Against expectations – the rise of adverbs in Swahili phasal polarity

Q2 Arts and Humanities
Aron Zahran, Eva-Marie Bloom Ström
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Abstract

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)
出乎意料的是——斯瓦希里语相极性副词的兴起
本文首次分析了斯瓦希里语中相极性的表达。相极性(Phasal polarity,以下简称PhP)是一种语言概念,它表达了给定情境相对于之前和/或之后的阶段所处的阶段,也表达了某种情境是否成立。这些概念在英语中被表示为“已经”、“不再”、“仍然”和“尚未”的元语言,它们以有趣的方式相互关联,形成一个语义子系统。与许多其他东班图语言相比,我们发现斯瓦希里语中PhP概念的专用表达主要是副词,动词词缀的使用有限。它在PhP概念的可表达性方面没有任何差距,并且利用了内部否定,这在该领域也很突出。为了针对现今的斯瓦希里语口语,结果是基于说话人的访谈,通过使用精心引入的语境。表达“已经”的主要策略是通过词缀“sha-”。还有一个副词tayari(准备好了)来表达这个概念,它在我们的结果中经常出现。我们发现它们的分布存在差异,并假设这可能与“(我)sha”(与“完美的我”有关)使用的持续变化有关。对于所有其他PhP概念,副词被用作主要策略。说话者在使用结构时的反应存在差异,我们考虑了上下文释义而不是专用的PhP表达式。当前的工作受到最近对非洲大陆语言中PhP系统的兴趣增加的启发,以前相对未被探索过(Kramer 2021)。该分析基于Kramer(2017)提出的跨语言比较参数。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
Studies in African Linguistics
Studies in African Linguistics Arts and Humanities-Language and Linguistics
CiteScore
0.50
自引率
0.00%
发文量
7
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