The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary [Preprint ed.]

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Preprint The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Malin Petzell

Preface and acknowledgements Samuel Johnson wrote in 1766 of how he had a passion for languages and how all languages deserved to be documented and preserved. I, too, have always held an enthusiasm for languages, but I never thought I would make it my quest in life (so far at least) to actually describe an undescribed language. Nonetheless, I am very glad that this turned out to be the subject of my dissertation, and I am even more delighted that it was the Kagulu language that I chose. Not for the reason that Kagulu in itself is exceptional compared with other languages, but because of the remarkable Kagulu people I have had the opportunity to meet. The person I owe the warmest thanks to for introducing me to African languages in general, and the Kagulu language in particular, is Tore Janson, the initiator of the subject African Languages at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. I wish to convey my utmost appreciation to my supervisor Karsten Legère. I am also very appreciative to my co-supervisor Karl Erland Gadelii. They have read and reread the drafts and provided me with numerous comments and suggestions. Various other people have read and commented on parts of this work. To all my colleagues at Oriental and African Languages at the University of Gothenburg, and especially to Christina Thornell, who commented on the entire dissertation; to Yasuko Madsen-Nagano, who commented on the Phonology; to Jouni Maho, who commented on the Verbal morphology; to Ferenc Tafferner, for computational assistance; and to Lena Voigt, for always being helpful, I owe a debt of gratitude. I am also grateful to my fellow doctoral students at the Faculty of Arts for making these years enjoyable and stimulating, both socially and intellectually. I would like to thank the University of Dar es Salaam for the research clearance and especially the colleagues at the Department of Linguistics and Foreign Languages, as well as Daniel Mkude, Professor at the Department of Kiswahili. I also wish to express my appreciation to the University of Gothenburg for giving me the opportunity to write a PhD dissertation. For the English language checking I owe thanks to Sandra Fitchat, and the excellent map was created by Monika Feinen. Any remaining mistakes in this work are of course my own. This work would not have been possible to write without the talented and enthusiastic Kagulu speakers who have worked with me. The three main informants are Tadeus Lembele, Sauli Lengoliga and Richard Mtambi. They answered numerous questions, both in person and in writing. They also proofread Kagulu examples, filled out questionnaires and recorded stories. Richard Mtambi helped in transcribing the Kagulu recordings alongside Gadrord Makasi. Gadrord Makasi likewise assisted in filling out questionnaires. Other people carrying out important tasks on various occasions, such as filling out the questionnaires, answering questions and making recordings, were Simon Magelewanya, Jesca Mkuchu, Sydney Mkuchu, Daimon Msami and Jones Ngiga. Assisting me in the beginning, introducing me to many of the informants, and proofreading some Kagulu examples was Handson Mlama. Other informants who contributed either with stories, conversions or answering questions several times were Eilizer Chiduo, Anna Chihamba, Helon Chihamba, Doris Godwinshambo, Erinesta Lwanda, Steven Machila, Joice Mada, Asheley Magelewanya, Josephine Mgulambwa, Ruth Msami, and Raymond Sekabigwa. Brief interviews on single occasions were 5 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

conducted with Rozadina Lengoliga, Penina Mlama and Peason Mtambi, as well as with people in and around the schools of Berega, Dumbalume, Mabula, Mamboya and Rubeho. Thanks are also due to all the researchers and colleagues I met at various conferences, courses and gatherings who had the patience to discuss Kagulu issues with me. For motivating feedback, I especially thank Lotta Aunio, but also Oliver Bond, Larry Hyman, and Gérard Philippson. In addition, I would like to thank Maarten Mous for being the external examinator (opponent), and Tore Janson, Elisabet Engdahl and Abdulaziz Lohdi for serving on the examination committee and for their comments on the dissertation. On a personal note, I would like to thank Ute Klatt and the Lwanda family, as well as everyone in the Berega village, for accommodation and for making my stay in Berega a pleasant one. I also wish to thank Brad Harvey in Morogoro who put me in contact with the Kagulu speakers mentioned above and who shared his knowledge on Kagulu with me. For contributing to the funding of this dissertation and the field trips, I would like to thank, in chronological order, Knut och Alice Wallenbergs stiftelse, Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, fonden för ograduerade forskare GU, Oscar Ekmans stipendiefond, Paul och Marie Berghaus donationsfond, Stiftelsen Lars Hiertas minne, Adlerbertska stipendiestiftelsen, Kungliga Hvitfeldtska stiftelsen, and Adlerbertska forskningsstiftelsen. Finally, I want to stress how grateful I am to all the Kagulu people who took the time to talk to me and who welcomed me into their homes. This work could not have been completed without them. Kwimage lugano! Gothenburg, March 2008 Malin Petzell

6 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

Contents 1

Introduction and background........................................................................ 17 1.1 Purpose of study................................................................................... 17 1.2 Method................................................................................................. 18 1.2.1 Evaluation of previous studies ...................................................... 19 1.2.2 Field trips and questionnaires ....................................................... 20 1.2.3 The informants ............................................................................. 20 1.2.4 Material and software ................................................................... 21 1.3 Theoretical framework ......................................................................... 21 1.4 Kagulu and its speakers ........................................................................ 22 1.4.1 The area........................................................................................ 23 1.4.2 Language varieties........................................................................ 23 1.4.3 The people.................................................................................... 25 1.4.4 Neighbours ................................................................................... 25 1.4.5 History ......................................................................................... 26 1.4.6 The current linguistic situation in Tanzania................................... 26 1.4.7 Is Kagulu endangered? ................................................................. 27 1.4.7.1 The sociolinguistic survey ........................................................ 28 1.4.7.2 What position does Kagulu hold in society?.............................. 32 2 Phonology.................................................................................................... 35 2.1 Vowel inventory................................................................................... 35 2.2 Consonant inventory ............................................................................ 35 2.3 Orthography......................................................................................... 36 2.4 The nasals ............................................................................................ 38 2.5 Prosody ................................................................................................ 40 2.6 Syllable structure.................................................................................. 41 2.7 Morphophonological processes ............................................................ 42 2.7.1 Glide formation ............................................................................ 42 2.7.2 Vowel coalescence ....................................................................... 43 2.7.3 Vowel deletion ............................................................................. 44 2.7.4 Vowel harmony ............................................................................ 45 3 Nominal morphology ................................................................................... 47 3.1 Noun classes ........................................................................................ 50 3.1.1 Classes 1/2 ................................................................................... 51 3.1.2 Classes 3/4 ................................................................................... 51 3.1.3 Classes 5/6 ................................................................................... 51 3.1.4 Classes 7/8 ................................................................................... 53 3.1.5 Classes 9/10.................................................................................. 53 3.1.6 Class 11........................................................................................ 54 3.1.7 Class 14........................................................................................ 54 3.1.8 Class 15........................................................................................ 55 3.1.9 Classes 16, 17 and 18 ................................................................... 55 3.1.10 Unclear noun class affiliation ....................................................... 56 3.1.10.1 Agreement from different classes.......................................... 56 3.1.10.2 Vocative ............................................................................... 58 3.1.10.3 Nouns with restricted reflexes of the noun class system ........ 58 7 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

3.1.10.4 Traces of an ancient class...................................................... 61 3.1.11 Plural pairings .............................................................................. 61 3.2 Initial vowel ......................................................................................... 62 3.2.1 Form............................................................................................. 63 3.2.2 Distribution .................................................................................. 64 3.2.2.1 Constraints in distribution......................................................... 65 3.2.2.2 Optionality ............................................................................... 67 3.2.3 Function ....................................................................................... 67 3.2.3.1 Definiteness.............................................................................. 67 3.2.3.2 Specificity ................................................................................ 68 3.2.3.3 Topicality ................................................................................. 69 3.3 Nominal personal elements .................................................................. 70 3.4 Noun-to-noun derivation ...................................................................... 73 3.4.1 Productive noun-to-noun derivation.............................................. 73 3.4.2 Restricted noun-to-noun derivation............................................... 74 3.4.3 Locative derivation....................................................................... 75 3.5 The constituents of the noun phrase...................................................... 76 3.5.1 Adjectives .................................................................................... 77 3.5.1.1 Adjective types ......................................................................... 78 3.5.1.2 Irregular NCPs on adjectives .................................................... 80 3.5.1.3 Comparison and degrees of comparison.................................... 80 3.5.2 Numerals...................................................................................... 81 3.5.2.1 Cardinal numerals..................................................................... 82 3.5.2.2 Ordinal numerals ...................................................................... 83 3.5.3 Quantifiers.................................................................................... 84 3.5.4 The associative marker D ............................................................. 85 3.5.5 Pronouns and other pronominal words.......................................... 86 3.5.5.1 Possessives ............................................................................... 87 3.5.5.2 Demonstratives......................................................................... 88 3.5.5.3 Inflected interrogatives ............................................................. 90 3.5.5.4 Other pronominal words ........................................................... 93 4 Verbal morphology ...................................................................................... 97 4.1 Morphotactics of the verb..................................................................... 97 4.2 Verbal inflection ................................................................................ 100 4.2.1 Subject and object markers ......................................................... 101 4.2.1.1 Multiple objects ...................................................................... 102 4.2.1.2 NL(reflexive and reciprocal)................................................... 103 4.2.2 NX«D (infinitive)...................................................................... 103 4.2.3 «D (imperative) ........................................................................ 104 4.2.4 SM / OM-«H (subjunctive) ....................................................... 105 4.2.5 Pre-root TAM-markers ............................................................... 107 4.2.5.1 SM-NX«D (present and future) ............................................. 108 4.2.5.2 SM+TAM-«D (future) .......................................................... 108 4.2.5.3 SM-ND«D (future)................................................................ 109 4.2.5.4 KDSM-«D (past/imperfective) .............................................. 110 4.2.5.5 SM-Ø«D (past/perfective)..................................................... 111 4.2.5.6 SM-ND«D/ H(consecutive) ................................................. 113 8 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

4.2.5.7 SM-QJ¶KD«D(conditional).................................................... 115 4.2.6 Post-root TAM markers.............................................................. 116 4.2.6.1 LOH (perfective and FV)........................................................... 116 4.2.6.2 DJ (imperfective) ................................................................... 117 4.2.6.3 LJZ (passive) ......................................................................... 119 4.2.6.4 Combinations of post-root TAM markers................................ 119 4.3 Verbs ‘to have’................................................................................... 120 4.4 Negation ............................................................................................ 121 4.4.1 The form of the negation ............................................................ 124 4.4.1.1 -LOH.......................................................................................... 126 4.4.1.2 -H ............................................................................................ 126 4.4.2 The position of the negation ....................................................... 127 4.4.3 Morphophonology ...................................................................... 128 4.4.4 Negated verb forms .................................................................... 129 4.4.4.1 Negated infinitive ................................................................... 129 4.4.4.2 SM-NEG-…H ........................................................................ 129 4.4.4.3 SM-NEG-NX«D ................................................................... 130 4.4.4.4 NEG-SM-NX«D ................................................................... 131 4.4.4.5 NEG-SMND«D ................................................................... 131 4.4.4.6 SM-NEG+D«LOH .................................................................. 131 4.4.4.7 NEG-SM+D«LOH .................................................................. 132 4.4.4.8 SM-NEG+D«D .................................................................... 132 4.4.4.9 SM-NEG-Ø-«LOH .................................................................. 133 4.4.4.10 NEG-SM-Ø-«LOH............................................................... 133 4.5 Verbal derivation/extensions .............................................................. 134 4.5.1 -il / -el ........................................................................................ 134 4.5.2 -is(h) / -es(h)............................................................................... 135 4.5.3 -ik / -ek....................................................................................... 137 4.5.4 -any ............................................................................................ 138 4.5.5 Traces of other extensions .......................................................... 139 4.5.5.1 XO / RO ................................................................................... 139 4.5.5.2 -XN .......................................................................................... 140 4.5.5.3 DO........................................................................................... 140 4.6 Combinations of extensions and TAM markers .................................. 140 4.7 The constituents of the verb phrase..................................................... 141 4.7.1 Periphrastic constructions ........................................................... 142 4.7.1.1 NXZD....................................................................................... 142 4.7.1.2 NXJHQGD .................................................................................. 144 4.7.1.3 NXVRZHOD................................................................................. 144 4.7.1.4 NZLMD....................................................................................... 145 4.7.1.5 NXIXOXVD or NXPDOD.................................................................. 145 4.7.1.6 QJ¶KDWL.................................................................................... 146 4.7.2 Reduplication ............................................................................. 146 5 Uninflected parts of speech ........................................................................ 149 5.1 Adverbs.............................................................................................. 149 5.2 Ideophones......................................................................................... 150 5.3 Conjunctions ...................................................................................... 152 9 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

5.4 Interrogatives ..................................................................................... 152 5.5 Interjections and back-channel items .................................................. 153 6 Syntax........................................................................................................ 155 6.1 Basic clause structure ......................................................................... 155 6.2 Subject marking ................................................................................. 156 6.2.1 Coordinated NPs ........................................................................ 157 6.2.2 Agreement for animate subjects.................................................. 157 6.2.3 Impersonal constructions ............................................................ 158 6.2.4 Plural SM for 1SG ...................................................................... 159 6.3 Finite clauses...................................................................................... 159 6.4 Non-finite clauses .............................................................................. 160 6.5 Copulas and existentials ..................................................................... 161 6.5.1 Uninflected copula ..................................................................... 161 6.5.2 Inflected copula .......................................................................... 162 6.5.3 Existentials................................................................................. 165 6.5.3.1 Negated existentials ................................................................ 166 6.5.3.2 Locative inversion .................................................................. 168 6.6 Transitive constructions ..................................................................... 169 6.6.1 Object marking........................................................................... 169 6.6.2 Subject/object inversion.............................................................. 171 6.6.3 Ditransitive constructions ........................................................... 172 6.7 Clause types ....................................................................................... 174 6.7.1 Declarative clauses ..................................................................... 174 6.7.2 Interrogative clauses ................................................................... 175 6.7.2.1 Yes/no questions..................................................................... 175 6.7.2.2 Content questions ................................................................... 176 6.7.3 Imperative clauses and hortatives................................................ 178 6.7.4 Exclamatory clauses ................................................................... 179 6.8 Combinations of clauses..................................................................... 180 6.8.1 Clause combining particles ......................................................... 180 6.8.1.1 QD ........................................................................................... 181 6.8.1.2 ORZR........................................................................................ 181 6.8.1.3 NRVRNRNZDVRNR ...................................................................... 182 6.8.1.4 ILQD ......................................................................................... 182 6.8.1.5 KDPED..................................................................................... 182 6.8.1.6 QKDQJD ................................................................................... 183 6.8.1.7 ND .......................................................................................... 183 6.8.2 The reference marker R.............................................................. 184 6.8.3 Adverbial clauses of time ........................................................... 184 6.8.4 Complement clauses ................................................................... 185 6.9 Relative clauses.................................................................................. 187 7 Concluding remarks ................................................................................... 191 Kagulu texts...........................................................................................................194 Kagulu-English word list... ...................................................................................209 References..............................................................................................................223 Subject index..........................................................................................................232

10 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

/LVWRIWDEOHV

Table 1 Learners in Std I who speak Kagulu ........................................................ 29 Table 2 Language usage in Std VI/VII ................................................................. 30 Table 3 Attitudes to language usage..................................................................... 31 Table 4 The vowel phonemes .............................................................................. 35 Table 5 The consonant phonemes ........................................................................ 36 Table 6 Graphemes and phonemes in Kagulu....................................................... 37 Table 7 The voiceless nasals ................................................................................ 38 Table 8 Prefixes and agreement of the Kagulu noun ............................................ 49 Table 9 Regular singular/plural noun class pairings ............................................. 50 Table 10 Nouns with restricted reflexes of the noun class system......................... 59 Table 11 Plural pairings in Kagulu....................................................................... 62 Table 12 Nominal personal elements for classes 1/2 ............................................ 71 Table 13 Nominal personal elements with the stem HQH ...................................... 72 Table 14 The noun phrase.................................................................................... 77 Table 15 Possessives ........................................................................................... 87 Table 16 Outline of the verb ................................................................................ 98 Table 17 The verbal slots..................................................................................... 98 Table 18 The SMs and OMs for all noun classes................................................ 101 Table 19 The SMs and OMs for all persons ....................................................... 102 Table 20 Examples of TAM in classes 1, 2 and 6............................................... 107 Table 21 Examples of TAM in 1SG and 1PL ..................................................... 107 Table 22 Subject markers in the future tense...................................................... 109 Table 23 Inchoative verbs .................................................................................. 112 Table 24 Examples of SM and ND ..................................................................... 115 Table 25 ‘To have’ in the present....................................................................... 120 Table 26 A table of negative verb forms ............................................................ 123 Table 27 VLandQJ¶KD...................................................................................... 124 Table 28 SM-NEG-«H ..................................................................................... 129 Table 29 SM-NEG-NX«D................................................................................ 130 Table 30 NEG-SM-NX«D................................................................................ 131 Table 31 SM-NEG+D«LOH............................................................................... 132 Table 32 NEG-SM+D«LOH............................................................................... 132 Table 33 SM-NEG+D«D................................................................................. 133 Table 34 SM-NEG-Ø «LOH............................................................................... 133 Table 35 NEG-SM-Ø «LOH............................................................................... 133 Table 36 Causatives with an underived counterpart............................................ 136 Table 37 Causatives with a counterpart derived from other extensions............... 137 Table 38 Adverbs in Kagulu .............................................................................. 149 Table 39 Matrix of the relative........................................................................... 188 Table 40 Matrix of the persons in the relative .................................................... 189 Table 41 Matrix of persons in the negated relative in the past and future............ 190

11 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

/LVWRIILJXUHV

Figure 1 Spectrogram, nasal................................................................................. 39 Figure 2 Spectrogram, voiceless nasal.................................................................. 40 Figure 3 Intonation, wh-question ....................................................................... 175 Figure 4 Intonation, yes/no question .................................................................. 176

12 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

Abbreviations 1.PAST 361PL 2SG ACP ADJ ADV APPL ASSOC AUG CAUS COND CONJ CONS COP DEM EXT FUT FV INT INTS INTERJ IPFV IV LFG LOC LWC ML N NNCP NEG NEUT NP NUM OBJ OM PASS PAST PB PFV PL POSS

Prefix for class 1, in the past Prefix for class 3 Prefix for class 6, etc. First person plural Second person singular Agreement class prefix (In the segmented examples, the ACP is only indicated by the class number) Adjective Adverb Applicative Associative marker Augmentative Causative Conditional Conjunction Consecutive Copula Demonstrative Extension Future Final vowel Interrogative Intensive Interjection Imperfective Initial vowel Lexical-Functional Grammar Locative Language of wider communication Minority language Noun Homorganic nasal (prefix) Nominal class prefix (In the segmented examples, the NCP is only indicated by the class number) Negation Neuter Noun phrase Numeral Object Object marker Passive Past Proto-Bantu Perfective Plural Possessive 13

Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

PRES PROG REC REF REFL SG SM SUBJ TAM V VP

Present Progressive Reciprocal Referential Reflexive Singular Subject marker Subject Tense, aspect and mood Verb Verb phrase

6RPHJORVVLQJDQGZULWLQJFRQYHQWLRQV

The abbreviations follow Leipzig glossing rules (http://www.eva.mpg.de/ lingua/files/morpheme. html) and Croft (2003), with a few necessary additions and alterations. Parentheses in the Kagulu examples and in tables mean that the segment is optional. For instance, the morpheme PX  may be used with or without the /W/. Parentheses in running text show an explanation or clarification. Square brackets are used for explanatory abbreviations as well as the Bantu language codes following Guthrie’s classification or updates thereof1, i.e. Kagulu [G12]. They are of course also used for phonetic representation, while slashes // are used for phonemic representation. The symbol * means that the segment is reconstructed as being Proto-Bantu [PB], i.e. a protolanguage and a reconstructed starting point for Bantu languages. The sources for the reconstructions used in this work are Guthrie (1971) and Schadeberg (2003b). Please note that * does not represent ungrammaticality. All Bantu language names are used without their prefixes for the sake of clarity. A slash means that the segments on each side of the slash are interchangeable so that DH means that either the vowel D or the vowel H can be used. A hyphen shows that a segment, either a root or an affix, needs to be attached to something else. The hyphen on an affix marks the side where it attaches to the root, so that FKL is a preroot morpheme while D is a post-root morpheme. The convention of using quotation marks, here single ones, for translations is adopted in this text except where the translation is associated with a segmented example. All Kagulu data was collected by the author during field work in Tanzania. Morphological parsing (i.e. segmentation) was executed using Shoebox software and presented according to the sketch below:

1

Updates follow (Maho 2003a).

14 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

Text in Kagulu Morphemes Gloss in English Free translation

The segmentation is not always necessary for the analysis and in order to save space, not all examples are segmented.

15 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

 0DSRIWKH.DJXOXVSHDNLQJDUHD

16 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

Introduction and background This work is a basic linguistic description of the Bantu language Kagulu. Kagulu is a fairly undescribed language, spoken by approximately 240,0002 people in the Morogoro region of Tanzania. The autonym, i.e. what the speakers themselves call their language, is &KLNDJXOX or &KLPHJL. The little information there is on Kagulu deals primarily with anthropology and there is no linguistic description that meets the required standard. The main reason for choosing the Kagulu language for a description is the lack of recent relevant linguistic material. The Kagulu spoken today is practically undescribed, and the only linguistic work on the language is an out-of-date grammar from 1886. Other factors such as a strong interest among the speakers to document their language, accessibility of the area and talented scholarly informants contributed to the choice of language. There is also another motivation for choosing Kagulu in that it brings forward challenges to describe previously unwritten languages that differ from Indo-European languages. The existing linguistic terminology is not always suitable for the specific linguistic traits, which necessitates thinking along new lines. The morphological part of this work is built around form. As a rule, the form is presented first, and then its label and function/s. The major reason for this is that “the form-to-function approach gives an immediate idea of what the language is like, and how its grammatical system works” (Cristofaro 2006:141), instead of imposing an interpretation based on a preconceived notion of IXQFWLRQ. Nonetheless, there are some conceptual/functional categories that are profitably discussed as such, for instance numerals and interrogatives. This first chapter presents the aim and scope of this work as well as methods used, theoretical frameworks, and the language and its speakers. Chapter 2 deals with the phonology, and Chapter 3 with the nominal morphology. The verbal morphology follows in Chapter 4 and uninflected parts of speech in Chapter 5. Chapter 6 revolves around syntax, including clause structure and clause types. After the concluding remarks in Chapter 7, and some segmented Kagulu texts, the Kagulu-English word list can be found. Finally, there are the references and a subject index.

1.1

Purpose of study

The purpose of the dissertation is to produce a descriptive study which will illustrate and analyse the Tanzanian language Kagulu. This description comprises the central phonological, morphological and syntactic structures of the language, supplemented by a sociolinguistic summary of the current position of Kagulu. The dissertation is intended to be a basic reference grammar of Kagulu sketching the linguistic characteristics and peculiarities of the language. This work is designed to provide linguists and researchers with a thorough description of Kagulu, but also to function as a resource for university students, schoolteachers and others who wish to study the basic structure of the language. A 2

See section 1.4.

17 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

general linguistic description of a language’s grammar from a modern perspective is naturally of benefit to the current speakers as well. Documenting and describing the languages of Tanzania is of critical importance. About 120 languages are spoken in the country and all four African language phyla are represented. Today, very little is known about the history, development and current position of the majority of these languages, primarily because there are few written records. As in all other fields of study, describing something previously undescribed places focus on the matter and draws the attention of scholars to its existence. Undescribed languages run the risk of disappearing, while documenting a language forestalls its loss. Furthermore, describing a language can be a tool in helping us understand the culture and identity associated with each language as well as a tool in preserving the cultural heritage it represents. Concurrently, “language death entails a loss of cultural diversity” (Mous 2003a:161). Language death is not only a loss of cultural diversity, but also a loss of linguistic diversity. Each language has its own unique linguistic traits that are not only worth preserving for their own sake, but that may also be difficult to convey in other languages. An example is the Kagulu word OXPER\D; a concept that translates as ‘sadness’ or ‘lonely’. Whether it is a noun or adjective is not clear, and it is only used in highly specific contexts, most notably a well-known Kagulu song. Furthermore, linguistic descriptions make it possible for linguists to compare different languages and to determine the relation between language families, which in turn makes it possible to calculate how people have migrated throughout history. Linguistic descriptions have proven to be one of the major contributors to writing the history of Africa. For linguistics as a science, it is also important that all languages are described since every language provides us with a wider knowledge of what grammatical constructions are possible in a language, and how the human linguistic ability functions. “The loss of a language, African or otherwise, is a serious event which is compounded by everything that we failed to do in terms of documentation. Least of our failures may be our inability to know what it might have told us about Language in general” (Hyman 2004:23). As a final point, it is hoped that this description and the Kagulu data can be used in typological studies as well as being used to test the relevance of different linguistic theories.

1.2

Method

The main methods used to extract the Kagulu data have been elicitation and recording of spontaneous speech, i.e. speech that was not specifically elicited by the interviewer, with the intermittent addition of participant observation. Secondary sources, although in short supply, have also been consulted. Elicitation has been the primary method of data collection for the present work. This method enables the researcher to elicit, i.e. to draw out, concise information, either in writing or in speech, aimed at a certain phenomenon. It is time-consuming to record long texts if, for instance, one is solely interested in adjectival constructions. The drawback is that the phenomenon one elicits may be out of context. Consequently, spontaneous speech is a necessary supplement. The elicitation was administered both by means of questionnaires and interviews. Both translational elicitation ‘how do you say [...]’ as well as non18 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

translational elicitation (Samarin 1967:77) ‘tell me about [...]’ or ‘can you say [...]’ were used. The latter two are advantageous ways of eliciting large bodies of natural text. One refined elicitation technique is to ask informants ‘tell me about when you were scared’ or a similar emotional event. The tendency is that people then forget that someone is listening and pay less attention to their own language use, accordingly producing more spontaneous speech. The spontaneous speech that was recorded and transcribed consists of conversations between Kagulu speakers and of stories, both traditional stories and the accounts of the speakers’ own experiences. Back-translation to Swahili [G42] was also utilized to verify the data. A secondary source of Kagulu is found in Beidelman’ s works. This anthropologist gathered a number of Kagulu texts in the 1950s and 1960s, e.g. Beidelman (1967). Some of the texts have been examined for the purpose of comparing what the current speakers refer to as ROGIDVKLRQHG .DJXOX with the current variety of the language. The other secondary source is the grammar by Last (1886), which has been thoroughly reviewed. For further information on the secondary sources, see section 1.2.1 just below.

1.2.1

Evaluation of previous studies

The bulk of the material published on Kagulu focuses on anthropology. Additionally, there is also the grammar written by Last, a 19th-century missionary (Last 1886). Last’ s grammar is not very reliable and his wordlist is, naturally, obsolete. Given the fact that this non-academic work was printed more than 100 years ago, its relevance as an authentic source for adequately reflecting the contemporary Kagulu language structure is very low. In comparisons between this grammar and my newly collected data, numerous inconsistencies were discovered. The anthropologist Beidelman studied Last’ s grammar and notes that it is “ too poor to be a tool for later work” (Beidelman 1982:225). Last lived with the Nyamwezi leader in Mamboya until he had finished building his accommodation (ibid:55) and his linguistic work may have been influenced by the Nyamwezi language [F22]. Beidelman himself published a number of Kagulu texts that were recorded in the 1950s, but only with a free, i.e. idiomatic, translation. Without a word-for-word translation into either Swahili or English, these texts are not meaningful for a linguist. Furthermore, the language is, as expected, dated. Nevertheless, some of these texts have been worked through again by the informants and two rewritten stories are incorporated into my Kagulu corpus. Other sources of general surveys that briefly mention the Kagulu language are Tucker and Bryan (1957), Kadima (1969) and Nurse and Philippson (1975). There are also some fractions of Bible translations available on the Internet, namely ‘Hymns for public worship in Kimegi’ (SPCK 1894) and ‘Portions of the Book of Common Prayer, in the Kaguru3 Language’ (SPCK 1895).

3

This is an alternative spelling for .DJXOX.

19 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

1.2.2

Field trips and questionnaires

In June 2002, a first field study was conducted in Tanzania. It comprised a pilot study and familiarization of the area. In addition, some basic linguistic data was collected in order to establish the status of Kagulu. Kagulu proved to be the predominant means of communication in the area. After this first field trip, five more field studies were carried out until October 2007. Most of the time was spent in the Morogoro region and especially in the Kilosa district, which is where Kagulu is spoken. The main village where ‘pure’ Kagulu is predominant is Berega, where most of the linguistic data was collected. A sociolinguistic survey of Kagulu was also carried out in 2003. The survey covered five central villages in the Kagulu area. This survey answered questions on what position Kagulu holds in society, current tendencies of language competence and use, and general attitudes towards minority languages. I used three main questionnaires for the grammatical description of Kagulu and two questionnaires for mapping sociolinguistic facts. The first grammatical questionnaire is based on the one used in Languages of Tanzania (LoT), which is a project run by the Department of Foreign Languages and Linguistics at the University of Dar es Salaam together with the Department of Oriental and African Languages at the University of Gothenburg. The questionnaire is in Swahili and in English, and consists of 250 sentences with an addition of a list of 1,080 words adapted from the Comparative Bantu OnLine Dictionary [CBOLD]. Several modifications were required to make the sentence questionnaire work for Kagulu. For instance, another 150 sentences were added to cover areas that were lacking in the original version, such as applicatives, locative constructions, copular constructions and adjectives. Moreover, it was necessary to alter a number of sentences, for instance to change some nouns in order to encompass all noun classes represented in Kagulu. Due to gaps in the data, new questionnaires had to be developed for subsequent field trips. The second grammatical questionnaire was based on the one used by the Department of Oriental and African Languages at the University of Gothenburg in a project aiming at describing Botswanan and Mozambican languages. I translated this questionnaire into Swahili for the Kagulu study. The third grammatical questionnaire was built on Hancock’ s model (Hancock 1987:282-322) with my addition of sentences targeting Bantu verbal extensions, which were lacking in all previous questionnaires. Although time-consuming, to modify and expand the questionnaires was necessary for the descriptive process. The three questionnaires that were used in the sociolinguistic survey are loosely based on Legère (1992:236) and (Thomas and Bouquiaux 1992).

1.2.3

The informants

The term LQIRUPDQW is used throughout this work. 6XEMHFW, LQWHUYLHZHH and UHVRXUFH SHUVRQ are other terms with the same meaning. These terms refer to somebody who acts as a source of data for linguistic analysis, typically a native speaker of the language (Crystal 2003:234). All informants and assistants are Kagulu mother-tongue speakers born in the Kagulu area. Given that the study required informants from an area where it is 20 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

impracticable to carry out a random sample4, snowball sampling proved to be the most appropriate and the most feasible method. 6QRZEDOO VDPSOLQJ involves referrals from initiated people who in turn suggest other people, which automatically entails judgement sampling as well. -XGJHPHQW VDPSOLQJ relies on the researcher’ s opinion whether a sample is representative of the whole population. The language competence of the informants was evaluated by other Kagulu speakers by simply asking ‘Is s/he a good speaker of Kagulu?’ .

1.2.4

Material and software

As mentioned, the conversations and stories were recorded and later transcribed. The first questionnaire was also read out loud by the informants and recorded. This was done by using a Sony MiniDisc player MZ-N707 with an attached table microphone. A MiniDisc provides a quality that is superior to analogue recordings, and the data is easily transferred to a computer. This in turn renders an acoustic analysis more feasible. Although limited and without acoustic depth, the formants are clearly visible when phonetically processing the material (see section 2.4), and a selected sequence can be played over and over without damaging the quality. For the phonetic analysis, the SUGI speech analyser was used to create spectrograms, vowel charts and pitch contours. As for the morphological analysis, the Shoebox program, version 5.0 released in 2000 by SIL International, was used. All Kagulu examples in this work are taken from my own data. The data was segmented and glossed by using the Shoebox software. Despite some limitations, Shoebox proved to be the most suitable program for segmenting Kagulu.

1.3

Theoretical framework

This descriptive work adopts the so-called Basic Linguistic Theory. “ The term Basic Linguistic Theory has recently come into use for the fundamental theoretical concepts that underlie all work in language description and change [...]” (Dixon 1997:128). The theory aims at describing each language on its own terms, focusing on the language facts, and it attempts to avoid influence from European languages. It is based on a descriptive approach and the analysis stems from structuralist traditions with the addition of semantics. Basic Linguistic Theory avoids using theory-specific terminology since many such theories have proven to be shortlived. Basic Linguistic Theory can be said to be the common theoretical assumptions underpinning most descriptive linguistics. It is basically the cumulative tradition of linguistic theory up to the present moment. Describing a language using Basic Linguistic Theory renders the work accessible to all scholars since the vocabulary used is based on common typological universals. For further information on Basic Linguistic Theory, see Dryer (2006). At times, it may also be fruitful to consider the data in the light of other theories, even though this is not within the scope of this work. There are largely two reasons 4

That is, where any member of the population has an equal chance of being selected.

21 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

for wanting to add a theoretical component to the descriptive one: the abstraction involved in theory building allows one to formulate questions which could not be framed in purely descriptive terms, and it also allows a more abstract typological comparison of the language. One important property of Bantu languages is the way in which functional information is often realized in the morphology rather than the syntax, for example the marking of argument structure. Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG) is a theoretical framework based around parallel correspondence, which allows direct mapping from morphological structure to functional structure. LFG supplies an analysis in functional and lexical terms instead of in terms of phrase structure configurations and movements. The idea that there is underlying movement is rejected, and the surface structure does not derive from an underlying structure. Instead, two different levels of syntactic representation exist in parallel and they are related by mapping conventions. The constituent structure (c-structure) is the surface structure that is represented by the phrase structure tree. It correlates to functional structure (f-structure), which represents the abstract grammatical function (subject, object, etc.). For a general introduction to LFG, see Bresnan (2001). The differences between transformational theories5 and LFG, exemplified by Kagulu data, is explored in the article ‘LFG vs. transformational theories: A comparison of certain phenomena in Bantu languages’ (Petzell 2004). The article claims that transformational theories work less well for agglutinating languages like the Bantu languages. The transformational theories were built around English and other isolating languages and it is well known that they are difficult to apply to languages with a complex morphology. LFG, on the other hand, arose as an alternative to modern transformational theories. The discussion on theory is conveniently summed up in the words of Hyman (2004:26): “ In my descriptive work, I like to say that the approach I take to formalisms is strictly opportunistic: If a tableau is worth a thousand words, use it! In other words, having a proper command of theory means not only knowing when to use it, but when not to” .

1.4

Kagulu and its speakers

Kagulu is a minority language, at least in functional terms. This does not necessarily imply that the speakers constitute a minority numerically, but the language is marginalized in the sense that it is not used in formal domains. It is not recognized by the state in domains such as public administration, education, health care or legal services. Languages like Kagulu have been referred to as LQGLJHQRXV ODQJXDJHV, ORFDO ODQJXDJHV, YHUQDFXODUV, HWKQLF FRPPXQLW\ ODQJXDJHV or even GLDOHFWV. For different reasons, none of these terms is apt for this work (for a discussion of this see Legère (2002)). A recently more appropriate term suggested by Hyman (2004:22) is XQHPSRZHUHGODQJXDJHV. However, it is preferable to avoid negative definitions i.e. defining something for what it is not. In this paper, these 5

That is, grammatical theories based on transformation such as Government and Binding, the Minimalist Programme, etc.

22 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

languages will be referred to as PLQRULW\ ODQJXDJHV (MLs), being understood as languages that are restricted to some non-formal domains. The exact number of Kagulu speakers is unknown, but estimates range between 200,000 and 300,000. Several matrilineal clans and subgroups constitute the Kagulu people. Beidelman (1971:5) predicates that the number of speakers was 100,000 in 1971, and in Ethnologue the number is 217,000 (Gordon 2005). If one reckons with 3% annual growth since the census in 1967, where 113,831 persons were reported to be Kagulu, there should be about 330,000 speakers today. My deduction, based on the most recent census (Government of the Republic of Tanzania 2002), reaches the figure 241,000. In the census, the Kilosa district, where most Kagulu live, has 489,513 inhabitants. Not all of these speak Kagulu and since no questions about language usage or ethnic affiliation were included in the census, there is no way of knowing the exact number of Kagulu speakers today. The estimate above comes from Kagulu informants who were asked to mark down the villages where Kagulu is spoken and then the number of inhabitants in each village was added up.

1.4.1

The area

The Kagulu area is in east-central Tanzania, approximately 200 kilometres inland from Dar es Salaam on both sides of the main road to Dodoma. It is a hilly area with mountains (called ,WXPED), lowlands and a plateau where most of the Kagulu live. The climate varies greatly within the region and, for the people dwelling on the plateau, the amount of rainfall is crucial. Many of the Kagulu are agriculturists. The Itumba Mountains are considered to be the cultural and spiritual heart of the land partly because this is the region that sheltered the Kagulu at the time when they were threatened. Most informants claim that Mamboya and Berega make up the heart of the Kagulu area and that the pure language is spoken there (see below for a discussion on this). The most homogeneous villages are in the Kilosa district in the Morogoro region, but there are towns in the Dodoma region where Kagulu is spoken as well, such as Kongwa and Mpwapwa. The further away from the core of the Kagulu area, the more amalgamation takes place between Kagulu and the neighbouring languages.

1.4.2

Language varieties

In referential sources, the Kagulu language is classified as G12. In recent works it is merged with the neighbouring languages into group G1 (Mann and Dalby 1987:147). The language may also be called 1RUWKHUQ6DJDUD or .LNDJXUX, mainly by Swahili [G42] speakers. According to Ethnologue (Gordon 2005), a dialect of Kagulu is called 0HJL. There is even a hymn in (Ki)Megi (SPCK 1894), which is said to be a dialect of Sagara. The informants assert that Megi is just an alternative name for Kagulu and that the two are actually synonymous. (&KL PHJL is also the autonym used by the speakers when talking amongst themselves. There are several explanations as to the origins of the word 0HJL. According to the anthropologist Beidelman, the name stems from the form NXPHJD, ‘to break something such as food with the fingers or teeth’ , which refers to the daily meal where everyone sits around containers and they break off bits of food (Beidelman 23 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

1993:69). According to Mwaga (1970:3) the name comes from PHML ‘water’ because a number of the Kagulu people settled close to the water instead of the mountains (Itumba). A third explanation says that (Chi)megi is a dialect spoken in Berega (Tucker and Bryan 1957:133). These less plausible explanations were all refuted by my informants. Instead, they believe that 0HJL is a name the Maasai gave to Kagulu. Various independent speakers confirmed this. It is allegedly a derogatory term used by the Maasai to refer to the Kagulu, meaning ‘contempt’ or ‘scorn’ , but has now been accepted by them. The Kagulu who know the origins of the name say they try not to use it, but since most people do not know of its supposed belittling meaning, it is commonly used. The Maasai that were asked about the origins of the name asserted that it is not derogatory; it is simply a way of showing that the person in question is not a Maasai. In the 0DDVDL /DQJXDJH DQG &XOWXUH 'LFWLRQDU\ (Mol 1996:251), it is described as follows: “ Ol-meeki, pl. il-meek: any non-maasai, bantu. Noun, masc. te-meeki, pl. i-meek: a non-maasai girl or woman, a bantu girl or woman” In the online Maa (Maasai) dictionary, the following is found for ROPppNt: One who is not a Maasai; foreigner. Usage: pejorative. If s.o. of this status kills another, he is not obligated to compensate for it (as a Maasai would be). These people are called on to do unpalatable jobs which no Maasai would be asked to do, including digging graves, carrying a dead body, digging dams for collecting water, (traditionally) growing food. (Payne and Kotikash 2005)

It seems clear that the word PHJL originates from the Maasai even though its exact meaning is yet to be discovered. It is plausible that the word had a belittling connotation, although the denotation used among the Kagulu today does not reveal that. While the informants do not consider Megi to be a dialect, they mention other dialects of Kagulu instead. The difference between one dialect and another is primarily in intonation and not so much in lexicon or grammar. If the lexicon differs, this is mainly due to the influence of neighbouring languages. The most prestigious Kagulu dialect allegedly stems from the mountains. It is said to be spoken in Nongwe, Mamboya and Berega, among other places. Then again, Berega is nowadays influenced by Swahili since its hospital attracts people from several different language groups whose common language is Swahili. Other predominantly Kagulu-speaking villages are Uponela and Gairo, despite the fact that Gairo is situated on the main road and, thus, more influenced by Swahili nowadays. The above-mentioned mountain dialect has been referred to as (&KL)7XPED (from the mountains called ,WXPED). Various informants say that Tumba is mixed with, or at least influenced by, Gogo [G11], and another source claims that Tumba is the Gogo name for Kagulu (Mnyampala and Maddox 1995:50). Another dialect is Mangehele (Mangaheri in Ethnologue). It is said to be spoken around Berega, Magubike, and Mamboya. The Kagulu are reported to be bilingual in Swahili, but that is not always the case. There are older illiterate people who do not speak Swahili, and the majority of 24 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

the children do not master Swahili before going to school (see survey in section 1.4.7.1). When asked if there was a typical Kagulu intonation that could be heard when people spoke Swahili, most people said that there was a slight Kagulu accent but it caused no obstacle in communication. After a few years of living in a mixed area, that intonation would probably disappear, according to the informants. This is corroborated by E Chiduo (pers. comm. 2003), who is a Kagulu mother-tongue speaker as well as a linguist at the University of Dar es Salaam.

1.4.3

The people

The Kagulu, like many other groups, regard their language as a base of their cultural unity. A teacher from another language group who participated in the sociolinguistic study explains: “ They are a people who like their language very much.” Most informants declare that there are no Kagulu persons who do not speak the language, at least not in the villages. Yet, there are people born in cities who regard themselves as Kagulu even though they do not speak the language. The Kagulu are a matrilineal people. This implies that a man is responsible for his sister and her children, who are his heirs, as well as for his own children (who belong to a different lineage). This creates a complicated situation where the man is torn between loyalty to his wife and to his sister(s). In the eyes of the Kagulu, men rightfully dominate women, just as the old dominate the young. Women are inferior to men and “ even educated Kaguru women appear to be unable to break this pattern of female subordination” (Meekers et al. 1994:26). An unmarried woman has low status in society regardless of her professional position. Initiation rites constitute an important part of life. They are seen as processes through which young boys and girls become adults. During the initiation girls learn, among other things, to tolerate their future husband’ s behaviour. The initiation includes both physical operations and moral instructions (Beidelman 1971:101). Since Christianity has gained grounds in the Kagulu area, many of the old rites have disappeared. The majority of the Kagulu people are Christians, a few are Muslims, and some still practice traditional religion even though this is not publicly admitted. Since blood is the basis of biological relationships, men can form blood brotherhoods in order to become “ one social person” (White 1994:366). Joking relations, i.e. an institutionalized form of social interaction in which the person is allowed to tease another person who is not allowed to take offence, are also common, as in all East Africa.

1.4.4

Neighbours

The Morogoro and the Dodoma regions, where the Kagulu speakers live, constitute a heterogeneous ethnic area. The neighbours to the east and south-east are all Bantu-speaking people with similar customs, namely Zigula [G31], Ng’ hwele [G32], Zaramo [G33], Ngulu [G34], Luguru [G35] and Sagala [G39]. To the west are the Gogo [G11] and the Hehe [G62], who are all patrilineal societies and, thus, differ substantially from the matrilineal Kagulu. It is, however, possible for individuals to belong to “ both Gogo patriclans and Kaguru matriclans” 25 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

(Mnyampala and Maddox 1995:14). To the north are the Nilotic Maasai. The relationship between Kagulu and their neighbours is on occasion ambivalent, inasmuch as they resemble each other in many customs. The Kagulu themselves consider Luguru, Ngulu and Sagala to be more closely related languages than Gogo (Harvey, pers. comm. 2003). Admittedly, Gogo has some bearing on Kagulu, especially on the dialects from the Itumba Mountains. The neighbouring languages are mutually intelligible with Kagulu (Chiduo, pers. comm. 2003), while Swahili is not. The Kagulu teachers interviewed profess to understand neighbouring languages.

1.4.5

History

Oral traditions say that the Kagulu were part of a Bantu group that originated from the far north, which is contradicted by Proto-Bantu [PB] history. It is more likely that they came from the district to the north-west of the Kagulu area, namely Kondoa (Beidelman 1993:76). The Kagulu area lies astride what was once one of the major caravan routes between the Indian Ocean and the great lakes of central Africa. Slaves and ivory were the major commodities. The Kagulu area served mainly as a safe corridor, and as a place for caravans to rest and replenish their supplies. However, there was precolonial raiding, which caused many of the Kagulu to flee to the Itumba Mountains for shelter. The first Europeans who came to the area were British missionaries. They founded a mission station in 1876 and worked to spread Christianity as well as to disrupt the slave trade. Shortly after, German adventurers arrived and started to acquire land, even from the Kagulu. In response to this land acquisition, the colonised people revolted in 1889. Germany sent help, which resulted in an invasion of the area. A German colony was created – German East Africa. Due to a shortage of staff, the Germans appointed people from the coast to assist in the Kagulu area as administrators. The British missionaries upheld medical and education services until World War I, when the Germans put an end to it. In 1916, when the British started to push the Germans away, the Germans burned all the mission stations. The effects of the war upon Germany’ s achievements in East Africa were disastrous: the administration and economy were completely disrupted. In these circumstances the people reverted to their old social systems and their old form of subsistence farming. The Kagulu area was now fairly ruined, with a hungry population. On top of this, they were hit by an influenza epidemic. Under the British mandate, the Kagulu area was divided between two different provinces and still is today.

1.4.6

The current linguistic situation in Tanzania

The Swahili language has spread all over the nation, even to remote areas, and it has deeply penetrated Tanzanian society. It is predominant in all public settings and has all but marginalized the other 120 languages. The MLs of Tanzania survive mainly in the rural homes where they are spoken. In public domains they are effectively banished; their use is excluded in education (e.g. all functional literacy material since the 1970s has been in Swahili), at political rallies and religious 26 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

functions; they are not used by any radio or television station; and there are no newspapers published in any of them. The general political context discourages the use of the MLs in favour of Swahili since their use is seen as a retrogressive step undermining national unity. The function of the MLs is chiefly as community markers serving as symbols of group solidarity. Even though Swahili is the highly esteemed national language, English, too, holds a distinguished position in society. Swahili denotes traditional ideals, while English is related to technical modernism and external ideals. English is used as the medium of instruction in higher education, and is the language of the High Court, diplomacy and foreign trade. “ [T]he former colonial language is seen as a prerequisite for scientific and technological development” (Rubagumya 1990:2). It is also perceived as a magical key to social prestige, economic advancement and power. English is introduced as a subject in the first year of primary school, Standard I, and it becomes the medium of instruction in Form I, which is the eighth year (i.e. first year of secondary school). The students can study Swahili as a subject throughout school and university, but the prevalent medium of instruction on all levels above primary school is English. English is the de jure official language while Swahili is the de facto official language. Tanzania, like several other African countries, employs the three-language model (Bamgbose 1991:5458). On the local level there are in-group languages (MLs) that, like Kagulu, serve as markers of solidarity. At the national level, a larger regional language like Swahili is used. It is understood by 90% of the population (Rubagumya 1991:198) even though it is only the mother tongue of approximately 10%. Communication at international level is carried out by means of a language of wider communication [LWC], such as English. Between the two potentates English and Swahili, not much elbow room is left to the approximately 120 MLs. “ It seems clear that many of the approximately 120 languages in Tanzania will lose many or all of their speakers within a generation or two” (Janson 2002:191). Speakers of MLs, including Kagulu speakers, are abandoning their languages for the benefit of larger languages, in this case Swahili. “ Even in cases where some languages exert an assimilating influence at the regional or district level [...] they cannot compete with Swahili” (Legère 2002:169). A growing number of speakers who start to abandon their language is a first step towards language extinction.

1.4.7

Is Kagulu endangered?

The question of endangered languages is highly relevant not only in Tanzania but also around the world. Small languages are abandoned to the benefit of LWCs. “ Languages typically become obsolescent when they no longer have a role in a speech community interacting with speakers from a different linguistic background” (Brenzinger 1998:71). In Tanzania, Swahili has gained many speakers on behalf of the MLs and regional languages, and is growing stronger (Janson 1997:205). Some of the minority languages in Tanzania are dying out (Robins and Uhlenbeck 1991:20, 29). The reasons for this language extinction are complex. A small isolated community may continue speaking a unique language for centuries, while somewhere else a language with many speakers may – for social, economical or political reasons – die out in a few generations. Generally, language death does 27 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

not occur because the speakers want it to happen; it is simply not discovered that the language is endangered until it is too late. Whether Kagulu is endangered or not is hard to answer. Kagulu has no writing system so far, and is not used in education at all. With approximately 240,000 speakers, it is small enough to be threatened by extinction, but large enough to have a sufficient number of speakers who would want to preserve it. It is used exclusively in some domains such as in the home, and some (rural) people use it in almost all domains. The advantage of this language is that there is intergenerational language transmission and that it has high status among its community members. Moreover, in intermarriage, the non-Kagulu spouses learn Kagulu if the couples still live in the Kagulu area.

1.4.7.1

The sociolinguistic survey

In 2003, a sociolinguistic study was conducted in order to find out the extent to which the Kagulu language was being used today, and whether it was endangered. By including both adults’ and children’ s usage, the current as well as the future language situation could be evaluated. The survey focused on: a) the position Kagulu holds in society b) current tendencies of language competence and use, and c) general attitudes towards MLs. The framework for the questions asked was inspired by the criteria set out by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) for endangered languages (2005). These issues, which will be explored further in the discussion, include: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

intergenerational language transmission absolute number of speakers proportion of speakers within the total population trends in existing language domains (areas of use) response to new domains and media materials for language education and literacy governmental and institutional language attitudes and policies, including official status and use 8. community members’ attitudes towards their own language, and 9. amount and quality of documentation.

0HWKRG

Five villages were selected in the Kagulu area: Berega, Mabula, Magera, Mamboya, and Rubeho. These have been identified as Kagulu-speaking villages. Uponela and Nongwe are other villages in the mountains which many Kagulu speakers regard as linguistically pure, but because of the impassable road, we were unable to get to them. In each village, the primary schools were the target of study. If children’ s and adolescents’ language usage is mapped, predictions can easily be made about the future language situation. What is more, by investigating the attitudes to the 28 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

languages concerned as well as self-evaluation of the students’ fluency (or lack thereof) in Swahili, predictions about the spread and status of Kagulu can be made. Standard I together with Std VI/VII were singled out to partake in the study to obtain the maximal age spread. Due to the dropout rate, there are fewer students in Std VII and, therefore, Std VI was included as well. In Std I, a Kagulu speaker asked the children questions and they answered by a show of hands. Although this is not an infallible method, it was the most functional way of including illiterate children in the survey. The interpreter who posed the questions switched between Swahili and Kagulu in order for everyone to understand. In Std VI/VII, students were asked to fill out a form. The teachers also participated in the study. Apart from filling out a longer form and answering a number of questions, they were also asked to assess the children’ s answers. The questionnaires used were based on previous studies in Africa (see 1.2.2), although questions were added to suit this particular survey.

7KHVXUYH\LQ6WG, 

Children are reportedly 7-8 years old when starting school, but other surveys show that they are often older than that. When interviewed, the teachers in Rubeho acknowledged that children may be up to 12 years old when enrolled. A new regulation from the ministry of education introduced in 2003 stipulated that children over the age of 8 were not allowed to be enrolled. This might elucidate the teachers’ disinclination to reveal the actual ages of the learners in Std I. 7DEOH/HDUQHUVLQ6WG,ZKRVSHDN.DJXOX
 

 100 90 80 70 60 50

P ercentage

40 30 20 10 0 Learners who are K agulu

Learners who speak Kagulu at hom e

Learners who spoke only K agulu before starting school

About 397 learners from Std I participated in the survey. In one of the five schools, learners from Std 2 were taken in since Std I was not offered. The questions asked 6

That is, the first class of primary school.

29 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

were: ‘Are you Kagulu?’ , ‘What language do you speak at home?’ , and ‘Did you speak only Kagulu before starting school?’ 7, see Table 1. Some of the 94% who asserted to be Kagulu did not speak the language at home, while some of the non-Kagulu learners claimed to speak Kagulu at home. The irregularities in the numbers may be a mistake in counting hands, or simply that there is intermarriage and even though the child considers him-/herself as nonKagulu, s/he may speak the language at home. The percentage who knew only Kagulu before starting school is probably higher than 81%. All the teachers corroborated this and said that only a low percentage of the young children spoke Swahili well, which indicates how prevalent Kagulu is. Most learners knew a few Swahili phrases before starting school, but almost no one was fluent.

7KHVXUYH\LQ6WG9,DQG9,,

There was a total of 158 respondents in Std VI and VII, 96% of which consider themselves to be Kagulu and started speaking Kagulu as their first language in childhood, see Table 2. This is not necessarily a fair representation of the population in the area. The questionnaire was given to the students for them to fill out themselves. I chose not to be present in the classrooms to avoid influencing the respondents’ answers. However, the teachers were supposed to stay in the classroom to supervise, but given that some students gave identical answers, there is a probability that the students were momentarily left on their own. 7DEOH/DQJXDJHXVDJHLQ6WG9,9,,  ! Number of respondents

160 140 120 100

Kagulu Swahili

80

Both Kagulu and Swahili

60

Other

40 20 0 What language do you What language do you What language do you speak with your speak with your speak with your parents? siblings? friends?

7

Since these are three questions, the total percentage in the chart is more than 100%.

30 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

One question was about language use (the questions about gender and age, etc. are not presented here). The aim was to investigate how extensively Kagulu is used in different domains. The respondents were not given the alternative to tick more than one answer, but some ticked both ‘Kagulu’ and ‘Swahili’ nonetheless. Kagulu is clearly the dominant language in the home (i.e. spoken with parents and siblings) though the number who ticked Swahili for siblings and friends is rather high. It is important to note, however, that when Swahili is used it is most likely via code-mixing and code-switching and not pure Swahili. Code-mixing and -switching is heard everywhere in the Kagulu area. The last question on the questionnaire was No. 13: ‘What language do you prefer to speak?’ , see Table 3. The answers provided are somewhat questionable since there is a general tendency for the students in the same school to answer similarly. The figures are nevertheless included since they give an intimation of how highly esteemed both languages are. 7DEOH$WWLWXGHVWRODQJXDJHXVDJH What language do you prefer to speak? 60

50

40

Percentage

30

20

10

0 Kagulu

Swahili

English

Other

7KHWHDFKHUV

A total of 35 teachers participated in the study. They taught all grades in primary school from Std I to Std VII. In the sample, 20 teachers were Kagulu speakers, and the remaining 15 had different language backgrounds. The teachers showed great zeal in keeping up appearances and, like the children, the answers must be analysed bearing this in mind. The usage and fluency of English and Swahili may be exaggerated. Along with the questionnaires, in-depth interviews were conducted with some of the teachers and headmasters. The teachers reported that: a. the bulk of the students came from the Kagulu area and spoke Kagulu as their mother tongue. 31 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

b. the teachers themselves came from different areas and they all spoke Swahili fluently, although they almost certainly have different mother tongues. The ones who came from the Kagulu area generally spoke Kagulu, according to nonKagulu teachers; but according to the Kagulu teachers themselves, they generally spoke Swahili and English.

6XPPDUL]LQJWKHVXUYH\

All the non-Kagulu teachers testified that the Kagulu teachers mostly spoke Kagulu to their students during recess, even though Swahili was used at times. This was generally not admitted by the Kagulu teachers themselves. The students, of course, spoke Kagulu amongst themselves, even in class. All but six Kagulu teachers proclaimed to speak Swahili to their students. Five of these confessed to speaking Kagulu after we told them that we really wanted to know the usage of the language and that we were not concerned with whether they spoke Swahili – as the rules advocated. One teacher recognized that the teachers mixed Swahili and Kagulu when talking to their students during recess. Code-switching is frequent in Tanzanian society and in all probability in the schools as well. If a leader student hears a teacher speaking Kagulu during school hours, s/he has the authority to give that teacher a slate on which it is written :DOLPX VHPD .LVZDKLOL DX (QJOLVK ‘Teachers, speak Swahili or English’ . According to the headmaster at the primary school in Berega, this will “ help to eradicate the speaking of Kagulu” . There are also several different slates for students, one of which refers to use of the language. The teachers only have the above-mentioned slate and it is generally distributed between zero and three times per week.

1.4.7.2

What position does Kagulu hold in society?

Generally, the Kagulu language is very powerful in the villages. It is spoken in all domains but the classrooms, and even there it is used for clarification. Several teachers do not admit to translating into Kagulu, but the interviews and participant observations tell us otherwise. The headmaster of one school said that of course they all translated for at least the first year – otherwise the students would not understand. The students who are Kagulu speakers used the language exclusively when talking to other Kagulu students and mostly even with the Kagulu teachers. Several teachers from different ethnic groups, as well as some of the students with different mother tongues, had learnt some Kagulu. This demonstrates just how influential the language is in the area. The teachers that were interviewed believed that the children’ s children would still speak Kagulu as adults, partly for the reason that marrying another Kagulu person was customary. It is hard to tell if the language is in fact gaining ground. After leaving school, most people never speak Swahili on a regular basis again. When it comes to Kagulu, half of the criteria for endangered languages apply and half do not. The above-mentioned aspects imply that Kagulu is not threatened, but that there are some other issues to be considered. The factors that classify Kagulu as an endangered language are that it has no official status and is not supported by the government nor any other institutions. Furthermore, the amount and quality of documentation so far is poor, and there are no materials for language education and literacy. There is also a gap in vocabulary, such as technical 32 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

terminology, given that new words are not coined. Lastly, the proportion of speakers within the total population is low (0.7%) while it is higher within the Kilosa district (44%). What speaks for the language is that there is intergenerational language transmission, that the community members have a high regard for their language, and that the amount and quality of documentation is growing.

33 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

34 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

2

Phonology

This chapter will describe the phonemes of Kagulu as well as some segmental matters on both the word and the sentence level. Though this is not an extensive phonological description, I wish neither to simplify nor to under-represent distinctive features. It must, however, be borne in mind that this inventory is to describe only the basic features to back up the morphological description. Areas that are not dealt with here but that need to be looked into more carefully are allophonic variation, with a special focus on vowel quality, as well as lexical tones and prosody. The Kagulu language is influenced by Swahili [G42] in all aspects, including matters of pronunciation. The International Phonetic Alphabet [IPA] symbols will be used in this phonological description.

2.1

Vowel inventory

There are five vowels in Kagulu, like in the majority of Bantu languages. The back ones are rounded and the central and front vowels are unrounded. The mid vowels are slightly lower than the cardinal vowels, which is not unusual in Bantu languages, although /G/ and /Q/ are not as open as='?or=n?. The /G/ and /Q/ are more restricted in their distribution than the other vowels. They never occur in the nominal class prefixes [NCPs] or agreement class prefixes [ACPs] other than when subject to vowel harmony, section 2.7.4. Vowels are often slightly nasalized when following a voiceless nasal. This allophonic variation is seen in the first /G/ in PKHQH ‘goat’ and the last /W/ in PXQKX ‘person’ , which are somewhat nasalized. Vowel length is not distinctive in Kagulu. The vowels are listed in Table 4 below. 7DEOH7KHYRZHOSKRQHPHV %DFNQHVV +HLJKW +LJK 0LG /RZ

2.2

)URQW

&HQWUDO

%DFN

K

W

G

 



C



Q

Consonant inventory

The consonant inventory in Kagulu includes stops, nasals, fricatives, affricates, glides, and an alveolar lateral. All voiceless stops have a voiced counterpart, while none of the fricatives do. All fricatives are voiceless in Kagulu, as noted in the survey done by Nurse and Philippson (1975:12). While in some personal as well as place names and loanwords, the trill [T] is present, it has not been inherent in Kagulu. Due to influence from Swahili and neighbouring languages it is sometimes heard in Kagulu, but is in most cases

35 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

realized as the lateral [N]. For instance, the Kagulu village Berega is pronounced [DGNGIC]. The glides are not proper consonants and they can be non-syllabic. /Y/ and /L/ can also be referred to as “ vocoid approximants” (Maddieson 2003:25). The consonants are found in Table 5. Voiceless stops and affricates are usually slightly aspirated although aspiration is not contrastive. Some voiced stops seem to be implosives8, but they are most likely just heavily voiced. Though implosives recurrently are in free variation with the voiced stops in Bantu languages (Hyman, pers. comm. 2005), there is no evidence of implosives in Kagulu in the spectrograms. An interesting feature in Kagulu are the voiceless nasals, which are described in section 2.4 below. 7DEOH7KHFRQVRQDQWSKRQHPHV %LODELDO 3ODFHRI DUWLF 0DQQHU RIDUWLF 6WRS RD 1DVDO OO )ULFDWLYH  $IIULFDWH  *OLGH Y /DWHUDO 

2.3

/DELRGH $OYHRODU $OYHR SDODWDO QWDO

9HODU

*ORWWDO

 

VF 

MI  PP Õ 00 

H

U

  

  N

5

 Vd5Fd$&3@ "$*

Note: --- means absent in the language; parentheses signal optionality

15

Following Guthrie (1971). The SM for class 1 is \D and NDin the past and perfective. With the associative marker D, only X is used resulting in ZD. 17 The capital N- refers to a homorganic nasal, i.e. a nasal that changes according to the following consonant. On some nouns, especially loans, there may be a Ø NCP. 18 Even though there is a consonant-vowel sequence here in class 10, for convenience this morpheme is referred to as an LQLWLDOYRZHO. 19 The adjective prefix for class 14 is P-. 20 The prefixes for classes 17 and 18 are not found with the word KDQKX, but are attached to other words. 16

49 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

Classes 1-11 enclose mostly countable nouns, although class 6 also contains some liquids. Most of the abstract nouns can be found in class 14. Class 15 holds the verbal nouns, i.e. the infinitives, and classes 16-18 are known as the ORFDWLYH classes. Class 16 contains the word KDQKX ‘place’ , but classes 17-18 do not include any nouns of their own. Instead, their prefixes can attach to other words. The discussion on how semantically coherent the Bantu noun classes are is still ongoing. “ [T]he question what, if any, semantic principles can explain the groupings of nouns into classes in Bantu languages has been controversial. The received wisdom is that although some generalizations can be made, there is a lot of arbitrariness in these systems” (Contini-Morava 1997:599). This statement is corroborated by Katamba (2003:114), who argues that although nouns belonging to the same gender usually have some degree of semantic coherence, the extent of the coherence varies, both with classes and with languages. In Kagulu, the only really semantically coherent classes are classes 1 and 2, to which most human noun stems belong. Finding plausible common semantic denominators for the other classes is not an easy task, and in this work, only the most typical members of a class will be mentioned.

3.1

Noun classes

Most nouns are assigned to two inherent classes, one in the singular and one in the plural. For instance, class 1 takes its plural in class 2. This singular/plural pairing is then referred to as FODVVHV or JHQGHU. In the description below, classes will be discussed in genders. Each description begins with a semantic description of the gender followed by segmented example words. Finally, the deviating forms of the NCP (if applicable) are discussed. A table of the regular singular/plural pairings is found below (Table 9). The less common or even irregular plural pairings are described in section 3.1.11 after the sketch of the noun classes. For instance, class 11, class 15 and the locative classes are not described here in Table 9 since they do not have a regular (or even any) plural pairing. 7DEOH5HJXODUVLQJXODUSOXUDOQRXQFODVVSDLULQJV &ODVV

6LQJXODU

&ODVV

3OXUDO



PXQKX ‘person’



ZDQKX ‘persons’



PX ODQJR ‘door’



PLODQJR‘doors’



GLPXG\R ‘fruit’



PDPXG\R ‘fruits’



FKLQKX ‘thing’



ILQKX ‘things’



PKHQH ‘goat’



PKHQH ‘goats’



XVDOX ‘bead’



VDOX ‘beads’

50 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

3.1.1

Classes 1/2

Class 1 contains exclusively animate nouns mostly referring to humans. This class takes its plurals in class 2. Some examples are PZDQLNH‘youth’ ,PXGLPL ‘shepherd’ andPXIXVD ‘teacher’ . 

PZDQDZDQD mu- ana wa- ana 1child:1/2 2child:1/2 child, children

The subclass 1a21 is minor in Kagulu. Nouns that are commonly found in this class in other Bantu languages such as ‘a deaf person’ in Nyamwezi [F22] (Maganga and Schadeberg 1992:290) or ‘king’ in Mbukushu [K333] (Fisch 1977:24), when checked, prove to belong to other classes in Kagulu. The noun FKLNXOL ‘a deaf person’ is in class 7 and PXQGHZD ‘king’ is in class 1. Some of the small number of nouns that can be assigned to class 1a are loans, such as EDED ‘father’ , and some are Kagulu nouns such as NDND‘grandfather’ and PEX\D‘friend’ . There is another subgroup in this class, consisting of the so-called QRPLQDO SHUVRQDOHOHPHQWV; see section 3.3.

3.1.2

Classes 3/4

Classes 3/4 include, for instance, body parts such as PXNRQR ‘hand’ and PXORPR ‘mouth’ . In these classes there are also some plants such as PXWDPD‘maize plant’ , while the actual ear of maize is in class 5 (LWDPD). Class 3 also holds the uncountable mass noun PSDQGD ‘beans’ , which has no plural. Otherwise, most class 3 nouns take their plural in class 4. There are usually not many loanwords in this class, but PXWXND PLWXND ‘car, cars’ is here due to its initial CV sequence. Consider also Swahili, where PRWRNDD is class 9. 

PXKRJRPLKRJR mu- hogo mi- hogo 3cassava:3/4 4cassava:3/4 cassava, cassavas

The vowel X in the NCP of class 3 is sometimes dropped depending on how influenced the speaker is by Swahili and on the speaker’ s age. Older speakers and rural speakers tend to use the full PX-.

3.1.3

Classes 5/6

Classes 5/6 contain the names of various animals: GLEZD‘dog’ , GLMRND ‘snake’ and GLEXOD ‘frog’ . Moreover, natural phenomena are found in these classes, such as 21

The nouns in class 1a do not display any NCP.

51 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

GLOROR ‘valley’ and GLWXPED ‘mountain’ , as well as body parts as seen in GLWZL ‘head’ and GLWRPER ‘breast’ . Some liquids are found in class 6, such as PHML ‘water’ and PDIXWD‘oil’ . Class 6 is additionally a common plural class for other classes besides class 5; see section 3.1.11 on plural pairings. 

GLELNLPDELNL di- biki ma- biki 5tree:5/6 6tree:5/6 tree, trees

One irregular pair is found in this class, namely GLJLVR PHVR ‘eye, eyes’ ; see example 28. Other nouns may be recategorized to classes 5/6 when they are augmented; see section 3.4.1. 

GLJLVRPHVR di- giso ma- iso 5eye:5 6eyes:6 eye, eyes

The NCP of class 5 is the most debatable. Two forms co-occur, namely L- and GL-. Informants are not consistent in their usage. Phrase-initially, the GL- is used, which may imply that it is syntactically governed, like the initial vowel; mostly in listings as well as phrase-medially, the L- is used. All informants who use LWZL ‘head’ phrase-medially, for example, change it to GLWZL‘head’ when the word is phraseinitial. An interesting fact is that on adjectives, the NCP is always L- and never GL(example 109), unless the noun is augmented. This is almost certainly related to the fact that the adjective can never precede the noun and can, thus, never be phraseinitial. Since GL is mostly used phrase-initially, it implies that it is confused with the initial vowel and/or replaces it in phrase-initial position. There could be a change in the usage or simply that the initial vowel L is erroneously treated as an NCP. The initial syllable GL is found phrase-medially too, but generally not the first time the noun is mentioned, which corresponds to the usage of the initial vowel; see section 3.2.3. Guthrie describes the two variants of the class 5 prefix co-occurring in some languages and attests the reflexes in PB, but then goes on to say that “ the variants occur respectively with consonant stems and vowel stems” (Guthrie 1967:120). This is not the case in Kagulu. Some of the variation may be dialectal. For instance, in a neighbouring language such as Sagala, L alone is used for nouns of class 5, which may affect informants living close to that language area. Kadima (1969:38) lists a single vowel as an alternative NCP in class 5 for Kagulu. The initial vowel may be used with class 5 nouns (as with most nouns) and then the form isLGLELNL ‘tree’ (never as LLELNL,which is ungrammatical). Most likely, the initial vowel used to be a CV sequence (de Blois 1970:153), so GLGLELNL ‘tree’ is the original form. Then that form became LGLELNL ‘tree’ due to loss of the initial consonant; see section 3.2.1. Without the initial vowel, the form is either GLELNLor 52 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

evenLELNL‘tree’ . It is possible that the initial vowel has become the NCP over time (Maho, pers. comm. 2003). Metathesis between the initial vowel and the NCP of class 5 has been reported for other Bantu languages (Ngunga 2003). In Kwangali [K33], the remnant of the initial vowel of class 5 nouns is now treated as the NCP (Legère 2005:259).

3.1.4

Classes 7/8

Classes 7/8 typically contain tools and instruments like FKL\D ‘vessel’ , FKLZHPEH ‘razor’ and FKLVHJH ‘basket’ . What is more, these classes contain the word for ‘item’ or ‘thing’ , namely FKLQKXILQKX ‘thing, things’ . Therefore, class 8 is used as the default SM as well as OM when items from different noun classes are involved; see Syntax, section 6.2. 

FKDOLI\DOL chi- ali fi- ali 7child:7/8 8child:7/8 child, children

Furthermore, classes 7/8 typically enclose persons with disabilities. Here we find nouns such as FKLOHPD’ a crippled person’ , FKLNXOL‘a deaf person’ and FKLSRIX‘a blind person’ , which are regarded as belittling. “ Usually human nouns in class 7 exhibit some kind of undesirable and permanent feature” (Maho 1999:75) which is also the case in Kagulu. The derogatory terms found in class 7 are however not only related to disabilities. Other non-favourable concepts such as FKLQ\DOD ‘shame’ are found here as well. Lastly, languages belong here, as seen in &KLNDJXOX ‘Kagulu’ and &KLQJHOHVD ‘English’ . Classes 7/8 may be used in noun-to-noun derivation, thus creating the diminutive; see section 3.4.1. Furthermore, the prefixes of these classes are involved in adverb formation; see Uninflected parts of speech, section 5.1.

3.1.5

Classes 9/10

It is difficult to give a general statement of what nouns classes 9/10 contain since these classes embrace a hodgepodge of nouns. If a common denominator need be used, it would be that the nouns are loans, predominantly from Swahili, as seen in EDOXD ‘letter’ and KXGXPD‘service’ . But words in this class, like QJ¶RPEH‘cow’ , which exist in Swahili as well, may of course be inherent Bantu words and not necessarily loans. The English loans such as NRPS\XWD ‘computer’ , ZLNL‘week’ and NRVL‘course’ , which come via Swahili, are mostly found in these classes. 

PKHQHPKHQH Npene Npene 9/10- goat:9/10 9/10- goat:9/10 goat, goats

In these classes, the NCP consists of a homorganic nasal [N-], i.e. a nasal that adapts its place of articulation to the adjacent consonant. It may also consist of a Ø 53 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

marker as in, for instance, the Kagulu noun ND\D ‘house’ , though the Ø is mostly found on nouns that are Swahili borrowings. It is not always possible to tell which is the original stem-initial consonant and which is the homorganic nasal. For example, QRQJD ‘language’ and Q\XQGR‘hammer’ cannot be segmented. As a result of the lack of an overt NCP, some informants, by analogy, add another initial vowel (the IV usually used in class 9), thus forming words like LVLQ\XPED ‘houses’ or LVLPKHQH ‘goats’ . This could be some sort of hypercorrection, or the VLcould be something in between an initial vowel and NCP since, in a restricted number of cases, it can be used with the locative prefixes which ‘ordinary’ initial vowels cannot. Compare also NXVLND\D‘to (other peoples’ ) houses’ .

3.1.6

Class 11

Traditionally in Bantu, this class includes long, thin entities. In Kagulu we only find a few examples of this, like OXVLJL ‘string’ and possibly OZDQGD ‘river’ . Other words found in this class are OZLPER ‘song’ , OXVLPR ‘story’ and OZLQJDQJR ‘calling’ . 

OZDQGD lu- anda 11- river:11 river

Class 11 in Kagulu only contains a decidedly limited number of nouns. Most of them have no plural, like OXNDVL ‘walls’ or more likely ‘frame of walls’ and OXNROR ‘clan’ . The few that take a plural do so in class 10, as seen in OXVLJLVLJL ‘string, strings’ . In Swahili, class 11 has merged with class 14, which may be an ongoing process in Kagulu too. Younger informants use this class less and would for instance use XVL ‘string’ in class 14 instead ofOXVL ‘string’ in class 11.

3.1.7

Class 14

Like in many Bantu languages, class 14 contains abstract nouns such as XJHOH ‘time’ and XKDL‘witchcraft’ . There are a few nouns for which it is not possible to determine a single inherent noun class. Such a noun is ND\D ‘house’ : it is class 9, but it is just as often found in class 14 as XND\D, and then with the more abstract meaning of ‘homestead’ . 

XWDPX utamu 14- disease:14/10 disease

Many of the nouns in class 14 have no plural, but the ones that have, take their plural either in class 10 or class 6. In example 32 above, XWDPX‘disease’ may take

54 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

both classes: QKDPX ‘diseases’ is in class 10 and PDWDPX ‘diseases’ is in class 6. Generally, class 10 is the more common plural class for class 14. Nouns from other classes may be assigned to class 14 when the meaning is abstract or refers to an area. This so-called noun-to noun derivation is illustrated in section 3.4.2. Not only nouns can be reassigned to class 14. Adjectives, such as  VZDQX ‘good’ and -NLZD ‘poor’ , can be made into nouns if the class 14 NCP is applied, i.e. XVZDQX‘goodness’ and XNLZD ‘poverty’ . It is unclear whether there is an initial vowel for class 14. The youngest informant gives ZRJD ‘fear’ (which is analogous in Swahili) and the older informants give XZRJD‘fear’ . The initial X- could be an initial vowel but it is most likely simply a variation in pronunciation and spelling. Unlike the other classes, the NCP may intermittently be dropped as in JLPEL ‘beer’ or JDOL ‘porridge’ , though this phenomenon is limited to a small number of examples.

3.1.8

Class 15

Like in other Bantu languages, class 15 in Kagulu contains the infinitive form of verbs. These cannot take the initial vowel. Unlike some Bantu languages, this class in Kagulu includes no actual nouns at all. 

NZLQDQJD ku- inang -a 15- call -FV to call

It is, however, likely that there used to be some nouns in this class in early Kagulu. The stem NXWZL ‘ear’ appears as QJ¶KXWZL in today’ s Kagulu due to morphophonological rules, but the old stem is seen in the diminutive form FKLNXWZL ‘small ear’ . In Mbukushu [K333], NXWZL is used in class 15 by older people while the young prefer to put the noun in class 5 (Fisch 1977:38). Also for Bantu languages in general, a few body parts are reported to occur in class 15 (Katamba 2003:116).

3.1.9

Classes 16, 17 and 18

Classes 16, 17 and 18 are locative classes. Only one noun, KDQKX ‘place’ , is in class 16. In classes 17 and 18 there are no inherent nouns. During elicitation, one informant gave the class 17 NXQKX ‘at the place’ , but this is not common. Instead, the NCPs of classes 17 and 18 are put before the NCP of other classes, as in PXFKL\D ‘in the vessel’ (example 34). This is referred to as QRXQWRQRXQ GHULYDWLRQ or VHFRQGDU\FODVVLILFDWLRQ, as the locatives signal time and space on top of the inherent noun class membership. Noun-to-noun derivation is discussed further in section 3.4.3.

55 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.



PXFKL\D mu- chi- ya 18- 7vessel:7/8 in the vessel

Generally, it can be said that KD denotes ‘by’ , NX denotes ‘to’ and PX denotes ‘in/on’ even though other connotations are common. The locatives are employed in constructions that are prepositional in many other non-Bantu languages. The word class SUHSRVLWLRQ does not exist in Kagulu. Class 16KDPXJXQGD‘by the farm’ Class 17 NXPXJXQGD ‘to the farm’ Class 18 PXPXJXQGD‘in/on the farm’ So far, only nouns with an inherent class affiliation have been examined. There are, however, some nouns that are difficult to place in a class. These are discussed below.

3.1.10 Unclear noun class affiliation Various nouns do not entirely follow the noun class system. Some nouns take their agreement from different classes and, thus, do not have an inherent class. Other nouns are vocative and can neither take nor govern agreement. Moreover, there are noun-like words that still show reflexes of the noun class system though any typical noun-like properties have been lost. Finally, there is a trace of a class that does not exist in Kagulu today.

3.1.10.1 Agreement from different classes A few kinship terms belong to classes 1/2 in terms of agreement with verbs and with most modifiers. Some of them may take the NCPs of classes 1/2 on the nouns as well (see examples 36, 37, 39, 41, 42, 44 and 45). Nevertheless, they all take the ACP of class 5 on possessives in the singular (except example 42, which takes class 9) and class 10 on possessives in the plural (except example 44, which takes class 10 in the singular too). Other modifiers such as adjectives and demonstratives are inflected according to classes 1/2 as seen in example 35. 

DZDNRORVDQJXZD\DZDGDWX a- wa- kolo si- angu wa- ya wa- datu IV- 2uncle:5 10- 1SG.POSS 2DEM 2three those three uncles of mine

A similar construction is found in the neighbouring language Ng’ hwele [G32]. /XPEX \DQJX ‘my sibling (of opposite sex)’ takes the class 9 agreement even though this agreement is not used on any other modifiers but possessives for this noun. Class 9 is otherwise a common default when there is no overt class marker; see section 6.2.3. The plural is ZDOXPEX VDNH ‘his/her siblings (of opposite sex)’ (Legère, pers. comm. 2006, based on recorded texts). In Vidunda [G38], however, we find the contracted OXPEXO\H ‘his/her sibling (of opposite sex)’ (Legère, pers. 56 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

comm. 2006, based on recorded texts), where the agreement appears to be class 11. In PB, the reconstructed stem *GPE is classified as 1,5/2,6 (Guthrie 1970a:189). Following Guthrie, the Kagulu OXPEX ZDOXPEX ‘my sibling/s (of opposite sex)’ would be in classes 1,5/2,10. The possessives, either as independent pronouns or as clitics, are obligatory with these nouns as seen in OXPEX G\DNZH or, in short, OXPEXG\H ‘his sister’ . An unidentified person ‘a sister’ or ‘somebody’ s sister’ would simply be referred to as PXGDOD ‘woman’ . 

PIXQDQJX my younger sibling (It is always contracted in the data.)



ZDIXQDVDQJX my younger siblings



NRORG\DQJX my uncle



ZDNRORVDQJX my uncles



OXPEXG\DQJX my sibling (of opposite sex)



ZDOXPEXVDQJX my siblings (of opposite sex)



PEX\D\DQJX my friend



ZD PEX\DVDQJX my friends



PX QGXJXVDQJX22 my relative



ZDQGXJXVDQJX my relatives



ZD EDEDVDQJX my fathers (This form is not common.)

There are a few more nouns that are hard to classify, mainly because they do not commonly take independent modifiers; cf. examples 47-49. 

QJ¶LQD\DQJXRUQJ¶LQDQJX my mother



PL\DQJX my fellow

22

Note that PQGXJX\DQJX is incorrect.

57 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.



ZD\DQJX my fellows

The noun L QJ¶LQD ‘mother of’ is probably in classes 9/10 since it occasionally takes the agreement from these classes, though the SMs are always from classes 1/2. Nevertheless, it is frequently found with the possessive stem DQJX ‘my’ as seen in example 47, or as in QJ¶LQDNH ‘his/her mother’ (example 50), where the possessive modifier is merged with the noun – thus not displaying the agreement marker. The same goes for ‘fellow/s’ in examples 48-49. (, QJ¶LQD ‘mother’ cannot be used when addressing someone, which is also attested in the neighbouring Gogo [G11] (Q\LQD ‘mother’ ), where it is only used for reference. The same goes for Nyamwezi [F22], where we find QLQDD‘his/her mother’ in class 1a (Maganga and Schadeberg 1992:65). 

.DILOLJZDQDQJ LQDNZH kafil -igw -a na ng’ina akwe 1.PAST- be bereaved -PASS -FV CONJ mother 3SG.POSS S/he has lost his/her mother.

3.1.10.2 Vocative Three nouns (examples 51-53) exist in Kagulu that cannot be assigned to any noun class because of their vocative behaviour. Among other things, these words do not allow for modifiers and they are only used when addressing someone; see example 54. These nouns are the following: 

JRORNR friend or dude



Q\RORNRRUPRORNR friends



PDL mother

Note that PDL‘mother’ (example 53) is only used when addressing someone, while QJ¶LQD ‘mother’ (example 47) cannot be used when addressing someone. Featured below is a common greeting that includes the vocative JRORNR‘friend’ . 

*RORNRJZH goloko gweye friend you Hey you!

3.1.10.3 Nouns with restricted reflexes of the noun class system In Kagulu, there are a number of nouns with restricted reflexes of the noun class system. In neighbouring Luguru [G35], some words that are referred to as FODVVOHVV QRPLQDOV are described by Mkude (1974:60). They are ‘yesterday’ , ‘today’ , ‘tomorrow’ , ‘the day after tomorrow’ and‘now’ . These do not pertain to any noun class despite their noun-like properties. They cannot take inflection or govern it. 58 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

7DEOH1RXQVZLWKUHVWULFWHGUHIOH[HVRIWKHQRXQFODVVV\VWHP .DJXOX FKLVLQGR GL\HOR GLJXOR QKRQGRL\D QKRVLNX KDPELD(adverb)

/XJXUX LNDFD OHOROL OLJROR --LOXYL VDPEL

7UDQVODWLRQ ‘the day after tomorrow’ ‘today’ ‘yesterday’ ‘the day after tomorrow’ s morrow’  ‘tomorrow’ ‘now’

All the words in Table 10 – excluding ‘now’ , which is an adverb in Kagulu – behave differently from the regular nouns. These nouns are difficult to allocate to a particular class. By and large, they function as adverbials. Even though they cannot be segmented into an NCP and a stem, they may take determiners carrying agreement, which is something adverbs cannot do. When determiners are used, they take the class 9 agreement in general. It is not possible to distinguish whether class 9 is their formerly inherent noun class or simply a default, as seen in GLJXOR \DNZH ‘the day before …’ . The word GL\HOR‘today’ can be traced back to the PB *GHHGywhich is labelled ‘particle’ by Meeussen (1967:115). However, if the initial CV sequence is GL, thus resembling class 5, the ACP of class 5 may also be used for the same word as in GLJXORG\DNZH ‘the day before …’ . More examples of how they display agreement can be found in QKRVLNXVLNX\DNZH ‘the following morning’ (class 9) and GL\HOR G\D … ‘this day, today, of …’ (class 5). Compare also the usage of the SM of class 9 in the following phrase: GLJXOR LORND ILVZDQX VDQD ‘yesterday passed very well’ . Even so, most informants claim the noun GLGMXD ‘day’ (class 5) is needed to generate the proper agreement as in GLGMXDG\DGLJXORGLORND ILVZDQX‘yesterday’ s day passed well’ . There are also a number of nouns with a restricted distribution that are predominantly used in locative constructions. The origins of these nouns are not easy to trace due to grammaticalization. They are found in constructions such as KDVL \D ‘under’ , NXQ\XPD \D ‘behind’ (example 55) and PX FKDQ\KD \D ‘over’ . The first example may stem from the noun LVL ‘country’ while the third example includes a noun formerly meaning ‘top’ , also seen in example 56. The stem  FKDQ\D can take both a locative prefix as well as a modifier, as seen in PXFKDQ\KD \DNZH ‘on top of that’ . Additionally, there is another set of locative expressions made up of unidentifiable stems, namely EHKL ‘near’ (example 57) and JDWL ‘inside’ (examples 58-60). Like the nouns with a restricted distribution, these stems cannot take the agreement of any other classes but the locative ones. What makes them different is that they do not make use of the associative marker D23, and cannot take any modifiers.

23

The associative marker, a construction typical of Bantu languages, is also referred to as FRQQHFWLYH; see section 3.5.4.

59 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

These constructions are most likely part of a grammaticalization process. In the language So (Nilo-Saharan), a word that is clearly a noun morphologically has the function of a preposition (Heine and Traugott 1991:178), which is what is taking place in Kagulu as well. Heine et al. suggest a “ word class intermediate between nouns and prepositions” (Heine and Traugott 1991:179) for words that contain both nominal and prepositional characteristics. 

,GLSLORSLORG\XZD i- di- pilopilo di- uw -a IV- 5wooden bike:5/6 5- be -FV NXQ\XPD\HSLNLSLNL ku- nyuma ia i- pikipiki 17- behind 9ASSOC IV- motorbike The (wooden) bike is behind the motorbike.



$OL\XZDNXFKDQ\KD\H Ali yu- uw -a ku- chanyha iAli 1- be -FV 17- top:9 9-

Q\XPED a inyumba ASSOC IV- house:9/10

Be on the top of the house, Ali! 

PXEHKL near/around



$OLNRZDPXQRPXJDWL Ali kauw -a mu- no mu- gati Ali 1.PAST- be -FV 18- DEM 18- inside Ali is here inside.



KDJDWL at/inside



NXJDWL inside

Another word that is challenging to categorize is OXPER\D ‘sadness’ or ‘loneliness’ . This word is mostly found in the following famous song (example 61) that The Kagulu sing when they are about to go home. A less common usage is displayed in example 62. The noun cannot take any modifiers nor can it govern agreement. 

&KLNXOXWDXNZHWXFKLZDOHNHOH chi- kulut -a u- ku- etu chi- wa- lek -el -e 1PL- PRES- go -FVIV- 17- 1PL.POSS 1PL- 2- leave -APPL -FV OXPER\D lumboya sadness We are going home, we leave you with sadness.

60 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.



'LEZDGLQRGLOHNLJZDQDOXPER\D di- bwa di- no di- lek -igw -a na lumboya 5dog:5/6 5DEM 5- leave -PASS -FV CONJ loneliness This dog is left alone.

Furthermore, we find PDSXQL‘slowness’ that cannot be assigned to any noun class. It can be found in a phrase like NHQDPDSXQL ‘s/he is slow to act’ . According to a young informant, PDSXQL is ‘the habit of forgetting things and a tendency to ask others about what was going on’ . Lastly, there is a group of words related to periods of the day which may have been nouns prior to being grammaticalized. The only one that is a noun today is PLVL ‘afternoon’ . These words have two different forms: one longer form, including QKH , and a shorter version without. It appears that the longer form is the original one, although today it is regarded as slightly archaic, while the shorter version is becoming more common, especially among younger speakers. It is intricate to differentiate between these two forms. The only difference detected is that the longer form seems to involve the meaning ‘at’ or ‘in’ ; see below: QKHFKLOR or KHFKLOR ‘at night’ (may also be abbreviated to FKLOR ‘at night’ ) QKHJXOX orKHJXOR ‘in the evening’ QKHPLVL ‘in the afternoon’ from L PLVL ‘afternoon’ See also the combination of the longer and the shorter form in QKRVLNX KHJXOR ‘tomorrow evening’ and KHJXOR\DNH ‘in the evening of that day’ .

3.1.10.4 Traces of an ancient class

In other Bantu languages, class 12 with its prefix ND is commonly used as a class for diminutives. The name .DJXOX ‘small mountain’ stems from this (Mkude 2002:1). Class 12 does not exist otherwise in Kagulu (my data and Kadima 1969:85). Alternatively, ND may simply be a way of creating names and name-like nouns in Bantu (Schadeberg 2003a:86). Moreover, the prefix ND is found on the ordinals ‘two’ to ‘five’ : NHOLNDGDWXNDQHNDVKDQR. A similar phenomenon occurs in Luguru, where ND is used to nominalize the numerals ‘two’ to ‘four’ (Mkude 1974:70). Guthrie mentions an element ND in Kagulu, saying that it is a nominal word-building prefix, but that it is not possible to relate it to the class 12 prefix ND (Guthrie 1970b:245). Whether the ND in today’ s Kagulu is a trace of class 12 or the nominal word-building prefix Guthrie points out is better left unsaid. Nonetheless, it is noteworthy that the time related adverbs NDKH ‘again’ , NDPHL ‘then and NDWDOL ‘formerly’ contain an identical segment.

3.1.11 Plural pairings The most common plural pairings – regular singular/plural noun class pairings – have been listed in the beginning of this chapter in Table 9. In Table 11, all pairings occurring in Kagulu are sketched. The dotted lines in the table imply that the pairing is less common.

61 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

7DEOH3OXUDOSDLULQJVLQ.DJXOX

1 3 5 7 9 11 14

2 4 6 8 10

As already mentioned, odd numbers pair with even numbers in a fairly systematic way. There are, however, some irregular though still grammatical plural pairings. Some singular classes pair with more than one plural class, which are referred to as SRO\SOXUDO FODVVHV by Maho (2003b:161). These commonly include classes 6 and 10, which is also the case in Kagulu. Class 4 is only found twice in my data as a plural for classes other than class 3 (once for class 11 and once for class 14), and is, therefore, not counted as a polyplural class here despite being defined as such by Maho (2003b) based on data in Tucker and Bryan (1957:40). The examples I found were XWDPLXWD‘bow, bows’ and OZDQGD PLOZDQGD‘river, rivers’ . Several inconsistencies crop up in the way the informants pair classes. Some informants stated that class 14 could be used as a plural for itself, while most informants would prefer either class 10 or class 6. Others used class 6 as a plural for class 9, as seen in LQKDPXDPDWDPX ‘disease, diseases’ . The fact that class 6 is often used as a plural for several classes is not uncommon since nouns can be assigned to class 6 for augmentation. Class 6 is expanding as a plural class in many Bantu languages (Maho 1999:256). For Kagulu, pairings such as 9/6 are mentioned by Kadima (1969) and Last (1886). Yet in my data, this pairing only occurs when the noun in question is augmented. For class 11 there is generally no plural, but if the noun takes a plural, it is that of class 10. Still, there are several exceptions to this, probably due to the augmentative quality of class 6 (see section 3.4.1). Kadima and Last mention the 11/6 pairing, but no other sources do. None of the sources give 14/10, which is the most common one (excluding the genders, that is) in my sample, though the older informants do not use it as frequently. This could be a product of Swahili influence since many of the nouns in question are the same in Swahili (cf. XNXWDNXWD ‘wall, walls’ ), or it could simply be an areal feature Notwithstanding the aforementioned issues, the pairings are similar to those of many Bantu languages.

3.2

Initial vowel

The initial vowel in Kagulu (also called the SUHSUHIL[) consists of the initial segment that emerges ahead of the NCP, e.g. LPX JHQL ‘guest’ . It is principally 62 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

found on nominals. The initial vowels vary greatly amongst the different Bantu languages and there are no collective rules. Below are some Kagulu examples of the initial vowel. 

LPXJHQL i- mu- geni IV- 1guest:1/2 the guest



XPXIXNRZDQJX u- mu- fuko uangu IV- 3pocket:3/4 31SG.POSS my pocket



LILWDEXILQR i- fi- tabu fi- no IV- 8book:7/8 8DEM these books



XOXVLJL u- lu- sigi IV- 11- string:11/10 string

The initial vowel has many different names. Some choose to call it DXJPHQW, but since it may be confused with the term DXJPHQWDWLYH, that term is avoided here. In this case, it is only the prefix itself that is augmented (hence the name) and not the noun or the semantics of the noun. Mkude (1947:51) calls it ‘VSHFLILHU’ and Batibo (1985:246) ‘YR\HOOH GX GpILQL’ . These terms are suitable to use when the segment actually functions as a determiner or involves specificity, which is not always the case as we shall see. It has also been called ZHDNGHWHUPLQHU or SUHSUHIL[. In all cases but one, the segment is realized as a single vowel in Kagulu, which is why it will be referred to as LQLWLDOYRZHO in this work. In class 10, however, the segment is a CV-syllable. Originally, the constructions with the initial vowel were probably the unmarked ones and omission of the initial vowel represents the marked constructions. Hyman and Katamba (1993) regard the constructions in Ganda [E15] without the initial vowel as the marked one that needs to be explained. In Kagulu, this is changing at present since its usage is becoming more optional and, hence, unmarked.

3.2.1

Form

In all classes but 1 and 10, the initial vowel is identical to the vowel of the ACP; see Table 8. However, we find an Lin class 1 (where the ACP is \X), and in class 10 the whole ACP, VL, is used, probably to avoid confusion with the class 9 nouns that would otherwise be identical. Originally, the initial vowel in Bantu languages was most likely a CV construction (de Blois 1970:153). De Blois presupposes a full form where the NCP is reduplicated as in the constructed Kagulu word 63 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

*PLPLODQJX ‘doors’ . Hyman suggests that the initial vowel is in the shape of the ACP since, in Bantu, they both historically carry a high tone, while the NCP carries a low tone (Hyman, pers. comm. 2005). In class 1, the \in the ACP \X could be an underlying /K/, which would then be reflected in the initial vowel of class 1. One informant mentioned an alternative form for class 2, namely LZDQD‘the children’ instead of the common DZDQD‘children’ . With the data available, it has not been possible to determine why.

3.2.2

Distribution

The initial vowel in Kagulu is usually found on nouns before the NCP, but something that resembles the initial vowels can also occur on determiners (i.e. also ahead of the ACP), on numerals (although this is not very common), and on pronouns. The initial segment occurring on modifiers is always in the shape of the vowel D: D\XQR ‘this’ , DZHOL ‘two’ DQL\H ‘me’ and PDELNL DJDPRQJD ‘the other trees’ . It is not clear whether this is the actual initial vowel or another initial segment. The initial vowel never surfaces on adjectives: LGLEZD GLWDPX G\RID ‘the sick dog died’ . The distribution is contrary to that of other languages where it seems to be more common for the initial vowel to emerge on adjectives than on demonstratives. For examples, see the languages Ganda [E15] and Rundi [D62] (Hyman and Katamba 1993:216). Moreover, the initial vowel doubles as the morphological marking of subject relatives, as seen in LILNXOLPLJZD ‘which are being cultivated’ , DZRLOH ‘who are here’ , and in example 67. The initial vowel is not used for object relatives, where another morpheme is employed; see Syntax, section 6.9. 

,PKHQHLPZHGXL\XZ LOHNX\D i- Npene i- mwedu i- yu- uw -ile ku- ya IV- 9/10- goat:9/10 9- one IV- 1be -PFV 17- DEM The one goat which is there ...

The initial vowel is also found on loanwords such as LELELOLD ‘the Bible’ and LGLJLOL ‘degree’ . All this said, nouns without the initial vowel are still more common than nouns with it, and its usage is optional. The initial vowel is not always realized, but traces of it can be found in some forms of the associative construction (see section 3.5.4). It often merges with the following initial vowel, thus forming G\H JH NZH ZH, etc. when the vowel is L (examples 68-69), or forming JR, ZR \R, etc. when it is X (example 70). Moreover, the conjunction QD displays the same morphophonological change: LGLWZL G\DQJX QH PLNRQR ILNXWDPD ‘my head and arms are aching’ (from QD LPLNRQR). The same is documented for Kwangali [K33], amongst other languages (Legère 2005:258).

64 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.



PXNRQRZHPXNH mu- kono uaL mu- uke 3hand:3/4 3ASSOC ,9 1wife:1/2 the hand of the wife



NZHPXQGHZD ku- a Lmu- ndewa 17- ASSOC ,9 1king:1/2 to the king



KDVL\RPXWXND hasi ia X mu- tuka under 9ASSOC ,9 3car:3/4 under the car

In some cases, however, the initial vowel is kept on the following word, as in PZH LQ\XPED ‘inside the house’ . This is most likely a transformational stage preceding the full merger of the D and the L. It could also be that the speakers are hypercorrecting.

3.2.2.1

Constraints in distribution

While it is problematic to tell where the initial vowel may occur, it is less problematic to state where it does not occur. In several Bantu languages, the initial vowel is disallowed or dispreferred following a negative verb; it is not possible in the domain of negation or other scope-bearing element. This is not necessarily the case in Kagulu, where we find sentences like the following: 

6LNXOLPDXPXJXQGDZDQJX I am not cultivating my farm.



8PXODQJRXQRVL\RPXNXJXWXNXNXPXOD This door is not difficult to open.

It is not only negation that generally disallows the initial vowel: kinship terms often do not take the overt initial vowel either (Hyman and Katamba 1993:235, Mkude 1974:108). Nonetheless, in Kagulu we may find several kinship terms with the initial vowel: LPDL ‘mother’ , LNXNX ‘grandfather’ and LPXWXPED ‘uncle’ . In Ndonga [R22], for instance, the initial vowel is not allowed for personified animals that occur in fables (Legère 2005:255). In Kagulu, however, we may find the personified LVXQJXOD ‘hare’ in class 9 with the initial vowel taking the animate class 1 subject concord. 

,VXQJXODNDOHPD i- sungula kalem -a IV- hare:9/10 1.PAST- refuse -FV The Hare refused.

65 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

Aside from the domains above where the initial vowel is dispreferred, there are some domains in Kagulu where the initial vowel is never allowed: 1. In combination with the locative prefixes: 

,ND\DL\DLQDPXKDL i- kaya iya i- in -a mu- hai IV- village:9/10 9DEM 9- have -FV 1witch:1/2 That village has a witch.



0XND\DL\DPZLQDPXKDL mu- kaya iya mu- in -a mu- hai 18- village:9/10 9DEM 18- exist24 -FV 1witch:1/2 In that village there is a witch.

Apparently, there is an exception to this rule if the context requires it. Compare, for example, QLNXOXWD NXVLND\D ‘I’ m going to (other peoples’ ) houses’ as opposed to NXND\D ‘(my) home’ . 2. On nouns preceded by the invariable element FKLOD ‘each, every’ : 

FKLODPXODQJR each door



FKLODPXQKX every person

 3. When the interrogative clitics NL or QL are attached, either to the noun itself as in 1\XPEDNL" ‘Which house?’ or to the associate marker as in 0LOLPR \DNL" ‘What works?’ , or to a construction consisting of the ACP and the reference marker R, as seen in example 78. 

1\XPED\RQL" nyumba io house:9/10 9REF

-ni -what

What house?

4. When the meaning is ‘any’ or ‘anything’ : 

24

,PZDQDNDWRZD i- mu- ana katow -a IV- 1child:1/2 1.PAST- beat -FV

.ZLQD can mean both ‘to have’ and ‘to exist’ .

66 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

PXQKXZRZRVH " mu- nhu wa- owa1person:1/2 2REF- 2-

ose all

Has the child hit anyone?

3.2.2.2

Optionality

Determining the use and function of the initial vowel is further complicated by the fact that its usage is becoming optional in Kagulu. It is used much less often by younger speakers as well as by speakers living in the city, who are influenced by Swahili [G42].25 When asked, informants claimed that “ you use it if you want to, for instance when you want to specify a little extra, but you do not have to” . It is not only in Kagulu that the initial vowel seems to be optional; in Tonga [N15] it appears to have the same undecided function: “ It cannot be assigned a place in the structure of the language, since there are no conditions under which its appearance is obligatory” (Carter 1963:42). Several informants said it was challenging to describe precisely how the initial vowel created a difference in meaning. We can suppose that the function is left behind even though the form is becoming optional.

3.2.3

Function

The function of the initial vowel is somewhat complex. Its appearance may have several functions and these differ in the various Bantu languages. For Kagulu, the usage of the initial vowel seems to be both syntactically and semantically conditioned. Ö. Dahl (pers. comm. 2003) suggests that historically, the pre-prefix might have functioned as a pronoun or definite article in Kagulu. Its function is connected to definiteness and specificity in addition to the syntactic issue of being phrase-initial. These in turn are related to topic. 7RSLF, here, is taken to mean given or presupposed information. One informant corroborates this by stating that “ the initial vowel can be used for things that have been mentioned before” . In many Bantu languages and especially in Ganda [E15] the initial vowel “ particularizes the word to which it is affixed, and its use and omission are governed by the degree of particularization implied” (Ashton et al. 1954:30). This also seems to be the case in Kagulu.

3.2.3.1

Definiteness

It has been claimed that the initial vowel corresponds to the definite article in European languages. That is true only to a limited extent in Kagulu. Example 80 can refer to any woman while the second sentence in example 81 refers to a definite woman. Also, the phrase ‘her children’ is marked for definiteness.

25

In Swahili there is no initial vowel.

67 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.



.XWRODPIHOHNXVZDQX ku- tol -a mu- fele ku- swanu 15- marry -FV 1woman:1/2 15- good Marrying a woman is good.



,PIHOH\DNZDPELNLOD i- mu- fele ya- kuambik -il -a IV- 1woman:1/2 1- PRES- cook -APPL -FV DZDQDJZHFKDNXGLD a- wa- ana -agwe chi- akudiya IV- 2child:1/2 -3SG.POSS 7food:7/8 The woman is cooking for her children.

Unfortunately, the generalization that the initial vowel corresponds to a definite article does not hold true. This is not only the case in Kagulu, but also in several other Bantu languages. It is assumed that definiteness functions the same way in all languages, but that is not necessarily accurate. Bantu languages seem to have a different sense of definiteness and the initial vowels provide clues as to how to interpret this. I believe that it can be interpreted as something similar to our articles, but it is more complex than that. In neither Ganda [E15] nor Kerebe [E24] does definiteness account for the usage of the initial vowel (Hyman and Katamba 1993:218 and Odden 2003). In the two Kagulu examples below, the phrase ‘the children’ is definite, but the initial vowel is only used in the second example: 

1LNXWDQGLNDPDVDVL ni- kutandik -a ma- sasi 1SG- PRES- make (a bed) -FV 6bed:5/6 JDZDQD ga- a wa- ana 6ASSOC 2child:1/2 I prepare the children’s beds.



$ZDQDZDQJ KDNRQJDNXOLOD a- wa- ana wa- ng'ha- kong -a ku- lila IV- 2child:1/2 2- COND- start -FV 15- cry If the (aforesaid) children start to cry ...

Here, the initial vowel has nothing to do with definiteness, but it does relate to topicality; see section 3.2.3.3. In the second phrase, ‘the children’ is used anaphorically, referring to the children the informant introduced in the first phrase.

3.2.3.2

Specificity

Greenberg defines the initial vowel as a QRQJHQHULF DUWLFOH, meaning that “ it is [+specific], that is, it involves an existence assumption and can in general be replaced by ‘a certain’ , e.g. ‘I’ m looking for a certain notebook’ ” (Greenberg 1978:55). Most informants asserted that the initial vowel was used when the noun 68 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

in question was specified. Even so, some alleged that the initial vowel was only used when the noun was phrase-initial (i.e. it is conditioned by syntax). This is not unheard of; in Rundi [D62] for instance, the initial vowel “ marks headness or initiality within the immediate NP” (Hyman and Katamba 1993:216). The line of reasoning that the occurrence of the initial vowel is syntax-related is plausible. The initial segment in Ganda [E15] “ is licensed not by the semantics or pragmatics, but rather by the syntax” (Hyman and Katamba 1993:255). Initiality is, however, not the only explanation. Several informants used the initial vowel phrase-medially as well as phrase-initially. The following example clearly shows how the difference in usage of the initial vowel correlates with a distinction in specificity as well as phrase-initiality. 

%DVLNRZDPXQKXLPXQKX\X\D\HMD\RZDQD Once there was a man; this man had ...

In the first phrase, a man is introduced; then, with the help of the initial vowel, he is referred to again. In example 85, the initial vowel is not phrase-initial, but it does refer to a specific child, i.e. the usage is due to specificity. 

$\XQRLPZDQD a- yu- no i- muIV- 1DEM IV- 1-

ana child:1/2

QLPOHNDXND\D ni- mu- lek -a ukaya 1SG- 1- leave (alone) -FV 14- home:14 As for the child, I have left him/her at home.

So, the function of the initial vowel in Kagulu is partly related to definiteness as well as specificity. What is certain is that LPXQKX with the initial vowel can never mean ‘any person’ , since the initial vowel always refers to something specific. Moreover, what looks like the initial vowel can be put on numerals and even on determiners themselves. Therefore, the concepts of definiteness and specificity are most probably different in Bantu languages, including Kagulu. In addition, the initial vowel can be used on proper names that occur both phrase-initially and phrase-medially, as seen in examples 86-87. 

,.DOLQGHKR\HORQGDLPXNH:DQ\HQGDNZDPGDOD Kalinde then took his wife Wanyenda from the old woman.



+DQLPRQHVDL6DXOLNZD/HPEHOH hani- mu- on -es -a i- Sauli kwa Lembele PAST- 1SG- 1- see -CAUS -FV IV- Sauli to Lembele I presented Sauli to Lembele.

3.2.3.3

Topicality

The presence vs. absence of the initial vowel in Kagulu correlates with topicality. In Ganda [E15], the presence of the initial vowel is licensed both by negation and by focus (or, actually, the lack thereof). The marked form without the initial vowel 69 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

depends on the focus and is often distinguished by a stress pattern. It is hard to tell if it is focus since in Kagulu, constituents are stressed differently. The language does not follow the intonation and stress patterns of, say, English. Therefore, focus cannot be used to resolve the role of the initial vowel in Kagulu. Instead, the initial vowel may be defined as a topic marker used for things that are known or contextually given. The initial vowel is more likely to be used when the nouns are not in the scope of focus, i.e. in statements and unmarked constructions, and once a first introduction is made. The fact that topicality may be morphologically expressed is not unheard of. It may seem exotic but it is common in many languages of the world, such as Japanese (Berger, pers. comm. 2003). Creole languages function similarly. Here, the article rather refers to specificity than definiteness and the concept of specificity is more important than that of definiteness (Gadelii, pers. comm. 2005). The initial vowel can also be said to have an anaphoric function. This is shown in the conversation between two men in their thirties. The first one uses the initial vowel and the other one does not. The man who uses it does so when the word in question is used to refer to something with which they are both familiar. 

$ZDQLNHIRZHQXNHQD a- wa- anike fowa- inuk -e na IV- 2youth:1/2 when- 2wake up -FV conj PGDODKDND\D" mu- dala ha- kaya 1’missus’:1/2 16- house:9/10 How did the kids and wife (OLW old lady) wake up at home?



:DQLNHZHQXNDGLJR\D wa- anike wa- inuk -a digoya 2youth:1/2 2wake up -FV well The kids have woken up well.

Even the first time ZDQLNH ‘kids’ is mentioned, it already carries the initial vowel. This is because the man is referring to the other man’ s children and that is understood by both parties. One would think that the other man would answer using the same initial vowel, but he does not. If this is because it is not necessary to repeat the initial vowel, or if it is because he is younger and is not using the initial vowel at all, is difficult to tell.

3.3

Nominal personal elements

The nominal personal elements in Kagulu can replace nouns. They are independent forms inflected according to noun class. The term stems from Legère (1974:51). As in several Bantu languages, the nominal personal elements are emphatic lexical items, which reinforce the identity of a person or show some contrast between two different persons (example 90). They can also be called SHUVRQDO SURQRXQV or VXEVWLWXWLYHV (Maganga and Schadeberg 1992:86). The forms for the nominal emphatic elements used for persons can be found in Table 12. They are treated as a 70 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

subgroup of classes 1/2 since they generate the agreement of classes 1/2 on modifiers. Another reason for listing the persons together with classes 1/2 is that all other noun classes (see Table 13) take the ACP, while the persons and classes 1/2 take the NCP (example 91). The interrogative invariable QDQL‘who’ also belongs here since it generates the agreement of classes 1/2; see Syntax, section 6.7.2.2. 

$Q\H\HPNXZHQGDZDQDZHQX a- nyeye mu- kuwa- end -a wa- ana wa- enu IV-2PL 2PL- PRES- 2- love -FV 2child:1/2 22PL.POSS As for you (PL), you love your children.



.DPHLLPZHQH\DNXNZLODNXNDQR kamei i- mu- ene ya- kukwil -a ku- kano then IV- 1PRN 1- PRES- climb -FV 17- storage:9/10 Then s/he climbs up to the storage.



7DEOH1RPLQDOSHUVRQDOHOHPHQWVIRUFODVVHV Person 1RPLQDOSHUVRQDO HOHPHQWVXEMHFWIRUP 1SG DQL\H 2SG

DJZH\H

1PL

DVH\H

class 1 LPZHQH 2PL

DQ\H\H

class 2 DZHQH

1RPLQDOSHUVRQDO HOHPHQWREMHFWIRUP QHQH

$JUHHPHQW

PZHQH

  class 1 

Q\HQ\H

class 2

JZHJZH VHVH

ZHQH

There is a segment in the shape of a vowel used on the subject forms. For lack of a better term, it is referred to as LQLWLDOYRZHO [IV]. It must be borne in mind that this segment may be different from the nominal initial vowel discussed in section 3.2. The subject forms of the nominal personal element are used when the referent is the subject of the phrase, as in example 92, and the version without such an element is used on the object forms, as in example 93. 

$ZHQHZHQDPDNDQLVD a- wa- ene wa- in -a ma- kanisa IV- 2PRN 2- have -FV 6church:5/6 They have churches.

71 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.



1LNXZHQJ KDZHQHPXNHND ni- kuwa- ing’h -a wa- ene mu- keka 1SG- PRES- 2- give -FV 2PRN 3mat:3/4 I give them (those people) a mat.

The nominal personal elements may also be shortened and used in dependent constructions in combination with the conjunction QD. The meaning is then ‘with me/her/him’ , etc., e.g. QDJZH\H ‘with you’ or QDVH\H ‘with us’ . What is more, there is a double pronoun construction used for emphasis, as seen in DJZH\HQDJZH ‘you too’ , or example 94. 

$QL\HQDQL a- niye na niye IV- 1SG CONJ 1SG As for me ...

As mentioned earlier, the persons and classes 1/2 take the NCP. All other noun classes take the ACP, as seen in example 95. What is more, the stem for all other classes is always in the shape of HQH. Table 13 presents some examples of the nominal emphatic elements for the other noun classes (except classes 1/2). These are all the forms that are represented in the present data. 

+DNDPZLQJ KDG\HQH hakamu- ing’h -a di- ene PAST- 1.PAST- 1give -FV 5PRN S/he gave him/her it (cl.5).

Note that the initial segment within parentheses is used to differentiate between the subject and object forms; thus, LFKHQH KDFKLMD GLJXOR ‘it came yesterday’ . The same pronoun from class 7 appears in object position when the referent is the object of the phrase, as in KDQLFKRQDFKHQHGX ‘I saw it only’ . 7DEOH1RPLQDOSHUVRQDOHOHPHQWVZLWKWKHVWHPHQH &ODVV 1RPLQDOSHUVRQDOHOHPHQW VXEMHFWDQGREMHFWIRUP 3 ZHQH 4 L \HQH 5 L G\HQH 6 D JHQH 7 L FKHQH 8 L I\HQH 9 L \HQH

72 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

3.4

Noun-to-noun derivation

As mentioned, a singular class and its plural class are often referred to as a JHQGHU: PXQKXZDQKX ‘person, persons’ are classes 1/2 or gender 1/2. However, a noun may take a different NCP from that of the inherent noun class. This recategorization of the noun is then referred to as QRXQWRQRXQ GHULYDWLRQ (Schadeberg 2003a:82). The derivation entails various changes in meaning in the nouns. The types of derivations and their implications are discussed in the following paragraphs: • • •

3.4.1

Productive noun-to-noun derivation, Restricted noun-to-noun derivation, and Locative derivation.

Productive noun-to-noun derivation

This type of derivation involves diminutives and augmentatives. The derivation is productive, meaning that most nouns can be used with the diminutive or augmentative prefixes. It can either involve a sense of size in what is denoted by the noun or an attitude towards the noun. The agreements on all modifiers as well as on the verb follow the recategorized class and not the inherent class. The NCP of classes 7/8 or 5/6 generally replaces the inherent NCP, but sometimes, in order to avoid confusion, the inherent NCP is kept as in GLPXQKX ‘a big person’ . The word GLQKX, without the inherent NCP for class 1, would mean ‘a big thing’ . Classes 9/10 often keep their NCP since the “ identity of the stem-initial C may be obscured by the sound changes of prenasalization” (Schadeberg 2003a:83), as seen in ILQ\HOHVL ‘stars’ . However, in some nouns, like in example 96, the underlying stem-initial C is identified.

'LPLQXWLYHIRUPDWLRQ

The diminutive is formed by adding the NCP of classes 7/8 to the noun stem. It is used for making the object smaller, as seen in example 96. Here, the stem SHQH ‘goat’ 02belongs in class 9 (where it takes the homorganic nasal, thus forming 1 PKHQH ‘goat’ ) but takes the agreement of the diminutive class 7. 

&KLSHQHFKLQRFKLVZDQX chi- pene chi- no chi- swanu 7goat:9/10 7DEM 7beautiful This small goat is beautiful.

Class 8 is the plural used for diminutives, but it can also be used for the uncountables such as PSDQGD ‘beans’ when the need is to specify ‘a small number’ .0SDQGDPNHIX means ‘a few beans’ , but the recategorized ILSDQGD ‘a few

26

For a discussion on the phonological process changing the plosive to a voiceless nasal, see Phonology, section 2.4.

73 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

beans’ can mean the same thing or it may also mean ‘small beans’ – depending on the context.

$XJPHQWDWLYHIRUPDWLRQ

The augmentative is formed by adding the NCP of classes 5/6 to the noun stem. Below are two examples of augmentation in QJKXWZL ‘ear’ from class 9, which becomes augmented when the NCP of class 5 is used in the singular (example 97) and class 6 in the plural (example 98). 

'LNXWZLGLQRGLNXOX di- kutwi di- no di- kulu 5ear:9/10 5DEM 5big This ear is big.



0DNXWZLJDQRPDNXOX ma- kutwi ga- no ma- kulu 6ear:9/10 6DEM 6big These ears are big.

The augmentative derivation does not only comment on the size of the noun, but also on the speaker’ s attitude to the noun. The augmented nouns may be used encouragingly or derogatorily. 'LPXQKX ‘big person’ can refer to a big, fat or even stupid person when it is used derogatorily, or it may be used positively in the sense of ‘a clever person’ . 0DWDPX ‘diseases’ are considered more dangerous than QKDPX ‘diseases’ . &KDQD ‘small child’ is in class 7, while G\DQDmeans ‘a big child’ or ‘a bad child’ , i.e. the character trait can be augmented as well as the child’ s physical size. Note that the initial vowel may be used with recategorized nouns: LFKLEZD ‘small dog’ . 

3.4.2

Restricted noun-to-noun derivation

The restricted derivations incorporate a limited number of stems that can be used in different classes, and that have no inherent class. The most common stem, not just for Kagulu but for most Bantu languages27, is QKX, which in classes 1/2 denotes ‘persons’ , in classes 7/8 ‘things’ , and in the locative class 16 ‘place’ . Names also have this capacity: • • •

Classes 1/20NDJXOX:DNDJXOX ‘Kagulu person, Kagulu persons’ Class7&KLNDJXOX‘the Kagulu language’ Class14 8NDJXOX‘the Kagulu area’

Another versatile stem that is also attested in PB is QMXNL ‘bee:9/10’ and XNL ‘honey:14’ . Other shifts involve applying the NCP of class 14, thus creating an abstract noun or a noun of quality, as illustrated below. 27

Confer the stem in the name itself; EDQWX.

74 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

• • •

Class 1 PZDOLZDOL ‘maiden, maidens’ Class 7 FKDOL‘child’ Class 14 XFKDOL ‘childhood’

• •

Class 1 PXKDL‘witch’ Class 14 XKDL‘witchcraft’

3.4.3

Locative derivation

There is only one locative noun, KDQKX‘place’ , which is in class 16, although this contains the versatile stem QKX and may, therefore, be regarded as derived; see 3.4.2. Classes 17 and 18 contain no nouns at all, but other nouns can take their locative NCPs. The three locative NCPs do not replace the inherent NCPs, but are added ahead of them, resulting in double NCPs as seen in example 99. What is more, all three locative classes display full agreement such as subject and object marking as well as inflection on pronouns. 

.XPXORPRNXILPEDNXJDWL ku- mlomo ku- fimb -a ku- gati 17- 3mouth:3/4 17- swell -FV 17- inside The mouth has swollen inside.

Adjectives, demonstratives and possessives can take either the locative NCP (examples 100 and 102) or the inherent NCP (examples 101 and 103).  0XPXNHNDPXGRGRJLPZLQDLMRND mu- mu- keka mu- dodogi mu- in -a di-joka 18- 3mat:3/4 18- small 18- exist -FV 5- snake:5/6 GLJRQD di- gon -a 5- sleep -FV On the small mat a snake is sleeping.  0XND\DLQRVZDQXPZLQDZDQKX mu- kaya ino swanu mu- in -a wa- nhu 18- house:9/10 9DEM nice 18- exist -FV 2person:1/2 Inside this nice house there are people.  0XND\DXPZDNRPZLQDPJHQL mu- kaya u- mu- ako mu- in -a mu- geni 18- house:9/10 IV- 18- 2SG.POSS 18- exist -FV 1- guest:1/2 There is a guest in your house.

75 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

 0XND\D\DNRPZLQDPJHQL mu- kaya iako mu- in -a mu- geni 18- house:9/10 92SG.POSS 18- exist -FV 1guest:1/2 There is a guest in your house.

Like in the neighbouring Luguru [G35], the verb must take a locative SM, as seen in example 104.  0XPXJXQGDXQRPZLQDPDELNL mu- mu- gunda uno mu- in -a ma- biki 18- 3farm:3/4 3DEM 18- exist -FV 6tree:5/6 On this farm there are trees.

3.5

The constituents of the noun phrase

Kagulu nouns and the noun class system were described in the previous section. We will now take a closer look at the internal structure of the noun phrase [NP] as well as its constituents. How the NP combines with the verb phrase [VP] and other NPs as well as its position in the clause is discussed in the Syntax chapter (see section 6.1). An NP consists of a head noun together with optional pronouns and modifiers such as an adjective, a nominalized verb (i.e. in the infinitive) or an invariable28. Kagulu is head-initial, meaning that the head of a given phrase appears at the beginning of the phrase. So also in the NP, where the head noun usually goes before its modifiers, though the demonstrative may intermittently precede the noun.29 The internal organization of NP constituents, with simple noun heads, can be seen in Table 14. If more than one modifier or determiner appears in the NP, the internal order is that POSS, DEM or NUM usually precedes the ADJ, as can be seen below. This is not unusual for Bantu languages (Rugemalira 2006). The number of modifiers and determiners rarely exceeds two. Note that the initial vowel (see section 3.2) is sometimes used instead of a determiner, thus limiting the number of constituents. It is highly plausible that Kagulu allows for more constituents in the NP as well as more combinations of constituents than the ones listed in Table 14, but these do not occur in the data and are difficult to elicit in a natural way. Note that a noun can modify another noun, as in GLEZDG\DPKHKR ‘cold dog’ . All constituents of the NP agree with the head noun. The verb, in turn, agrees with the subject NP. The two sets of agreement markers (NCPs and ACPs) are listed in Table 8. NCPs are primarily used with adjectives and numerals, while the ACP is used with demonstratives, possessives and the associative marker. Two NPs can constitute a clause on their own (so-called QRQYHUEDOSUHGLFDWLRQ; see Syntax, section 6.4).

28

That is, uninflected words that do not pertain to any word class; see Uninflected parts of speech, section 5. 29 This is done for different discourse effects, as in GLG\RLEXOD ‘that one, the frog’ .

76 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

7DEOH7KHQRXQSKUDVH 13FRQVWLWXHQW N DEM N NUM N POSS N ADJ N ADJ ADJ N POSS ADJ N NUM ADJ N ASSOC N30

N ASSOC31 N N POSS ADJ NUM N NUM ADJ ADV N DEM NUM POSS N ADJ NUM LOC

.DJXOXH[DPSOH GLEZDGLG\D PDEZDPDGDWX GLEZDG\DQJX GLEZDGLNXOX GLEZDGLNXOXGLVZDQX PDEZDJDQJXPDNXOX PDEZDPDGDWXPDNXOX GLEZDG\DPKHKR PDEZDJD0ODPD 3&0 DPDEZD JDQJXPDNXOX PDGDWX PDEZDPDGDWXPDNXOXOXJDQR DPDEZDJDQRPDGDWXJDQJX DQL\H DPDEZDPDNXOXPDGDWXDKD\D

7UDQVODWLRQ ‘that dog’ ‘three dogs’ ‘my dog’ ‘big dog’ ‘big nice dog’ ‘my big dogs’ ‘three big dogs’ ‘cold dog’ (OLW ‘dog of cold’ ) ‘Mlama’ s dogs’ ‘my three big dogs’ ‘three very big dogs’ ‘these three dogs of mine’ ‘(the) three big dogs, over there’

This chapter will now continue to describe each constituent of the noun phrase in detail, starting with the constituents that take the NCP. These enclose adjectives, numerals and quantifiers. They are followed by the constituents that take the ACP as agreement, starting with the associative marker. Pronouns will then be outlined, including possessives, demonstratives and interrogatives. Lastly, other pronominal words are listed and exemplified.

3.5.1

Adjectives

Adjectives constitute the smallest open word class in Kagulu. Like in numerous Bantu languages, there are very few adjectives in Kagulu. The restricted number of adjectives in Kagulu does not mean that speakers cannot articulate states and properties that are expressed by adjectives in, for instance, Germanic languages. Instead, other word categories are used, such as verbs (see example 108) or the associative construction; see Table 14. The adjective comprises a stem and one prefix, i.e. the NCP. A formula for the morphological structure of the adjective is given below: nominal class prefix [NCP] + adjective stem

30

For a further discussion of the associative marker, see section 3.5.4. Here, the associative marker denotes possession. 32 The initial vowel (here in the form of D) is optional in these types of constructions; see section 3.2. 31

77 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

“ Cross-linguistically, the category identified with the label ‘adjective’ varies much more than those labelled ‘noun’ or ‘verb’ ” (Croft 2003:183). Adjectives are defined here as a combination of a stem that takes the NCP of the noun they modify as agreement, and the NCP itself. In other words, the categorization used here follows inflection rather than semantics. Despite this definition, it is not always easy to tell what is an adjective, and what is a noun in an attributive position. The divergence between a noun stem and an adjective stem is that the former can take the NCP of any noun class, while the latter can only take the NCP of the class(es) to which it belongs or the NCP of a class to which it has been recategorized33, as in example 107. See also PXJROL ‘rich’ , in examples 105-106. The adjectives all follow the noun they modify.  PXQKXPXJROL mu- nhu mu- goli 1person:1/2 1rich:1/2 a rich person / the person is rich  1KDQJDQRZLOHPXJROL nhanga ni- uw -ile mu- goli COND 1SG- be -PFV 1rich:1/2 If I were rich ...  FKLJROL chi- goli 7rich:1/2 a small rich person

As stated, there are only a limited number of adjective stems in Kagulu. The restricted number makes each adjective’ s meaning broader, so an adjective such as NXOX ‘big’ is used in a wide variety of ways. See for instance ‘expensive’ , which is rephrased into G L\RPEHLNXOX ‘big price’ .

3.5.1.1

Adjective types

Below is a list of adjective stems in Kagulu following Dixon’ s seven semantic types (Dixon 1982:17). They were chosen because Dixon is an authority on adjectives and because Kagulu fits into the pattern well. Types 1 through 5 (i.e. dimension, physical property, colour, human propensity, and age) are depicted here since only these types are represented in Kagulu. The sixth type, ‘value’ , is expressed by verbs in Kagulu and the seventh type, ‘speed’ , is expressed by adverbs; see section 5.1. Note that only types 1 and 5 have antonym pairs. Though originally created for English, Dixon uses the types to examine other languages as well. When applied to Bantu languages, Dixon notices that several of the types cannot be filled since adjectives are expressed by other means such as abstract

33

See section 3.4 for a discussion on noun-to-noun derivation.

78 Preprint. For reference, see Petzell, Malin. 2008. The Kagulu language of Tanzania: Grammar, texts and vocabulary. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

nouns or verbs (Dixon 1982:37). The list may not be exhaustive for Kagulu. Even so, it contains all the adjectives in my data.

'L[RQ¶VVHPDQWLFW\SHV 1. ',0(16,21(contains antonym pairs) 34 -GRGRGRGRJL ‘small’ 35 -NXOX ‘big’ -JXKL ‘short’ WDOL ‘tall’ 36 VLOL ‘narrow’ JDODPX ‘wide’ QHQH ‘fat’ - 37  3+