We investigate the reduced noun class system in Emai and its transformation from a non-reduced system. Of Edoid and West Benue Congo stock, Emai manifests 100 plus nouns that inflect by prefix relative to thousands that do not. Inflected stems reveal eleven declension sets, with one to thirty members in each set and each set defined by a prefix pair that cumulates form class and number. Rather than focus on each declension set, we assess macro-declensions, combinations of multiple prefix pairs with a common vowel form in the plural. Noun stems in two macro-declensions tend to denote kinship, unlike East Benue Congo Bantu where kin are uniformly allocated to a single declension. Distribution of kinship stems is semantically non-arbitrary since each macro-declension correlates with either consanguine or affine relations. Most remaining stems tend to occur in a declension set for non-kin that includes inanimates and non-domesticated animates. We conclude with a brief discussion of possible factors that may have motivated system reduction to the extant type from a presumed declensional matrix not unlike Benue Congo Bantu.
This paper presents the first description and analysis of the verbal tonology of Malawian Nyiha. While it has maintained the Proto Bantu vowel length distinction, it has completely lost the tonal contrast on verb roots. Surface tonal patterns are largely determined by the assignment of Melodic High tones, which are linked to either the antepenult, penult or final TBU, based on multiple factors, including tense/aspect/ mood, polarity, the presence of an object marker, and the type of subject marker. Two sets of verbs are examined where the location of the Melodic High surfaces one TBU to the right of the expected location. We show this can be straightforwardly accounted for by 1) assuming surface glides are derived from underlying vowels, and 2) the short causative, when present, is often placed in multiple locations in the verb, but ultimately does not surface after the /-ag/ inflectional suffix.
In this article, we provide a preliminary account of the phonology, morphology and main clause syntax of Kp & aacute;l & agrave;, a nearly undocumented, small-scale Mundu-Baka language spoken by nearly 14,000 people southeast of Libenge, in the Sud Ubangi province, in northwesternDemocratic Republic of Congo. Mundu-Baka is alanguage family recently confirmed by historical-comparative work and one of the subgroups within Ubangi, a geographic label uniting language groups of possible Niger-Congo affiliation whose internal genealogical relations are not well understoood. This first exploration reveals several typologically/areally relevant features of Kp & aacute;l & agrave;, including: (i) a phonotactically-constrained syncopation process which creates complex syllable onsets; (ii) an alienability split visible in two formally distinct sets of independent possessive pronouns; (iii) a direct-indirect object alignment system with two formally distinct sets of pronouns for direct and indirect object relations; and (iv) a tense/aspect-based split in the shape of clause-final negation markers.
This article examines a case of contact between Bantu languages, specifically between subgroups of a "Congo Basin" branch and the Lega subgroup, in the region between Kisangani and Lowa (DRC). The analysis of a corpus of basic and cultural vocabulary in six languages of the region, Mokp & aacute;, Eny & aacute;, Metoko, Lengola, Komo and Mbole, allows us to draw up a lexical stratigraphy. Between the ancient stratum consisting of lexemes inherited from Proto-Bantu and the recent strata featuring borrowings from neighboring languages and lingua francas, primarily cultural words, two strata point to two phases of older contact, notably the contact between the ancestors of the Lega languages and the Upper Congo languages, and a slightly more recent one between the ancestor of the Mokp & aacute;, Eny & aacute;, and Metoko branch and the Mbole, possibly including its sister languages (Lokele, Foma). This discovery suggests a more eastern presence of Upper Congo languages in the past. Based on linguistic evidence, the article provides an overview of interethnic contacts related to the history of settlement and languages in the lower Lualaba River basin.
This paper deals with sequentiality in non motion affirmative verb forms in declarative and injunctive moods in Nas epsilon [A62A], a Bantu language spoken in Cameroon. Through a corpus-based analysis of narrative and procedural texts, this research aims to identify the sequential tenses in Noas6E, their semantic values, and contextual distributions. The findings reveal that sequentiality marker distribution in Noas6E is conditioned by the anchoring time of the sequential construction, rather than subject coreference as in many Bantu languages. Four sequential tenses have been identified, including two dedicated (NARp and NARNp) and two non-dedicated tenses expressing sequentiality in their secondary function (p1 and sBJ). Specifically, NARp is compatible with p4 and p3; p1 with p2 and p1; NARNp with prs, F2, and F3; and sbj with imp (plural), F1, and sbj. NARNp and sBJ surface as the verbal stem, allowing an initial high tone on the vowel-initial stem. Whereas NARp, marked by the morpheme a-, is the only sequential tense that, in cases of absolute subject reference, permits the simultaneous presence of both the nominal subject constituent and pronominal subject index in the same clause-a structure prohibited in all other Noas6E constructions.
