Journal of the Linguistics Association of Southern African Development Community Universities

Inside cover

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Editorial Board

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Guidelines to Authors

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The Morphophonolgy of the Past Tense in Ciyaawo

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While time is a philosophical category that humans use to partition the succession of units such as hours, days, weeks, years, centuries, etc., tense is the language resource that humans use to express time reference. According to their culture, humans interpret the time phenomenon in a diversity of ways which are reflected in linguistic expression of time. This diversity explains why, according to Comrie (1985) there are languages which have three basic tenses (past, present and future), other languages have one tense (past) and the other tenses are said to be not tense (non-past). Still other languages distinguish different types of past and future in such a way that, having the tense corresponding to the present time, or the time of speech, as the reference tense, and the other tenses as those expressing events which happen before the present (past) or happen after the present (future), may distinguish recent past from remote past, or near future from distant future. In agglutinative languages, all these tense distinctions are marked in different ways in the verb structure be it segmentally or suprasegmentally.

Based on Lexical Phonology and Morphology (Kiparsky 1982, 1985, Mohanan 1982, and others), the present paper aims at describing the morphophonology of the past tense in Ciyaawo, a Bantu (P21 in Guthrie 1967-71’s classification) language spoken mainly in Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania.

The paper is organized as follows. After the introduction, it presents the literature review on the topic including the theoretical frameworks adopted; then it describes the past tense markers and the ways they are affixed to the verbs of different root structures. Lastly, it presents the final remarks.

A Descriptive Analysis of Chibrazi, the Urban Contact Vernacular Language of Malawi − a Focus on the Lexicon and Semantic

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This paper discusses what Chibrazi is. The paper uses some of the findings of a study that provides a basic descriptive analysis of the emerging new contact language with the aim of demonstrating that there is a new mixed language that is emerging within Malawi. The study was designed as a mixed method research that was both theoretical and empirical in nature. Data was collected through a questionnaire, interviews, observation, and literature review. The linguistic data that is presented in the paper was analysed through personal intuition of Chibrazi to illustrate the lexical shift from Malawian languages that is happening through Chibrazi.

Chegwapong: The Risk beyond Bilingualism

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Intelligibility between Chegwapong and other languages (e.g. Sebirwa) or dialects of Setswana (such as Sengwato and Setawana) remains an undeniable fact due to genetic relations between these speech forms. What raised our eyebrows is the ETHNOLOGUE’s description of Chegwapong as a vigorous (i.e. vibrant) language. We went out for a much more recent fieldwork to collect data that led to the publication of An Anthology of Chegwapong Folktales. Our three-member research team included two fluent Setswana speakers.

Contrary to the afore-mentioned inadvertent description, Chegwapong is not only undergoing the process of change, its life too is threatened by the dwindling number of its speakers. The public image of this language is generally negative; people tend to see it derogatively as a mispronounced variety of Setswana whereas it is in reality an offshoot of Sepedi/Sesotho sa Leboa (i.e. Northern Sotho, one of the Bantu languages spoken in the Republic of South Africa).

Our account in this paper is backed by our unanimous field observation that most people in the eight Tswapong villages that we were recommended to investigate based on the claim that they were the stronghold of Chegwapong turned out to be people who rather spoke Setswana with a Chegwapong accent assuming that they were speaking Chegwapong.

Should we therefore conclude that Chegwapong is nothing but a mispronounced form of Setswana? This paper attempts to answer this question with supporting evidence collected during our fieldwork.

The Syntax-Phonology Interface and Phrasing in Cisukwa, Cindali and Cilambya Relative Prosodic Clauses

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This paper is a descriptive analysis of the prosodic structure of relative clauses in relation to various syntactic structures in Cindali, Cisukwa and Cilambya - a cluster of related varieties spoken in Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia. The analysis in this paper is for the varieties spoken in Northern Malawi particularly in Chitipa district. The paper sought to answer the following questions: i) What is the prosodic structure of relative clauses of Cisukwa, Cindali and Cilambya? ii) What is the relationship between phonological phrasing of relative clauses and syntax.

The paper argues that the prosodic phrasing of Cisukwa, Cindali and Cilambya is determined by syntactic structure. This is similar to what has been observed in several other Bantu languages. The paper notes that restrictive clauses are right-bounded by a prosodic break and XPs serving as heads of relative clauses, whether as subjects, objects (both direct and indirect), or other adjuncts are normally phrased together with the relative clause.

More Evidence of Non-Voice Bundling in Nyungwe

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While Marantz (1984) was the first to present the idea supporting the assumption that external arguments are not true arguments of their verbs, as has widely been discussed in the literature (Grimshaw 1990, Parsons 1990, Koopman & Sportiche 1991, Pylkkänen 1999, for example), it was Kratzer (1996) who first developed a theory about how Marantz’s (1984) proposal can be executed in syntax.

The aim of the present paper is to discuss non-Voice bundling parameter as proposed by Pylkkänen (2008) using data from Nyungwe, a Bantu language spoken by 457.290 people in two Mozambican provinces, namely, Tete and Manica, (Sitoe and Ngunga 2000).

The study suggests that in Nyungwe Voice° and Cause° are two functional heads projected independently.

The paper is organized in four sections as follows. Section 1. Introduction; Section 2. Pylkkänen’s (2002, 2008) proposal; Section 3. Discussion of Nyungwe data; Section 4. Conclusions of the study.

Language and Broad-Based Socio-Economic Development in Africa: Authenticity and Scale.

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The place of one’s first language in contributing towards authentic scholarship cannot be over-emphasised as attested to by countless studies in this area[1]. Africa has numerous first languages and while this diversity is colourful and must be celebrated and preserved, on its own it is not really working for Africans. In “communication-for-development” circles scale matters – a language is as useful, important and effective as a tool for development as the number of people who use it. The question that arises is: how can we scale up these indigenous languages so that they work for broad-based development on the continent?

A Lexicostatistical Study: Phonological Similarity between American and Malawi Sign Languages

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This pilot study compared the relationship between American Sign Language (ASL) and the signed language of the deaf community of Malawi. Additionally, this study considered the mutual intelligibility between the two languages. A video recording of signed words, stories, and scriptures being used by children and teachers at the School for the Deaf in the northern region of Malawi was used as a beginning lexical database for this study. From the video, a list of 50 words were placed on a list for comparison and given to deaf signers for analysis. Words were analyzed for similarity on four domains of phonology (hand shape (HS), location (LOC), palm orientation (PO), and movement (MOV)) and then coded. A modified second sample of 50 words was then obtained using the Swadesh list and both lists were then compared. Using the original list, there were similarities between the two languages 39.2% of the time overall. Using the Swadesh list, similarities existed only 32% of the time. In both cases, results from the current study appear to strongly support that Malawian sign language is unique and unintelligible from ASL, despite the potential influence from users of ASL on the signed language of Malawi.

The Setswana Independent Pronoun, an Integral Constituent or a Resumptive Appendage to Lexical NP Topic?

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This paper examines the pronoun occurring in verb complex in Setswana declarative sentences, showing their referential agreement with externally occurring topic noun phrases. It has been found out that this pronoun has the same distribution as a lexical object noun phrase, and thus giving the impression that it is the grammatical subject of the sentence. Similarly, when the pronoun occurs in preverbal position, there is a tendency for it to be viewed as a canonical subject pronoun. The paper argues that the pronoun in this position is an independent resumptive pronoun which agrees with its referent which is a Lexical topic NP.

African Languages and Community Participation in Environmental Management

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Environmental management debates have focused much on finding solutions to the ecological challenges facing the planet without regard for the language that can be used in fostering the dialogue. The use of African languages has often been ignored under the guise that they do not adequately represent the environmental phenomenon. This paper argues that the appropriate use of an African language such as Chichewa in environmental management discourse can enhance participation of local communities in the conservation exercise. Therefore, the paper reports that the appropriateness of the Chichewa language used in environmental messages is not considered as literally translated technical terms are used which are not in sync with the everyday language use of local communities. The paper therefore concludes that much as the African language is used in the information dissemination, the appropriate form is crucial if local communities are to actively participate in the environmental management.