provide an inventory and typological overview of the commonest pre-stem and suffixal tense-aspect markers across Bantu. We examine geographical distribution, phonological and tonal shape, and general semantic range. The other is to ask which of these might be assigned to Proto-Bantu, some 5000 years ago. We use a database of 100 languages, comprising 85 from all Guthrie's groups (A10, A20, etc) plus another 15 from his 15 zones. The most widespread pre-stem markers are: /a/, which comes in several tonal and vowel-length variations, representing 'past' in most languages and 'non-past' (possibly older focus (Nurse 2006)) in fewer languages; zero 'general present';/ka/ 'itive, narrative, (far) past, (far) future';/ki/ 'persistive, participial'; /laa/ fiture' and/la/ focus'. The first three certainly go back to Proto-Bantu, the status of the last three is less certain. The commonest suffixes are: /a/ 'neutral'; /e/ 'subjunctive'; /ile/ 'perfect, past'; /ag/ 'imperfective'; /i/ 'positive near past'; a vowel copy suffix 'positive near past'. The first five go back to Proto-Bantu, the sixth is innovation. We propose that /ile, i, the vowel copy suffix/ are connected. Finally, we mention four widespread but derived pre-stem markers. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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