By Chet A Creider
Abstract
The semantics of three valency-changing verbal derivational suffixes in Nandi (a Nilo-Saharan language spoken in East Africa) are investigated. Two cases of polysemy and one of homonymy are found and related to general case theory (DeLancey 2000, Jakobson 1936, 1990) as well as to the general theory of concept formation (Rosch and Mervis 1996).
1. Introduction[1]
1. The Nandi language is spoken in the highlands of western Kenya and belongs to the Nilotic branch of the Nilo-Saharan language family. Its basic word order is VSO with VOS a freely occurring variant. There are two tonally-distinguished cases, nominative and oblique. The former will be identified in transcription with the label (nom)[2]. All nouns not marked with nom are oblique-case forms.
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kè:réy la:kwe:t te:tà
see child+nom cow
“The child sees the cow.”
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kè:réy te:tà la:kwe:t
see cow child+nom
“The child sees the cow.”
2. Nouns are inflected for number. Verbs are inflected for subject (generally only non-3rd person), object, negation, tense (3 degrees of past tense), mood and aspect (perfective/imperfective). Verbal derivation is a typical feature of the languages of East Africa. Although perhaps best known in the Bantu languages, it is also found in many, if not most, of the Nilotic languages. Nandi (Southern Nilotic) is not an exception, and there exist derived verbs of Ventive, Itive, Dative, Instrumental, Stative, Associative, Reciprocal, Causative, Detransitive, etc. types. As the names imply, these processes are associated with semantic (e.g. directional) and grammatical (valency-changing) meanings. What the names do not imply, however, is the multifunctionality and polysemy/homonymy of verbs derived with a given element.
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