Phasal polarity in Nyakyusa (Bantu, M31)

Persohn, Bastian

doi:10.1515/9783110646290-007

Cited by 2 publications

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“…Tu-li-mw-on-a tena SM1PL-PST-OM-see-FV again 'We saw him again.' (Mpiranya 2015: 103) From a diachronic perspective, NO LONGER expressions deriving from 'again' or similar elements indicating repeated time are not uncommon and, for example, are also found in Manda (Bernander 2021) and Nyakyusa (Persohn 2021). Cross-linguistically, NO LONGER items can derive from different notions, including iterative, repetitive and/or additive constructions (van Baar 1997: 97).…”

Section: Tayari and Sha-: Part Of An Ongoing Ta Shuffle?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Against expectations – the rise of adverbs in Swahili phasal polarity

Zahran

Ström²

2023

sal

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This article provides a first analysis of the expression of phasal polarity in Swahili. Phasal polarity (henceforth PhP) refers to linguistic concepts which express the phase of a given situation in relation to a prior and/or subsequent phase, as well as expressing whether a certain situation holds or not. These concepts, represented here in English as a meta-language with already, no longer, still and not yet, are interrelated in interesting ways and form a semantic sub-system. In contrast to many other Eastern Bantu languages, we show that the dedicated expressions for PhP concepts in Swahili are mainly adverbs, with limited use of verbal affixes. It also stands out in the area by not having any gaps in the expressibility of PhP concepts, and by making use of internal negation. In order to target present-day spoken Swahili, the results are based on speaker interviews, through the use of carefully introduced contexts. The main strategy for expressing already was through the verbal affix sha-. There is also an adverb tayari ‘ready’ to express this concept, which occurs not infrequently in our results. We show that there are differences in their distribution, and hypothesize that this could be related to an ongoing change in the use of (me)sha- in relation to perfective me-. For all other PhP concepts, adverbs are used as the main strategy. There was variability in speaker responses in the use of constructions which we have considered contextual paraphrases rather than dedicated PhP expressions. The current work is inspired by a recent increase in interest in PhP systems in languages of the African continent, previously relatively unexplored (Kramer 2021). The analysis is based on the parameters for cross-linguistic comparison as presented by Kramer (2017)

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Section: Tayari and Sha-: Part Of An Ongoing Ta Shuffle?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Against expectations – the rise of adverbs in Swahili phasal polarity

Zahran

Ström²

2023

sal

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The ‘Still Not’ Present in Andi: identifying the grammaticalization source

Maisak,

Verhees

2024

Folia Linguistica

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Andi (East Caucasian) features a verb form that marks an event that is (still) not happening, contrary to the speaker’s expectation (i.e. ‘Still Not’ Present). This form is unusual for several reasons. First, forms of this kind are not typical for the language family. Second, while it conveys negative semantics, the form does not contain negation marking, even though segmentally it is rather heavy in comparison to other synthetic tenses. Third, to our knowledge grammatical ‘still not’ expressions are typologically uncommon. The paper describes the semantics and morphosyntactic properties of the ‘Still Not’ Present and suggests a plausible grammaticalization source by comparing dialects and closely related languages. We also try to match the data to typological categories like phasal polarity.

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Phasal polarity in Nyakyusa (Bantu, M31)

Cited by 2 publications

References 0 publications

Against expectations – the rise of adverbs in Swahili phasal polarity

Against expectations – the rise of adverbs in Swahili phasal polarity

The ‘Still Not’ Present in Andi: identifying the grammaticalization source

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