Accounting for Post-Verbal Affixes on the Kĩmwĩmbĩ Verb
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Date
2016
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Research on Humanities and Social Sciences
Abstract
Bantu languages are known to cluster affixes on the verb root, some before the root and others after the verb root.
Each of these affixes carries some meaning that contributes to the final meaning of the verb. This raises the
question as to whether there are any principles that guide these combinations, and whether these affixes occur in
any particular order. This paper is an account of all the suffixes that may occur on the Kĩmwĩmbĩ verb, as well as
the order in which they occur, starting with the plugs that are idiomatic with the root and on outwards to the affix
that occurs farthest from the root. The semantic import of these morphemes has also been dwelt upon as most of
them are valency-changing. The paper also presents the variations in their occurrences, the associated
phonological and syntactic processes as well as the constraints surrounding their occurrences. The population for
the study was all Kĩmwĩmbĩ verbs containing post- verbal affixes and data for the study was obtained from
respondents from Tharaka-Nithi sub-county, Kenya, who are competent speakers of Kĩmwĩmbĩ and who were
purposively sampled. The instrument of data collection was a structure generation exercise based on Kĩmwĩmbĩ
verbs. Data was also gathered using introspective reports. Researcher-generated structures were also
instrumental in informing the analysis. This being a qualitative and descriptive study, data was analyzed in terms
of words, phrases and sentences and rules were developed and discussed to account for the affix manifestation
on the verbs. The data has been presented in the light of the Principles and Parameters theory. The results
demonstrate that suffix occurrence on the agglutinated verb is orderly relative to the first affix to occur after the
root. This study contributes new data for the continuing analysis of Kĩmwĩmbĩ, a language that is yet to be fully
analyzed. It also contributes to the linguistic theory by advancing knowledge on the morphology of Bantu verbs
and the typology of African languages
Description
Research article
Keywords
Agglutinated, Morphemes, Reading, Argument
Citation
Mũriũngi, A. K. P. Accounting for Post-Verbal Affixes on the Kĩmwĩmbĩ Verb.