scholarly journals Imbrication Patterns of Lunda

2021 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-81
Author(s):  
Boniface Kawasha

This paper examines the imbrication process in Lunda. It is widely acknowledged in the literature that imbrication in Bantu languages is mainly triggered by the perfective or past tense suffix (Bastin 1983). In Lunda, however, this morphophonological process is not only conditioned by the remote past tense inflectional suffix but also caused by derivational extensions that include the applicative, the causative, and to a lesser extent the reciprocal affix when they are attached to a large number of verb bases. Imbrication typically occurs with verb bases containing what is known as an extension, whether productive or frozen. Unlike many Bantu languages, this phenomenon always results in the deletion of the base final consonant and the consonant of the suffix survives. This segmental loss leads to either vowel coalescence between the two adjacent vowels or gliding

1984 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 347-374 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard M. Weist ◽  
Hanna Wysocka ◽  
Katarzyna Witkowska-Stadnik ◽  
Ewa Buczowska ◽  
Emilia Konieczna

ABSTRACTLongitudinal and cross-sectional designs were combined in this analysis of the evolution of children's capacity to represent deictic relationships. The longitudinal component contained the naturalistic observation of three relatively young children (1; 7–1; 9) and three somewhat older children (2; 0–2; 2). These children were tape-recorded in caretaker–child interactions. The analysis of the corpora from these children revealed: (1) imperfective activity verb phrases in the past tense, (2) telic verb phrases in the past tense used independently of resulting states, (3) moderately remote past references, and (4) deictic future references. The cross-sectional component contained an experiment in which elicitation procedures were used to obtain past and future references to atelic and telic situations. Nine 2½- and nine 3½-year-old children were tested. Generally high levels of performance reinforced the outcome of the longitudinal analysis.


2021 ◽  
Vol 74 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 533-559
Author(s):  
Leora Bar-el ◽  
Malin Petzell

Abstract Temporal/aspectual morphology often serves as a diagnostic for actional classes. Bantu languages are known for their highly developed tense, aspect (and mood) systems. The East Ruvu Bantu languages of Tanzania are unusual in that they exhibit a decidedly reduced set of temporal/aspectual morphemes. This paper contributes to the growing body of research on Bantu actionality in showing that despite not being encoded overtly, perfective distinguishes between at least two actional classes. We suggest, however, that imperfective, morphologically encoded by present and non-past tense morphology, does not clearly delineate between the two verb classes. This discussion highlights the complex interaction between tense and aspect.


Author(s):  
Masahiko Nose ◽  

This study attempts to clarify the tense systems in Madang Province, Papua New Guinea; particularly, the past tense and habitual past forms in the sample three languages in the area: Amele, Waskia, and Kobon. This study thus investigates past tense and habitual features, and discusses how the people in the area interpret past events. The study then discusses how these people map their temporal frames in their grammars (“anthropology of time”, Gell 1996). To aid analysis, I collected data through observing descriptive grammars and fieldwork, finding that Amele exhibits three types of past tense and habitual tense forms, as in (1). Kobon has two distinct simple and remote past tenses, as in (2). Kobon has habitual aspect with the help of the verb “to be.” Waskia, in contrast, has a distinction between realis and irrealis meanings, and the realis forms can indicate past and habitual meanings (two habitual forms: one is include in realis, another is with the help of the verb “stay”), as shown in (3). (1) Amele: Today’s past: Ija hu-ga. “I came (today).” Yesterday’s past: Ija hu-gan. “I came (yesterday).” Remote past: Ija ho-om. “I came (before yesterday).” Habitual past (by adding the habitual form “l”): Ija ho-lig. “I used to come.” (2) Kobon (Davies 1989): Simple past: Yad au-ɨn. “I have come.” Remote past: Nöŋ-be. “You saw” Habitual aspect (by using the verb “mid” to be): Yad nel nipe pu-mid-in. “I used to break his firewood.” (3) Waskia (Ross and Paol 1978): Realis: Ane ikelako yu naem. “I drank some water yesterday.” (simple past) Realis: Ane girako yu no-kisam “In the past I used to drink water” (habitual past) Habitual (by using the verb “bager“ (stay)): Ane girako yu nala bager-em. “In the past I used to drink water.“ Finally, this study claims that Amele and Kobon have remoteness distinctions; near and remote past distinctions, but there is no such a distinction in Waskia. The observed habitual usages are different to each other. Nevertheless, the three languages have a grammatical viewpoint of habitual past mapping.


LITERA ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Supardi Supardi

This study aims to describe the temporality aspect of verbs in the Western Dani Language (WDL) in Papua. The data were from Morfologi Bahasa Dani Barat, a researchreport by Purba, et al. (1994). The temporality was proved by the distributional methodsupplemented by permutation and deletion techniques. The findings show that WDLhas nine verb forms. Those are ones with: 1) a singular subject for the present tense, 2) asingular subject for the recent past tense, 3) a singular subject for the remote past tense, 4)a singular subject for the future tense, 5) a plural subject for the present tense, 6) a pluralsubject for the recent past tense, 7) a plural subject for the remote past tense, 8) a pluralsubject for the future tense, and 9) the habitual present tense. Temporality verb forms areclassified into two groups: eight verbs based on the time an event occurs and one verb ofa habitual event. The nine verbs showing time are distinguished on the basis of singularand plural subjects.


2014 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 173-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan Lee ◽  
Janna B. Oetting

Zero marking of the simple past is often listed as a common feature of child African American English (AAE). In the current paper, we review the literature and present new data to help clinicians better understand zero marking of the simple past in child AAE. Specifically, we provide information to support the following statements: (a) By six years of age, the simple past is infrequently zero marked by typically developing AAE-speaking children; (b) There are important differences between the simple past and participle morphemes that affect AAE-speaking children's marking options; and (c) In addition to a verb's grammatical function, its phonetic properties help determine whether an AAE-speaking child will produce a zero marked form.


2010 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 167-192
Author(s):  
Lea Sawicki

The article deals with the use of simplex and compound (prefixed) verbs in narrative text. Main clauses comprising finite verb forms in the past and in the past habitual tense are examined in an attempt to establish to what extent simplex and compound verbs exhibit aspect oppositions, and whether a correlation exists between the occurrence of simplex vs. compound verbs and distinct textual units. The investigation shows that although simple and compound verbs in Lithuanian are not in direct aspect opposition to each other, in the background text portions most of the verbs are prefixless past tense forms or habitual forms, whereas in the plot-advancing text portions, the vast majority of verbs are compound verbs in the simple past tense.  


Corpora ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xinyue Yao ◽  
Peter Collins

A number of recent studies of grammatical categories in English have identified regional and diachronic variation in the use of the present perfect, suggesting that it has been losing ground to the simple past tense from the eighteenth century onwards ( Elsness, 1997 , 2009 ; Hundt and Smith, 2009 ; and Yao and Collins, 2012 ). Only a limited amount of research has been conducted on non-present perfects. More recently, Bowie and Aarts’ (2012) study using the Diachronic Corpus of Present-Day Spoken English has found that certain non-present perfects underwent a considerable decline in spoken British English (BrE) during the second half of the twentieth century. However, comparison with American English (AmE) and across various genres has not been made. This study focusses on the changes in the distribution of four types of non-present perfects (past, modal, to-infinitival and ing-participial) in standard written BrE and AmE during the thirty-year period from the early 1960s to the early 1990s. Using a tagged and post-edited version of the Brown family of corpora, it shows that contemporary BrE has a stronger preference for non-present perfects than AmE. Comparison of four written genres of the same period reveals that, for BrE, only the change in the overall frequency of past perfects was statistically significant. AmE showed, comparatively, a more dramatic decrease, particularly in the frequencies of past and modal perfects. It is suggested that the decline of past perfects is attributable to a growing disfavour for past-time reference in various genres, which is related to long-term historical shifts associated with the underlying communicative functions of the genres. The decline of modal perfects, on the other hand, is more likely to be occurring under the influence of the general decline of modal auxiliaries in English.


2002 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 142-147
Author(s):  
S. K. Tabatabaee

It is historically established that the readers of the Qur'an read certain Qur'anic phrases or words in various ways. Some of these different readings affect the pronunciation of certain words without changing their meanings, e.g. ‘kufuwan aḥad’ where two readings exist: ‘kufuwan aḥad’ with fā' madmūma and wāw maftūha without hamza and ‘kufu'an aḥad’ with hamz and fā' maḍmūma. Other readings, however, may affect the function of a word in a sentence in terms of the syntactical structure of the sentence and the grammatical function of the word, and the way it is to be parsed. This can be observed in ‘mālik yawn al-dīn’ (Q.1:4) where three readings exist: ‘māliki yawmi'l-dīn’, ‘maliki yawmi'l-dīn’ and ‘malaka yawma'l-dīn’, turning mālik into a past tense verb and rendering the word yawm in the nasb mood. Another example can be found in the Qur'anic phrase ‘bi-mā kānū yakdhibūn’ (Q.2:10) where two readings exist: ‘yakdhibūn’ with yā' maftūḥa and single dhāl, and ‘yukadhdhibūn’ with yā' maḍmūma and doubled dhal. This article will focus on the obligations to be undertaken by the translators of the Qur'an in relation to the latter type of Qur'anic readings.


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