UCLA Working Papers in Linguistics, no.6
Papers in African Linguistics 1
edited by Harold Torrence
| Hilda Koopman | On the homophony of past tense and imperatives in Kisongo Maasai | 1–13 |
| Matthew Pearson | T-marking on Malagasy obliques: tense, aspect, and the position of PPs | 14–39 |
| Edward L. Keenan and Jean Paulin Razafimamonjy | Reciprocals in Malagasy | 40–89 |
| Russell G. Schuh and Alhaji Maina Gimba | Substantive and anaphoric `thing' in Bole, with remarks on Hausa `abu/abin' | 90–122 |
| Masangu Matondo | The interaction of high tones and verb-stem reduplication in Kisukuma | 123–157 |
| Alhaji M. Gimba | Verbal Pluractionality in Bole | 158–171 |
| Edward L. Keenan and Cécile Manorohanta | A quantitative study of voice in Malagasy | 172–195 |
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Abstracts
Hilda Koopman – On the homophony of past tense and imperatives in Kisongo Maasai
In Kisongo Maasai, it can be shown that imperatives and past tense verbs are constructed out of identical building blocks, a prefix tV depending on the class of the verb, a verbal stem, and a suffix (a/o) which agrees in ATR with the verbal stem. The question I would like to address here is how the same form can give ultimately give rise to such different semantic interpretations as past tense and imperative. I will suggest that different puzzle pieces fit together if these verbal forms are in fact dependent (participle-like) forms selected by a silent verb with a meaning close to "get". Standard assumptions about the syntactic representations of imperatives and past tensed clauses will provide insight into the syntactic and interpretative properties of past tense and imperatives.
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Matthew Pearson – T-marking on Malagasy obliques: tense,
aspect, and the position of PPs
In this paper, I discuss the distribution and function of the prefix t- in Malagasy, and show how a proper account of this morpheme can shed light both on the mapping between event semantics and syntax, and on the internal organisation of the (extended) VP, with particular reference to the position of locative and instrumental PPs and other modifiers.
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Edward L. Keenan and Jean Paulin Razafimamonjy – Reciprocals in Malagasy
We study here the morphological and syntactic properties of reciprocal constructions in Malagasy (Austronesian; Madagascar). Our purpose is in part typological, in part theoretical. Typologically we offer an extensive descriptive study of a verbal affix reciprocal construction. More theoretically, reciprocals are often grouped with reflexives as referentially dependent nominal expressions, anaphors. We consider at the end of this paper the possibility of deriving the reciprocal affix in Malagasy by movement from a pronominal type reciprocal anaphor and reject it in favor of directly generating derived predicates with a reciprocal interpretation.
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Russell G. Schuh and Alhaji Maina Gimba – Substantive and anaphoric `thing' in Bole, with remarks on Hausa `abu/abin'
The word `thing' in Bole, a language of the Chadic family spoken in northeastern Nigeria, has two phonological root forms: 'ya- with a glottalized 'y-, and ya- with a non-glottalized y-. Corresponding to this phonological difference is a corresponding functional dichotomy, which we refer to as substantive `thing' and anaphoric `thing'. The former, which can have both physical and cognitive reference similar to English "thing", has a number of unique formal properties as compared with other common nouns. The latter takes the form of a syntactic anaphor in that it is always post-verbal and must be bound to a referential syntactic subject by agreement features. Functionally, it adds a meaning to a sentence which we liken to middle voice, in which the subject acts for self-benefit or with self-involvement. A number of syntactic restrictions apply to the use of anaphoric `thing', including exclusion from sentences with overt object, negative sentences, and WH questions. Bole has three anaphoric expressions in addition to anaphoric `thing': the intransitive copy pronoun (ICP), which indicates definitiveness of an event; regular reflexives, which are VP arguments co-referential to the subject; and emphatic reflexives, which indicate action of the subject without external intervention. The four anaphoric constructions form a complementary pattern in semantic and syntactic space. Like Bole, the word `thing' in Hausa has special lexical properties and, moreover, has both substantive and anaphoric properties closely paralleling those of Bole. The morphemes themselves are not cognate, however, and there are some differences in the syntax, indicating that these lexical, syntactic, and semantic phenomena must be of an areal and/or typological nature rather than a specific West Chadic inheritance.
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Masangu Matondo – The interaction of high tones and verb-stem reduplication in Kisukuma
This paper seeks to investigate the interaction of tone and verb-stem reduplication in one Bantu language: Kisukuma. The paper focuses on providing answers to the following questions: what happens to a verb-stem high tone when the stem is reduplicated in Kisukuma? Does it appear on the reduplicant (RED) or not? What conditions determine the appearance vs nonappearance (or transfer vs non transfer) of base tones on RED? The paper is organized as follows: The first part introduces the basics of Kisukuma tonology. This section is a necessary prerequisite for understanding the tonal behavior in reduplicated stems. The second part lays down the tonal patterns in reduplicated stems. Efforts are made in this section to provide answers to the above raised questions. The last section raises some important questions regarding the status of RED in Kisukuma and provides a general discussion about verb-stem reduplication in Bantu.
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Alhaji M. Gimba – Verbal Pluractionality in Bole
This paper discusses verbal plurality in Bole. Bole is a Chadic language of the West-A Branch (Newman 1977). It is spoken in Gombe and Yobe States of Nigeria. Verbal plurality refers to "pluractional" verbs, also called "intensives", or "iteratives" (Schuh 1983b). "Plurality", according to Newman (1990:1), "encompasses various notions of pluralness or multiplicity including distributiveness...nouns (and adjective) plurals, plural action (= "pluractional") verbs, plural verb stems required by concord rules....". The discussion will focus mainly on the types of plurality in relation to the verb stems that generate them and verb forms they are associated with, that is, whether perfective, progressive, habitual, and so on. I will show that Bole has three morphologically distinct methods of verb plural formation. CV- reduplication e.g. 'yórúu- 'stop-Perf.' –> 'yó-yórú- 'stopped repeatedly' is the only method which is productive nearly across the board (with respect to verbs of all classes). Phonologically and/or lexically restricted sets of verbs use two other types: infixation e.g. kàráa- 'slaughter'-Perf. –> kà-gì-ráa- 'slaughtered repeatedly', and gemination e.g. kàráa- 'slaughtered-Perf.' –> kà-rr-áa- 'slaughtered repeatedly'. These also show restrictions in meaning/function not seen with CV- reduplicants. CV- reduplication can be combined with infixation and gemination to give a distributional meaning, e.g. kà-kà-gì-ráa- (< kà-gì-ráa- < kàráa- 'slaughter-Perf.') 'repeatedly slaughtered each'. On the basis of various semantic distinctions associated with these forms of plurality, I suggest the use of a better term "pluractionals", which sets apart "the semantically endowed verbal plurals from the inflectional agreement stems", first proposed by Newman (1990)
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Edward L. Keenan and Cécile Manorohanta – A quantitative study of voice in Malagasy
This paper is a quantitative study of the voice system in Malagasy (Western Austronesian; Madagascar). We show that non-active verbs in Malagasy have a very different distribution in texts than non-active verbs in English,German and Dutch: they occur far more frequently and they typically present Agent phrases. This we claim reflects the very different role of the voicing system in the grammars of W. Austronesian and W. European languages. Our presentation is organized as follows: Part I reviews the voice system of Malagasy, classifying the various voice forms into Active vs non-Active; the latter divided in Passive, and Circumstantial. Part II presents the results of our text study and Part III draws some conclusions regarding the nature of the voicing system in Malagasy.
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