The prefix ni- in Kuloonaay: grammaticalization pathways in a
three-morpheme system
By
David C. Lowry
August 2015
Word Count: 19,719
Presented as part of the requirement of the MA Degree in Field Linguistics, Centre for Linguistics, Translation & Literacy, Redcliffe College.
DECLARATION
This dissertation is the product of my own work. I declare also that the dissertation is available for photocopying, reference purposes and Inter-Library Loan.
David Christopher Lowry
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ABSTRACT
Title: The prefix ni- in Kuloonaay: grammaticalization pathways in a three-
morpheme system.
Author: David C. Lowry
Date: August 2015
The prefix ni- is the most common particle in the verbal system of Jola Kuloonaay, an Atlantic language of Senegal and The Gambia. Its complex distribution has made it difficult to classify, and a variety of labels have been proposed in the literature. Other authors writing on Kuloonaay and on related Jola languages have described this prefix in terms of a single morpheme whose distribution follows an eclectic list of rules for which the synchronic motivation is not obvious. An alternative approach, presented here, is to describe the ni- prefix in terms of three distinct morphemes, each following a simple set of rules within a restricted domain.
This study explores the three-morpheme hypothesis from both a synchronic and a diachronic perspective. At a synchronic level, a small corpus of narrative texts is used to verify that the model proposed corresponds to the behaviour of ni- in natural text. At a diachronic level, data from a selection of other Jola languages is drawn upon in order to gain insight into the grammaticalization pathways by which the three morpheme ni- system may have evolved.
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PREFACE
I first had the privilege of working with the Kuloonaay language in 2010 – 2011, when I was invited to join my SIL colleagues Pascal and Janet Frésard in The
Gambia for a year, to carry out a study of narrative discourse. Over the course of that year, I got to know many wonderful ‘Kaloon’ people, who were tremendous fun to work with and hugely generous with their time in welcoming me and helping me to understand their language.
Three years later, in 2014, I was invited back by Pascal and Janet to work again with the Kuloonaay language, this time in the role of a linguist/exegete for the translation of Luke’s gospel. This has been a similarly enjoyable task, and again a great privilege to work with some outstanding and motivated people.
During my time of working with the language, I have come up against certain common morphemes whose behaviour, at first sight, is both intriguing and baffling, and none more so than the prefix ni-. The aim of this study is to carry out a thorough investigation of this prefix, both at a synchronic and a diachronic level, to understand not only how it works in current Kuloonaay, but also how it has evolved.
I have a long list of Kaloon people to thank for their contribution in various ways. I am grateful to all those who have supplied the 15 narrative texts, collected during my stint in The Gambia, that make up the corpus necessary for this work. I am especially grateful for the time and patience of Joseph Sambou, Ekiyen Jarju, Remy
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Sambou, Matthias George-Jatta and Eric Diatta, all of whom have been prepared to be interrogated at length as I have tried to gain insights into how their language works.
I am grateful for the academic supervision of my SIL colleagues Colin Mills, Tim
Gaved and Maik Gibson, and for all the ways they have helped me to develop and to sharpen my linguistic competence through the exercise of writing this dissertation.
A big thank you in particular needs to go to my delightful and fun Northern Irish wife,
Ruthie. Her support, patience, warmth and general loveliness have been a huge blessing during long hours of writing, as has her careful proofreading of this work.
Finally, I give thanks to God for the enormous privilege not only of existing in His astonishingly glorious universe, but also of getting to spend my time researching aspects of how it works. It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings (Proverbs 25:2, NIV). Every new insight I gain into the minutiae of morphosyntax and language change in Kuloonaay reminds me of the indescribable brilliance of the eternal mind that first conceived all such linguistic systems, and that perfectly understands every detail.
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CONTENTS
Chapter Page
DECLARATION ...... 2
ABSTRACT ...... 3
PREFACE...... 4
LIST OF TABLES ...... 7
LIST OF FIGURES ...... 8
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ...... 9
CHAPTER 1 Introduction ...... 11
CHAPTER 2 Theoretical background and methodology ...... 16
CHAPTER 3 Morphophonemic considerations...... 33
CHAPTER 4 Ni- main ...... 46
CHAPTER 5 Ni- secondary ...... 57
CHAPTER 6 Ni- habitual ...... 69
CHAPTER 7 Distinguishing between the three ni- morphemes ...... 78
CHAPTER 8 Conclusions ...... 87
BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 93
APPENDIX A: Text corpus summary ...... 99
APPENDIX B: Example Kuloonaay text ...... 101
APPENDIX C: Sample consent form ...... 106
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LIST OF TABLES
Table Page
Table I: Verbal agreement markers for noun classes ...... 22
Table II: Verbal agreement markers for human subjects ...... 22
Table III: TAM categories ...... 24
Table IV: Morphological and syntactic modifications that accompany different organizations of the utterance ...... 27
Table V: Definition of main clause and secondary clause ...... 29
Table VI: Feature chart for Kuloonaay consonants ...... 34
Table VII: Possibilities for the initial phoneme of the morpheme to which ni- attaches
...... 36
Table VIII: Morphophonemic rules for ni- ...... 37
Table IX: Range of possible pronunciations for niŋ plus host noun ...... 40
Table X: The ‘two-series’ approach to ni- in Kuloonaay ...... 43
Table XI: Different ni- secondary verb types ...... 62
Table XII: Morphophonemic behaviour of ni- habitual for 3s and C2s ...... 70
Table XIII: -ē suffixes ...... 80
Table XIV: Word-level distinctive features for different ni- verbs ...... 82
Table XV: Statistical count for ni- in the text corpus ...... 86
Table XVI: Summary of the three ni- morphemes ...... 88
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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure Page
Figure 1: Map of the Kaloon region of Senegal ...... 12
Figure 2: Tree diagram showing the relationship between different Jola varieties ...14
Figure 3: A hypothesis for the evolution of ni- forms ...... 42
Figure 4: Possible evolution of ni- secondary in subject-focus and object-focus clauses ...... 66
Figure 5: Summary of suggested grammaticalization pathways for the three ni- morphemes ...... 89
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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
1s, 2s, 3s 1st, 2nd, 3rd person singular
1p, 2p, 3p 1st, 2nd, 3rd person plural
1d, 1pe, 1pi 1st person dual, 1st person plural exclusive, 1st person plural
inclusive
AGR Agreement marker
ART Article (definite)
ATR Advanced tongue root
C, CL Noun classifier (‘C’ is used in conjunction with a noun-class number,
‘CL’ is used elsewhere).
COP Copular
DEM Demonstrative
DIR Directional suffix. For a verb of motion, this reverses the direction of
the verb. For a punctual action, this indicates that the action takes
place elsewhere (see Wilkinson and Berndt, 2011, §2.4.4.2).
FUT Future tense
HAB Habitual aspect
IMPRS Impersonal
INDF Indefinite
INF Infinitive
IRR Irrealis
NEG Negative niH- ni- habitual
9 niM- ni- main niS- ni- secondary
PASS Passive
PFV Perfective
POSS Possessive
PREP Preposition
PRO Pronoun
PROH Prohibitive
Q Question particle
RDB Verbal reduplication morpheme
REFL Reflexive
REL Relativizer/relative pronoun
TAM Tense, aspect and modality
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CHAPTER 1 Introduction
Introduction
The aim of this dissertation is to attempt a systematic analysis of the verbal prefix ni- in Kuloonaay from both a synchronic and a diachronic perspective. Kuloonaay is an
Atlantic language of Senegal and The Gambia (Lewis et al., 2015) and is one of more than 20 dialects that make up the Jola language family (Barry, 1987). Many if not all Jola languages have a prefix which corresponds to ni- in Kuloonaay, the function of which is difficult to define. In Kuloonaay, ni- has been categorized as a narrative prefix (Sambou, 2007), and ‘a marker that signals the displacement of the object before the predicate’ (Galvagny, 1984). In other Jola languages, the corresponding particle has been labelled as a marker of realis as opposed to irrealis mode (Sagna, 2008, p. 144), and a discourse-level developmental morpheme
(Payne, 1992, p. 60). Still other authors have opted not to give this prefix a label at all, but rather to describe its distribution in terms of a somewhat eclectic list of rules
(e.g. Berndt, 2000, p. 46-47; Wilkinson and Berndt, 2011, §2.2.1-2.2.2).
This chapter gives some background to the Kuloonaay language, and summarizes the description of the ni- prefix by other authors. It then outlines the aims and research questions that structure the dissertation.
Kuloonaay has around 16,000 speakers (Frésard and Frésard, 2007a), who live mainly in the region shown in Figure 1. In their own language, members of the people group who speak Kuloonaay are called Kaloon (plural) or Aloon (singular).
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T h e C a s a m a n c e
- Kaloon area of origin
- Region where most Kaloon live today
Figure 1: Map of the Kaloon region of Senegal (Map source: Google maps. Data
source: Frésard and Frésard, 2007a)
Statistically, ni- is by far the most common particle in the Kuloonaay verbal system.
In the corpus of texts used here, 508 out of a total of 1055 conjugated verbs carry ni-: a proportion of 48%. In spite of this, relatively little has so far been written on ni- in Kuloonaay. Sambou (2007) and Wilkinson and Berndt (2011) both comment on ni- as part of their descriptive work on Kuloonaay morphosyntax, but neither has attempted a systematic study. Galvagny (1984) treats the distribution of ni- in argument-focus clauses, but does not comment on its role in other clause types.
The first aim of this dissertation is to present a coherent model to describe the synchronic behaviour of ni- in current Kuloonaay. Whereas existing studies in Jola languages have tended to treat ni- as a single morpheme, a distinguishing feature of this dissertation is that it proposes as a starting point three different ni- morphemes,
12 each of which is described in turn. The question of whether they are better considered as homonyms or as polysemies of a single morpheme is then discussed.
The second aim of this dissertation concerns the diachronic evolution of the ni- system. Drawing upon insights from current research in grammaticalization, pathways or ‘clines’ are suggested that may have led to the current distribution of ni-. Given that no written tradition exists in any of the Jola languages (the majority of which have only begun to be written down in the last few decades) there are none of the historical records that are the ideal for this kind of study (Narrog and Heine,
2011, p. 15). However, the Jola language cluster contains a rich diversity of closely related dialects, several of which have been studied in some detail. Barry (1987) lists 21 different dialects of Jola with varying levels of lexical similarity and mutual comprehensibility. Aside from the fact that all of these languages have evolved from a common ancestor, it has also been observed that closely related languages very often exhibit similar trends in grammaticalization (e.g. Lamiroy and De Mulder,
2011), and so the study of the behaviour of ni- in existing synchronic systems of other Jola languages may be expected to yield valuable insights into other points on the grammaticalization cline for ni- in Kuloonaay.
To this end, the following studies are drawn upon in this research: Hopkins (1995) and Sapir (1965) on Jola Fonyi; Sagna (2008), Bassène (2007) and Berndt (2000) on Jola Banjal; Payne (1992) on Jola Kwatay and Watson (forthcoming) on Jola
Kujireray. Figure 2 shows the classification of Lewis et al. (2015) for the principal
Jola dialects, with those under consideration in this dissertation shown in bold type.
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Jola
Jola proper Bayot
Jola Central Karon-Mlomp
Gusilay Her-Ejamat Jola- Jola- Kuloonaay Mlomp Kwatay Fonyi Kasa
Banjal Gusilay Jola- Kerak Felupe
Banjal Kujireray
Figure 2: Tree diagram showing the relationship between different Jola varieties
(source: Lewis et al., 2015)
Narrog and Heine (2011, p. 11) state that ‘when it comes to finding answers to the question of why languages are structured the way they are, grammaticalization studies provide insights that are indispensable for providing a satisfactory explanation.’ This dissertation aims to apply this principle in practice, to determine whether ni-, which has proved difficult to classify at a purely synchronic level, may be more satisfactorily explained by reference to its diachronic evolution.
The principal research questions addressed here are as follows:
1. What is the synchronic behaviour of the prefix/proclitic ni- in
Kuloonaay?
2. To what extent is it possible to trace out processes of
grammaticalization that explain the origin of the different roles of
ni-?
3. Are the different functions of ni- better explained in terms of a set
of distinct homonyms, or can they be adequately described as
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polysemies of a single morpheme, as in existing grammars of
Kuloonaay?
The dissertation is structured as follows: first, Chapter 2 outlines the theoretical background and methodology and gives details of the corpus of texts on which this study is based. Chapter 3 explores some morphophonemic considerations, briefly surveying how other Jola studies have described ni- at a morphophonemic level, before providing a justification for the approach taken here. It also outlines a possible morphologization pathway that may have led to the current state of affairs in Kuloonaay. Chapters 4, 5 and 6 provide a more detailed analysis of ni-. These three chapters each take one of the three ni- morphemes (here termed ni- main, ni- secondary and ni- habitual), and give a detailed description of the synchronic system, providing evidence from the text corpus. Each chapter then surveys some of the available evidence for the corresponding situation in other Jola languages, before suggesting possible grammaticalization clines. Chapter 7 addresses issues of morphological neutralization and how to distinguish between the three ni- morphemes, before providing a statistical count that results from the application of these principles to the text corpus. Finally, Chapter 8 offers some global conclusions, and proposes answers to the research questions stated above.
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CHAPTER 2 Theoretical background and methodology
Theoretical background and methodology
This chapter sets out in more detail the relevant theoretical background and methodology. Section 2.1 gives the theoretical frameworks that are drawn upon in the synchronic and diachronic aspects of this study, with a particular focus on grammaticalization. Section 2.2 sketches certain aspects of Kuloonaay morphosyntax that are of particular relevance to the study of ni-. Finally, Section 2.3 deals with some methodological concerns, particularly with reference to the text corpus used for this study.
2.1. The synchronic and diachronic aspects of this study
The synchronic and diachronic elements of this study correspond respectively to what Dryer (2006, p. 207) calls a ‘descriptive’ theory and an ‘explanatory’ theory.
Dryer (2006, p. 208) notes that linguists since Chomsky, whether following a generative or a functionalist approach, have tended to assume that an explanatory theory of language should be sufficient also to serve as a descriptive theory for individual languages. He helpfully challenges this notion, pointing out that a diachronic explanation of how certain morphemes arose in a language, however correct or insightful, does not take away the need for a synchronic description of that language (2006, p. 215).
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For this reason, this dissertation draws upon two different theoretical frameworks.
The synchronic (descriptive) part is an exercise in ‘basic linguistic theory’
(Section 2.1.1), while the diachronic (explanatory) part makes use of the concept of
‘grammaticalization’ (Section 2.1.2).
2.1.1. The synchronic aspect: basic linguistic theory
The term ‘basic linguistic theory’ (Dryer, 2006; Dixon, 2009) was coined to describe the framework employed by the majority of recent descriptive work, where the approach shows ‘a high degree of commonality’ (Dryer, 2006, p. 212), even though many working in this field would describe their work as ‘atheoretical’ or ‘theoretically eclectic’. A hallmark of basic linguistic theory is that it is motivated by ‘the need to describe each language in its own terms, rather than imposing on individual languages concepts whose primary motivation comes from other languages’ (Dryer,
2001).
Jola languages have already been the subject of a great deal of linguistic work, the vast majority of which may be described as following basic linguistic theory.
Following in this tradition, and wanting to benefit as far as possible from useful insights and terminology that have developed in Jola language studies, this dissertation is primarily an exercise in basic linguistic theory, and therefore in the synchronic study of Kuloonaay. The main motivation for incorporating insights from research in diachronic grammaticalization is to resolve classification problems pertaining to a set of morphemes (ni-) whose distribution seems to be synchronically unmotivated and hence hard to classify at a synchronic level.
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2.1.2. The diachronic aspect: grammaticalization
Recent literature on grammaticalization is substantial, and involves ‘a wide range of approaches and theoretical orientations’ (Narrog and Heine, 2011, p. 2). The aim of this section is simply to outline key concepts that are pertinent to the study of ni-.
More specific details are mentioned later, as they become relevant.
Narrog and Heine (2011, p. 3) note that grammaticalization is difficult to define, given the very wide diversity of different models proposed in the literature. They state, however, that ‘when controversies arise,’ the ‘classic definition’ given by
Kuryłowicz is still widely accepted:
Grammaticalization consists in the increase of the range of a morpheme
advancing from a lexical to a grammatical or from a less grammatical to a more
grammatical status, e.g. from a derivative formant to an inflectional one.
(Kuryłowicz, 1975 [1965], p. 52)
Among the various phenomena that have been associated with grammaticalization, the following are relevant to the discussion of ni-:
Tightening of the system of grammatical rules and loss of freedom on the
part of the speaker (Haspelmath 1998, p. 318).
Gain in frequency (‘the more frequently a form occurs in texts, the more
grammatical it is assumed to be’, Hopper and Traugott, 1993, p. 103).
Phonological reduction and coalescence of multiple morphemes into one
(Haspelmath, 2011).
‘Bleaching’: the loss of semantic content or pragmatic force of an expression
(Hopper and Traugott, 1993, p. 87).
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There is a great deal of discussion in current literature as to exactly what processes or mechanisms give rise to grammaticalization. Many authors consider the two most important mechanisms within grammaticalization to be ‘reanalysis’ and
‘analogy/extension’ (Hopper and Traugott, 1993, pp. 40-62). Reanalysis involves a change in underlying structure (Langacker, 1977, p. 58), and is often considered to take place as a new generation of language learners acquire the language from their parents; analogy/extension is the process whereby ‘patterns undergo limited adjustments that assimilate them to clearly related patterns’ (Haspelmath, 1998, p.
327). Much debate has centred around the interplay of these two mechanisms, and the question of which of the two is primary (e.g. De Vogelaer, 2010; Fischer, 2010).
Others, however, consider ‘pure’ grammaticalization to be a different process to both reanalysis and analogy (Haspelmath, 1998), and instead explain it in terms of
‘repetition’ (Bybee, 2006; see also Traugott, 2011, p. 28). This is the process where an expression proves to be ‘particularly useful in many contexts’ (Haspelmath, 1998, p. 322) and so gains a high frequency of use, which has been hypothesized to lead directly to the phenomena listed above (Bybee, 2003, cited in Traugott, 2011, p. 28).
While this dissertation makes mention of these concepts, a full discussion of exactly what mechanisms have influenced the development of ni- is beyond the scope of this study.
2.2. Relevant linguistic background to Kuloonaay
The aim of this section is to give a brief sketch of three points of Kuloonaay morphosyntax that are relevant to this dissertation. Section 2.2.1 describes the prefixes for person/noun class agreement. These are the prefixes to which the ni- prefix itself attaches and so are relevant to a morphophonemic discussion of ni- (see
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Chapter 3). Section 2.2.2 gives a brief sketch of the system for TAM in Kuloonaay.
Building upon this, Section 2.2.3 introduces and justifies a distinction in clause-types that is fundamental for understanding the distribution and respective roles of the three different ni- morphemes proposed here.
2.2.1. Person/noun class agreement
The three ni- morphemes analysed here are all verbal prefixes that attach to finite verbs. In the Kuloonaay verbal system, every finite verb must carry an agreement- marking prefix corresponding to either person or noun class, to which ni-, if applicable, must in turn be attached. The initial phoneme of the morpheme to which ni- attaches therefore depends on the agreement marker rather than on the verb root. Given that ni- is subject to a high degree of allomorphic variation that depends entirely on this initial phoneme, the system for person and noun class agreement is directly relevant to the morphophonemic rules governing the form of ni-. This section outlines the system for verbal agreement marking; Section 3.1 gives the corresponding allomorphs of ni-.
Nouns in Kuloonaay are organized into noun classes, membership of which is indicated by a noun-class prefix. These prefixes, with a few exceptions (see Table I below), have the form C- before a vowel and CV- before a consonant, where C is a
‘characteristic letter’ for the noun class, and V is realized by either /i/ or /u/ depending whether the vowel in the first root syllable is high or low (i.e. following +/- high vowel harmony). As well as marking the noun itself, this prefix also functions as an agreement marker on the definite article, on any verbs of which it is the subject, and on certain other constituents such as adjectives and relativizers.
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In (1), pu-lukuleen (‘animals’) belongs to the noun class whose characteristic letter is p, so this p is also present in pa (‘the’), piti (‘of’) and impipaakool (‘they met’). The noun saatee (‘village’) is a loan word which does not itself carry a classifier, but is by default (as for all borrowed words) a member of the noun class whose characteristic letter is y,1 which marks the accompanying article.
(1) pu-lukuleen p-a pi-ti saatee y-a im-pi-paakool
CL-animal CL-ART CL-of village CL-ART ni-CL-meet
‘the animals of the village met’ (PUL 3a)
Different classifications have been suggested for the noun classes in Kuloonaay:
Wilkinson and Berndt (2011, §1.1.1) suggest a system of nine different noun classes, while Sambou (2007, §4.1.1.2) proposes fourteen. The reason for this discrepancy is that Sambou’s classes each correspond essentially to one possible characteristic letter,2 whereas Wilkinson and Berndt group the letters together to show the rules of correspondence between singular and plural. Table I shows the characteristic letters for Wilkinson and Berndt’s classification, which is followed here.3 In this system, class 1 is reserved for human nouns, while class 2 contains most animals and borrowed words.
1 Or e before a consonant. Note also that in the established orthography for Kuloonaay (Frésard and Wilkinson, 2008) the letters y and ñ do not follow IPA, being used for the phonemes /j/ and /ɲ/ respectively. 2 He also includes in his categorization three different variants for human plural subjects. 3 For simplicity’s sake, only the forms used as agreement markers in the verbal morphology have been given here, since these are the ones that are of interest for the study of ni-.
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Singular a- e- kV- hi-1 nV- pV- ci- ci- ci-
Plural ka- sV- u- kV- ñV- ñV- mV-
Collective2 pV- pV- mV-
Table I: Verbal agreement markers for noun classes, based on Wilkinson and Berndt
(2011, §1.1.1)
Noun classifiers in this dissertation are glossed according to this system. Thus, C4s indicates class 4 singular, C2p indicates class 2 plural, etc.
The agreement markers given in Table I are used only in the 3rd person. The only noun class to have corresponding markers for the 1st and 2nd person is class 1, which is the class for human nouns. The full set of class 1 agreement markers is given in Table II.
Singular Plural
1st Ø- 1st inclusive u- -aa
1st exclusive u-
1st duel maa-/waa-3
2nd Ø-4 2nd ni-
3rd a- 3rd ka-
Table II: Verbal agreement markers for human subjects
1 Sambou (2007, §4.1.1.2) notes that hi- does not follow the expected rule in becoming hu- before a low vowel. The same is true of ci-. 2 The ‘collective’ form is generally used for plural nouns when the number is unspecified, as distinct from the ‘plural’ form, which is reserved for when the number is given (Wilkinson and Berndt, 2011, §1.1.1.1). 3 The variation between maa- and waa- is dialectal. 4 Wilkinson and Berndt (2011, §2.2.1) give aa- as the 2nd person singular form. The position taken here is that the aa- is in fact a cliticised form of the independent 2s pronoun awe, and that the basic form of this agreement marker is Ø-.
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The class 1 3rd person markers a- and ka-, which appear in both tables, will be glossed as 3s and 3p (following the convention for the other morphemes in Table II), not as C1s and C1p (following Table I).
It should be noted that the 2nd person plural marker has the form ni- and that the class 5 singular nV- can also be realized as ni-. These will be glossed as 2p and
C5s respectively, and should not be confused with the ni- morphemes under study here.
2.2.2. A sketch of TAM
The system for TAM in Kuloonaay is important for the study of ni- for two reasons.
First, one of the three ni- morphemes proposed in this dissertation is itself a marker for habitual aspect. Secondly, the clause-type distinction that is the defining feature of the difference between the other two ni- morphemes (see Section 2.2.3) relates to the system for TAM marking.
There are a variety of different approaches to the description of TAM in Jola languages, and space does not permit a discussion of the relative merits of each.
The system proposed here is based on Payne’s (1992, p. 59) analysis of Jola
Kwatay. In this system, there are three aspect categories: unmarked, progressive and habitual; and two principal tense categories: past/present and future, with a further distinction between past and present tense for progressive aspect. In addition, there is a separate category of ‘irrealis modality’, in which tense and aspect are not marked. Table III shows the possible TAM combinations, along with the relevant morphemes, all of which are either affixes or auxiliary verbs. Where more
23 than one morpheme is given, the difference between them relates to clause-type, which is explained in Section 2.2.3.
REALIS MODALITY
ASPECT: unmarked progressive habitual
TENSE: past yeno -aa / -e (perfective) ni- habitual present oopa / yem / yaake future efi-/kaakaay efi- + yeno efi- + ni- habitual
IRREALIS MODALITY
ø-
Table III: TAM categories
Other authors writing on Kuloonaay have used the term ‘perfective’ for the morphemes –aa and -e, following the trend in academic linguistics in other Atlantic languages of Senegal. This is problematic, because the same morphemes carry an imperfective meaning (a present, enduring state) when applied to stative verbs,1 which is not a natural property for a perfective marker (Comrie, 1976, pp. 50–51).
For the sake of consistency with the existing literature, however, the term ‘perfective’ will be retained here.
Irrealis modality is characterized by a ‘stripped’ form of the verb, which consists of nothing more than the verb stem plus the mandatory subject agreement marker
(Tables I and II). It is found in both main and subordinate clauses, and
1 It is likely that this state of affairs has arisen through analogy/extension, as these perfective morphemes have gradually encroached on the territory of other morphemes that originally marked imperfective aspect for stative verbs.
24 encompasses moods that may be labelled ‘jussive’, ‘imperative’ and ‘subjunctive’.
Two of the three ni- morphemes under study in this dissertation (ni- secondary and ni- habitual) are entirely confined to realis modality.1 The third (ni- main) applies equally to realis and irrealis modality, but in the context of narrative discourse is associated almost exclusively with perfective aspect (see Section 4.2), and hence with realis modality. Thus, it may be understood why some authors (e.g. Sagna on
Banjal, 2008, p. 144) have described ni- as a realis modality marker.
2.2.3. Main clauses and secondary clauses
The distribution of ni- in Kuloonaay depends on clause-type. This section describes a fundamental clause-type distinction in Kuloonaay, in terms of which the different ni- morphemes will be defined.
Research by Galvagny (1984) identified an important feature of the way information is structured in Kuloonaay. Using the terminology of ‘theme’ (‘what we’re making an assertion about’) and ‘rheme’ (‘what we’re asserting about the theme’, Galvagny
1984, p. 428), she notes that if an utterance with a ‘theme-rheme’ structure is reorganized so that the information occurs in the order ‘rheme-theme’, then changes at the level of the ‘morphological markings’ (1984, p. 429) become necessary. The precise nature of these changes depends on the tense/aspect of the verb. The first three rows of Table IV summarize her findings, taking examples directly from her paper. The final row shows how similar considerations apply to future tense2 clauses (examples in brackets are supplied that follow Galvagny’s paradigm).
1 For ni- habitual, this is because habitual aspect only applies for realis mode. For ni- secondary, this is because secondary clauses, as will be seen in the next section, are a distinct clause type to subordinate irrealis clauses. 2 Only future tense with unmarked aspect is given here. There seems to be no distinct rheme-theme form for future habitual or for past or future progressive.
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Theme-rheme Rheme-theme
Perfective -aa suffix -(y)e suffix aspect (+ optional reduplication (no reduplication morpheme)
morpheme)
Kodie a-li-aa-li Kodie a-li-ye
‘Kodie ate’ ‘It was Kodie who ate’
Progressive oopa1 morpheme + ti + infinitive yem (copular) + ti + infinitive aspect yaake ‘to be doing’ + infinitive2
(present tense) Amay oopa ti hisapu efil ya Amay a-yem ti hisapu efil ya
‘Amay is beating the goat’ ‘it is Amay who is beating the goat’
Amay a-yaake hisapu efil ya
‘It is Amay who is beating the goat’
Habitual ni- habitual prefix ni- habitual prefix aspect (+ optional reduplication (no reduplication morpheme)
(past/present morpheme) tense)
Kodie na3-li-li uli Uli Kodie na-li
‘Kodie has the habit of eating ‘It is rice that Kodie has the habit of
rice’ eating’
1 See Wilkinson and Berndt (2011, §2.6.2) for the rules of ‘conjugation’ of this morpheme. 2 There appears to be little difference in meaning between yem and yaake in these constructions. One possible explanation is that yem is a copular verb that is encroaching on the territory of the progressive auxiliary verb yaake. 3 Ni- habitual is realized as na- for 3rd person singular (see Section 6.1).
26
Theme-rheme Rheme-theme
Future tense Future tense morpheme efi1 Future tense morpheme or auxiliary verb
(unmarked kaakaay aspect)
(Kodie afaa-li uli) (Uli Kodie naakaakaay hili)
‘Kodie will eat rice’ ‘It is rice that Kodie will eat’
Table IV: Morphological and syntactic modifications that accompany different
organizations of the utterance (examples for the first three rows are taken from
Galvagny, 1984, pp. 437-439, 450-451, emphasis mine).
This kind of system, in which TAM-marking is intertwined with information structure, is common in Atlantic languages of Senegal, and there are terminological differences in the literature over how to describe it. Most authors do not follow
Galvagny in using ‘theme’ and ‘rheme’. In Wolof, the distinction between theme- rheme and rheme-theme constructions has often been dealt with in categories such as ‘subject-emphatic’, ‘complement-emphatic’ and ‘verb-emphatic’ (Robert, 1991, pp. 69, 117; Church, 1981, pp. 71, 84, my translation). In Jola languages, a number of linguists have described this phenomenon in terms of ‘focus’ (e.g. Wilkinson and
Berndt, 2011, §3.8; Hopkins, 1995, pp. 119–206; Payne, 1992, pp. 61–62), and it is this latter label of ‘focus’ that will be employed here.
It will be helpful to define exactly what is meant by ‘focus’, since various nuanced definitions may be found in the literature. A useful definition that corresponds well to the situation in Kuloonaay is given by Dooley and Levinsohn (2001, p. 62), who define focus in terms of ‘that part which indicates what the speaker intends as the most important … change to be made in the hearer’s mental representation’.
Following Lambrecht (1994, pp. 226–233), the distinction will be drawn between
1 See Wilkinson and Berndt (2011, §2.6.1) for the full conjugation of this morpheme.
27
‘predicate-focus’ (corresponding to theme-rheme), where the whole predicate is intended to build on the hearer’s existing mental representation; and ‘argument- focus’ (rheme-theme), where a single argument is singled out as the most important change. Argument-focus clauses in Kuloonaay are very common, and they always follow the pattern in in the right-hand (rheme-theme) column of Table IV where the focal argument1 precedes the verb, and the verb carries the tense/aspect marking given in this column. A focal argument is seldom if ever marked by intonation alone, as is often the case in English.
In summary, then, Galvagny (1984) describes two different systems for tense/aspect marking in Kuloonaay, and the choice of which one to use depends on the focus of the clause.
Building on this, it may easily be shown that the tense/aspect system described by
Galvagny (1984) for argument-focus (rheme-theme) clauses is also found in various subordinate clause types, including relative clauses, certain adverbial clauses and certain reason clauses. In (2), for example, the suffix –(y)e for argument-focus perfective aspect (see Table IV) is found in a temporal subordinate clause.
(2) ta na-a-yeni-ye ta toko
when niS-3s-be-PFV ART there
‘when he was there’ (AFA 17a)
Henceforth, the term ‘secondary clause’ will be used for all the different clause types that share the argument-focus tense/aspect system, while the term ‘main clause’ will
1 This argument may be a subject, direct or indirect object, or adverbial constituent. The verb form does not vary according to which argument is in focus, except in the case of subject focus where there is a difference relating to ni- secondary (see Chapter 5).
28 be used exclusively for independent clauses with predicate-focus or sentence-focus.
The two clause-types are summarised in Table V.
Main clause Secondary clauses
Independent clause with predicate-focus or Argument-focus clauses, and certain realis1 sentence-focus. subordinate clauses, such as:
May have realis or irrealis modality. Relative clauses with relativizer
(C)eNCa.2
Subordinate clauses of time, place or
manner introduced by Ca.3
Subordinate clauses of reason
introduced by kamma, ‘because’.
Subordinate clauses introduced by
kápiliŋ4, ‘when’ or ‘since’.
Table V: Definition of main clause and secondary clause
This clause-type distinction is significant for the study of ni-, whose distribution obeys different rules depending on whether the clause in which it appears is main or secondary. For the purpose of this dissertation, the ni- morphemes in the two different clause types are considered distinct, and are termed ni- main and ni- secondary. These are dealt with in Chapters 4 and 5 respectively.
1 Irrealis subordinate clauses all use the ‘stripped’ form, as in Table III, and hence do not behave as secondary clauses. 2 (C)eNCa is the general form: C is the characteristic letter of the noun class, and N is a nasal whose place of articulation assimilates to C. See Lowry (2011, p. 81) for the full paradigm. 3 Ca is the general form: C is the characteristic letter of an ‘abstract class’. The possibilities are la or pa ‘where’; ta or emma ‘when’; fa ‘how’ (see Wilkinson and Berndt, 2011, §3.1.2). 4 This word has been adopted from Mandinka, a Mande language of Senegal (Lewis et al., 2015) that is spoken by many Kaloon as a second language.
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While the existing literature on Kuloonaay and other Jola languages does not categorize clause types in exactly this way, all of the relevant issues contributing to such a categorization have been mentioned by various authors. See, for example,
Hopkins on Fonyi (1995, p. 117) and Galvagny on Kuloonaay (1984, p. 445), who note that the behaviour of ni- changes when a fronted constituent is in focus; or
Bassène (2007, p. 76) and Berndt (2000, pp. 46–47) on Bandial, who note different rules for ni- between main clauses and subordinate clauses. Changes in tense/aspect markings in Kwatay when an element is in focus are noted by Payne
(1992, p. 62). However, while it is clear that there are many similarities between different Jola varieties in this respect, there is no reason to expect that the category of ‘secondary clause’, exactly as defined here, will be relevant to Jola languages other than Kuloonaay. Indeed, it is very likely that boundaries between clause types, and exactly what defines those boundaries, may well vary from language to language within the Jola family.
2.3. Methodological considerations
The synchronic part of this study makes use of a small corpus of 15 narrative texts.
This corpus was formed for the purpose of a study of narrative discourse, based on the guidelines in Levinsohn (2012). The texts were contributed by speakers ranging widely in age (from 15 to 80) and educational background, from both Senegal and
The Gambia.
The corpus contains four oral and eleven written texts. Eight of the eleven written texts were supplied in written form by authors who contributed their stories for the purpose of creating Kuloonaay literacy materials, and these texts have been published as part of two text collections (Jarju et al., 2011; Saaña et al., 2010) by
30 the local language association, ‘Sempe Kaloon’, in collaboration with SIL. The remaining three written texts were written down by a native speaker specifically for the purpose of the narrative discourse study. These were based on stories, and in one case a debate, that were supplied by other Kaloon. The four oral texts were elicited in The Gambia, and transcribed and edited with the help of a native speaker.
The storytellers were orally informed of the purpose of the recordings and agreed to take part; efforts were subsequently made to obtain consent in written form wherever possible (see Appendix C for a sample consent form). Appendix A gives a full list of texts and speaker details, as well as the codes by which they are referred to in the examples. For every extract that is quoted as an example, a number and letter are given to indicate the sentence and clause number within the text: thus, for example, 14c means the third clause in sentence 14.
There are two reasons for drawing on a text corpus for this study. The first is to verify the proposed system of syntactic rules for the distribution of ni- morphemes.
A test that these rules represent a useful synchronic model is that they may be shown to apply in the vast majority of cases throughout the corpus, with only a small residue of outliers and ambiguous cases. Any significant and systematic deviation from the rules would indicate that the rules themselves need to be refined: either because they are incorrect, or because pragmatic or sociolinguistic factors have produced hitherto unaccounted variations. The application of this test is part of the aim of Section 7.2.
The second reason for drawing on a text corpus is for the purpose of statistical counting, so that an idea of the relative frequency of each type of ni- morpheme may be gained.
31
The mix of texts that make up this corpus is somewhat eclectic, both in terms of speaker age and background, and in terms of the way the texts were obtained. The lack of consistency in how the texts were obtained and edited is not ideal, since it introduces uncontrollable unknowns into the equation, e.g. how consistent were the rules of spelling followed by different scribes? In general, however, the eclecticism of the corpus is a strength from the point of view of being a testing ground for a theory of ni- morphemes. Any theory that can be applied to 508 instances of ni- in such a diverse corpus, with only a small proportion of outliers and ambiguous cases, may be confidently declared to be a model that describes the language well.
It is acknowledged that in using a corpus of narrative texts, some of the statistics that are cited will be relevant only to text of the narrative genre. To what extent and in what direction these figures would be different if text of a different text-type were studied must be left as a subject for future research.
Wherever possible, examples given in this dissertation have been cited directly from the text corpus. Where this has not been possible, e.g. if an example of a certain use or non-use of ni- has been needed for the purpose of explanation that is not attested in the corpus, examples have been elicited and/or carefully checked with a native speaker. This is the case for all examples where a corpus reference is not given.
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CHAPTER 3 Morphophonemic considerations
Morphophonemic considerations
This chapter describes and discusses the somewhat complex morphophonemic behaviour of the ni- morphemes. If this study were concerned only with the role of ni- in current Kuloonaay morphosyntax, this would be a point of secondary importance that could be dealt with quickly. It takes on primary relevance here, because the investigation also concerns the grammaticalization pathways by which the ni- system has evolved. Important clues as to the history of the morphemes may be gained by a study of their allomorphs.
For the purpose of this chapter, all three ni- morphemes (ni- main, ni- secondary and ni- habitual) are treated together. Apart from slight differences for ni- habitual that are discussed in Chapter 6, the morphophonemic behaviour of the three morphemes is identical. These morphemes have a wide variety of different allomorphs, but the ‘underlying’ form is taken as ni-, since, it will be argued, the primary diachronic ancestor was an independent grammatical word with the form ni
(see Section 3.2).
The discussion in this chapter relates to the branch of grammaticalization often called ‘morphologization’, that is, the ‘compacting’ or ‘fusing of erstwhile independent elements with each other’ (Hopper and Traugott, 1993, p. 130), usually involving an intermediate clitic phase. Hopper and Traugott (1993, p. 224) note that
33 the term ‘morphologization’ is sometimes used for ‘the development of ... morphophonemic alternations’, which is what is being dealt with here.
This chapter is structured as follows: Section 3.1 discusses the different allomorphs that are attested for ni-. Next, Section 3.2 investigates cliticization of the conjunction niŋ, a common noun-phrase conjunction which, as certain authors have argued
(notably Bassène, 2007, pp. 123–125, on the corresponding morphemes in Banjal), is a likely candidate for the origin of the ni- morphemes. Section 3.3 describes the two main approaches to ni- morphophonemics in the literature for Jola languages, here referred to as the prefix approach and the ‘two-series’ approach, before justifying the adoption of the prefix approach here.
As an aid to discussion in this chapter, the Kuloonaay consonant inventory is given in Table VI. Representations in this table are phonemic, and where the IPA symbol for a particular phoneme differs from the orthographic representation,1 the latter is indicated in brackets.
Place of articulation Labial Alveolar Palatal Velar/
Manner of articulation glottal
Plosive voiceless p t c k
Nasal voiced m n ɲ (ñ) ŋ
Fricative voiceless f s h
Lateral voiced l
Approximant voiced w j (y)
Table VI: Feature chart for Kuloonaay consonants. (Source: Frésard and Frésard,
2007b)
1 Throughout this chapter (and indeed throughout this dissertation) orthographic representation is given in italics.
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The ten Kuloonaay vowels subdivide into a -ATR set (/a, e, i, o, u/) and a +ATR set
(/a̘, e̘, i̘, o̘, u̘/), which are subject to the vowel harmony constraint that a single morpheme may not contain both -ATR and +ATR vowels. +ATR spreading between morphemes within a word is very common, and word breaks have been determined partly in terms of this (Frésard and Wilkinson, 2008). For this reason, the orthographic convention has been adopted that the feature [+ATR] is marked at word level by means of an acute accent over the first (lowercase) vowel (e.g. ínci, páacinool). However, as the +/- ATR distinction has no bearing on ni-, for the sake of simplicity, when reference is made here to the phoneme /o/, for example, this may be taken to include both /o/ and /o̘ / (i.e. o and ó).
3.1. Morphophonemic rules for the ni- morphemes
As stated in Section 2.2.1, Kuloonaay morphology requires that the ni- morphemes attach to either a person or noun-class agreement prefix, and not directly to the verb root. This may be seen in (3), where the ni- morphemes attach to the agreement markers a- (3s) and ka- (3p).
(3) akina na-a-taak paka-háaciil in-ka-sok-ee …
3s.PRO ni-AGR.3s-have 3p-three ni-AGR.3p-say-PASS
‘she had three (children), they were called…’ (AFA 2b-c)
The only exceptions to this arise because of the null morpheme agreement markers for the 1st and 2nd person singular1 (Table II), which have the effect of forcing the ni- directly up against the verb root, as in (4).
1 This null morpheme is also found in impersonal constructions.
35
(4) in -ø-kaay po
ni-AGR1.1s-go there
‘I went there’ (KAM 3a)
Table VII gives the different possibilities for the initial phoneme of the morpheme to which the ni- morphemes may attach. Row 2 of this table is derived from the set of different possible agreement markers that were given in Tables I and II. Row 1 is derived from the constraint that verb roots in Kuloonaay must begin with a consonant. This is a slight oversimplification, since verbs are attested whose roots begin with /i/ or /u/.2 If a prefix is attached, however, a semi-vowel (/j/ or /w/) is always inserted root-initially, meaning that even these verbs behave as consonant- initial from the point of view of verbal morphology. From Table VII, it may be seen that the only phoneme in the Kuloonaay inventory that is never attested in direct combination with the ni- prefix is /o/.
Subject environment of ni- possibilities for initial phoneme
1s, 2s ni- attaches directly to verb root. c, f, h, j, k, l, m, n, ɲ, ŋ, p, s, t, w
Other ni- attaches to agreement marker a, c, e, i3, k, m, n, ɲ, p, s, u, w
Table VII: Possibilities for the initial phoneme of the morpheme to which ni- attaches
Allomorphs for the ni- morphemes are conditioned by the initial phoneme of the morpheme to which they attach. The morphophonemic rules governing the attachment of ni- are as follows:
1 For sake of glossing simplicity, the ‘AGR’ will be dropped from the gloss in all subsequent examples. 2 E.g. ísan, ‘to show’ and ufan, ‘to give’. 3 The /i/ here in fact results from the agreement marker hi- (class 4 singular), in which the /h/ undergoes deletion when in combination with ni-.
36
ni- → nV- /_+V
→ in- /_+(n,s,t)
→ iɲ- /_+(c,ɲ)
→ im- /_+(f,m,p)
→ iŋ- /_+(h,k,ŋ)
→ il- /_+l
→ ij- /_+j
→ iw- /_+w
Table VIII: Morphophonemic rules for ni-
It should be noted that the resulting CC clusters are all of the only type allowed by
Kuloonaay phonology, namely NC, where ‘the nasal adjusts its position to the same point of articulation as the following consonant’ (Frésard and Frésard, 2007b, p. 9).
Difficulties arise, however, in the case of _+h, since there is no convenient ‘glottal nasal’ in the inventory. The form iŋ- given in the table is an approximation; in reality, there appears to be speaker variation along the lines of [iŋ-] ~ [iː-] ~ [ĩː-].
Instrumental phonetic analysis would be necessary to determine exactly what sound different speakers are using here, which goes beyond the scope of this study.
A striking feature of this list of rules is the complementary distribution between the environments _+V and _+C. In the environment _+V, ni- retains its initial nasal, giving rise to forms such as /naːsok/ (‘he said’ = /ni-/ + /asok/) and /nuːcoːk/ (‘we sang’ = /ni-/ + /ucoːk/). In the environment _+C, however, the underlying form would be better described as iN-, rather than ni-, and generates forms such as /iɲcuk/ (‘I saw’ = /ni-/ + /cuk/) and /iŋkaleŋken/ (‘they laughed’ = /ni-/ + /kaleŋken/).
Taking this complementary distribution into consideration, the rules in Table VIII may
37 be summarized as follows:1
Before a vowel, the underlying form is /nV-/
where, V → [αF] / __+[V, αF]
Before a consonant, the underlying form is /iN-/
where, N → [+nasal, αF] / __+[C, -son2, αF]
→ [αF] / __+[C, +son, αF]
In the speech of some Kaloon, the initial /i/ for the _+C allomorphs is scarcely audible, and the pronunciation is more akin to a syllabic nasal.3 Variation of the sort
/iN-/ ~ /N̩ -/ is common, and Wilkinson and Berndt (2011, §2.2.2) note both forms.
Given that syllabic nasals are not attested elsewhere in Kuloonaay, it seems almost certain that the form with the initial /i/ is the earlier form, from which the syllabic nasal has arisen by a process of phonetic erosion (see Hopper and Traugott, 1993, p. 148).
3.2. The conjunction niŋ
The conjunction niŋ, not to be confused with ni-, is the standard means of conjoining noun phrases in Kuloonaay, e.g. Ceelan niŋ Akoli, ‘Ceelan and Akoli’ (EPU 1a). It occurs in Kuloonaay utterances both as an independent prosodic word, and also as a proclitic, depending on the rapidity of speech. Wilkinson and Berndt (2011,
§2.2.2) note the likelihood that this particle is at the origin of ni- in Kuloonaay.
Bassène (2007, pp. 123-125) analyses the corresponding particles in Banjal, demonstrating that ni, the equivalent of the Kuloonaay conjunction niŋ, takes an
1 These rules apply except in the context _+h, which, as noted above, is problematic. 2 The category ‘-sonorant’ here consists of the phonemes /c, f, h, k, p, s, t/, those where the ni- prefix results in a prenasalized consonant. The category ‘+sonorant’ consists of /j, l, m, n, ɲ, ŋ, w/, those where the ni- prefix results in a lengthened consonant. 3 Or in the cases of /j/, /l/ and /w/ a syllabic approximant.
38 identical form to the Banjal ni- prefix in certain contexts and in slow speech, and comes to the conclusion that, in Banjal, ni- results from grammaticalization of ni.
The aim of this section is to investigate the plausibility of this claim in Kuloonaay from a morphophonemic perspective; Chapter 4 continues the investigation from a semantic-pragmatic perspective.
This conjunction is here written niŋ, with a word-final velar nasal. In practice, however, there are a wide variety of possible phonetic realizations of niŋ, depending on the phonological context, the speech context and the speaker. The different possibilities are shown in Table IX, ranging from pronunciation A, the most phonetically augmented, to D, the most phonetically reduced. If the speaker has a reason to articulate carefully, he/she will generally opt for pronunciation B; if not, he/she will more likely opt for C or D. Pronunciation A, in which the word-final velar nasal is clearly articulated regardless of the initial phoneme of the following noun, is generally accepted as a valid pronunciation, but seems to be rare in natural speech.
In careful, deliberate speech, pronunciation B, where this nasal has assimilated to the place (and in certain cases the manner) of articulation of the subsequent phoneme, seems generally to be preferred.
39
Initial phoneme of host noun:
Labial Alveolar Palatal Velar Approximant Vowel
Orthog. niŋ piteen niŋ soon niŋ ñíkin niŋ kawaay niŋ lompo niŋ afansa
A /niŋ piteːn/ /niŋ soːn/ /niŋ ɲikin/ /niŋ kawaːj/ /niŋ lompo/ /niŋ afansa/
B /nimpiteːn/ /ninsoːn/ /niɲːikin/ /niŋkawaːj/ /nilːompo/ /niɁafansa/
C /impiteːn/ /insoːn/ /iɲːikin/ /iŋkawaːj/ /ilːompo/ /naːfansa/
Pronunciation D /m̩ piteːn/ /n̩ soːn/ /ɲ̩ ːikin/ /ŋ̩ kawaːj/ /l̩ːompo/
Gloss ‘and a boat’ ‘and fish’ ‘and eyes’ ‘and lunch’ ‘and also’ ‘and a
guard’
Table IX: Range of possible pronunciations for niŋ plus host noun
It will be noticed that the allomorphs in Table VIII and the forms in row C of Table IX
match exactly. All the characteristics of the ni- allomorphs noted above, such as the
variation between /iN-/ and /N̩ -/ (corresponding to rows C and D), and the
complementary distribution between the environments _+V and _+C are found in the
realizations of niŋ in Table IX. Thus, on purely morphophonemic grounds, the niŋ
conjunction would appear to be a likely candidate for the forerunner to ni-. The
process may be represented by the cline niŋ > ni-.
However, while cross-linguistic morphologization trends might suggest that /niŋ/ is
the proto-form (line A), and that the other forms (lines B to D) are the result of
phonetic reduction in rapid speech, it seems more likely that the proto-form is
actually /ni/, and that a word-final nasal has been introduced by a phonetic process
of nasal spreading and epenthetic insertion (Sambou, 2007, §4.3.4). This process
may be represented as:
ni > nĩ > niN
40
There are two reasons for supposing this, which are as follows: first, a survey of other Jola languages finds no evidence of a word-final nasal for the particle corresponding to niŋ in those languages. In Banjal, for example, the particle corresponding to niŋ is ni (Bassène, 2007, p. 287), in Fonyi it is di (Hopkins, 1995, p.
78), and in Kwatay it is nV, where V ‘follows the rules of vowel harmony’ (Payne,
1992, pp. 42, 52). If /-N/ had been part of the proto-form, it might have been expected to have survived in more Jola varieties than just Kuloonaay. Secondly, in the case where an Aloon pauses for any length of time between niŋ and the following noun phrase, the short form /ni/ is often heard, and not the long form /niŋ/.
If /ni/ were really the result of phonetic reduction associated with rapid speech, then one would expect to hear the full form in this context.
If /ni/ is indeed the proto-form, the question remains as to why the default place of articulation for the epenthetically inserted nasal should be velar. Why, when this word is considered in isolation, does it become /niŋ/, and not /nin/, /niɲ/ or /nim/?
Without further research it is difficult to be sure, but it is perhaps a pertinent observation that when French words are adopted into Kuloonaay, nasal vowels
(which do not feature in Kuloonaay phonology) tend to become oral vowels followed by velar nasals.
Putting together the various processes that appear to be at work, Figure 3 shows a hypothetical evolutionary ‘tree’ for the different forms explored in this chapter.
41
ni Nasal spreading Vowel assimilation nĩ Epenthetic insertion of a nasal
niN-/_+C
Deletion of initial n
nV-/_+V niŋ conjunction iN-/_+C
Figure 3: A hypothesis for the evolution of ni- forms
This model provides a possible explanation for the complementary distribution between /nV-/ and /iN-/, showing how the /niŋ/ variant of /ni/ may be linked to the origin of the /iN-/ form. While the nasal in /nV-/ comes from the initial /n/ in /ni/, the nasal in /iN-/ results instead from the nasal inserted in the environment _+C, and is related to the word final nasal in the conjunction niŋ.
In conclusion, then, this section and the previous one have demonstrated from a morphophonemic perspective that ni, the proto-form of the conjunction niŋ, is a likely candidate for the diachronic ancestor of the different allomorphs of the ni- morphemes.
3.3. The prefix approach and the ‘two-series’ approach
Among the authors who have explored this subject in Jola, many do not treat ni- as a separable morpheme (e.g. Sagna, 2008, p. 144; Bassène, 2007, p. 74). They rather view it as having been absorbed into the verbal subject-agreement markers to which it attaches, effectively yielding two distinct series of subject-marking prefixes: a ‘full’ or ‘nasal’ form (corresponding to the form with ni-), and a ‘stripped’ or ‘short’
42 form (without ni-). This two-series model dates back to Sapir (1965), whose descriptive grammar of Jola Fonyi has influenced a great deal of subsequent linguistic work in Jola.
Within the small body of literature on Kuloonaay itself there is a divergence of approach: both Sambou (2007) and Galvagny (1984) have preferred, as here, to treat ni- as a prefix or proclitic, while Wilkinson and Berndt (2011) have followed
Sapir’s two-series model. Wilkinson and Berndt (2011, §2.2.1 – 2.2.2) give the following table, which is representative of the kind of table found in many Jola grammars:
Person (sg) 1st series 2nd series Person (pl) 1st series 2nd series
1st Ø- iN- 1st exclusive u- nuu-
1st inclusive u- nuu-
1st duel waa-/maa-1 maa-2
2nd aa-3 aN- 2nd ni- (i)nni-
3rd a- na-/naa-4 3rd ka- (i)nka-
Table X: The ‘two-series’ approach to ni- in Kuloonaay. (Source: Wilkinson and
Berndt, 2011, §2.2.1 – 2.2.2)
1 The variation between waa- and maa- is probably dialectal. 2 The position taken here is that this should be (i)wwaa/(i)mmaa, which fits the available data, and agrees with the morphophonemic rules given in Table VIII. Gieske (née Wilkinson, personal correspondence, 20th August 2015) accepts that this is likely, but notes that on the basis of the very few examples of this rare morpheme that have so far been elicited in natural text, it is difficult to be certain. 3 As has already been noted (footnote 4, p. 22), the aa- and aN- given in this table result from a contraction of the 2nd person singular pronoun awe. The position taken here is that the basic form for the two series is Ø- and iN-, both of which are attested in the corpus. 4 The difference between the two possibilities for the 3rd person singular given by Wilkinson and Berndt here corresponds to the difference between ni- main/secondary on the one hand, and ni- habitual on the other, as discussed in Chapter 6.
43
The question of which of the two approaches is more suitable may be addressed in terms of the degree of morphologization that has taken place. Hopper and Traugott
(1993, p. 192) propose the following basic cline for the evolution of an affix:
lexical item > clitic > affix
The situation for ni- in Kuloonaay appears to involve the affixation of the conjunction ni(ŋ) to another set of affixes, namely the verbal agreement marker prefixes. Taking this into consideration, a more finely grained morphologization cline for this situation is:
grammatical word + affix > clitic + affix > affix + affix > portmanteau morpheme
The first three steps on this cline correspond to the three steps in Hopper and
Traugott’s basic cline, shown above. The final step involves morpheme boundary loss or ‘fusion’: the process where the agglutinative nature of the individual morphemes is lost, and a single portmanteau morpheme results. Such processes are well documented in grammaticalization studies (e.g. Hopper and Traugott, 1993, pp. 145–150; Heine and Reh, 1984, pp. 21–25).
The two-series approach corresponds better to the final step on the cline, in which a separable prefix no longer exists and all that remains is a series of portmanteau morphemes, as proposed in Table X. The prefix approach corresponds to a point earlier on the cline, where the agglutinative nature of the prefix or proclitic still holds, and the morpheme boundaries are still intact.
In the case of Kuloonaay, the allomorphs of ni- that were presented in the previous section are entirely agglutinative. There is a high degree of morphophonemic
44 variation, but no sign of the beginnings of internal boundary loss. Moreover, the difficulties noted above for the environment _+h give evidence that the current state of affairs corresponds to a point further left on the above cline: i.e. ‘clitic + affix’ rather than ‘affix + affix’. The allomorph here (/iŋ-/) results in a consonant cluster
(/ŋh/) that is not normally allowed within a phonological word (Frésard and Frésard,
2007b, p. 9), indicating that, at least for some speakers, the clitic has not fully morphologized to affix status (see Hopper and Traugott, 1993, pp. 136-138).
In this dissertation, then, the prefix approach will be considered more suitable for the description of current Kuloonaay than the two-series approach. It should be noted, however, that the two-series approach may well be necessary in other Jola languages, if these languages are found to be further along the morphologization cline than Kuloonaay in this respect.
This chapter has dealt with the morphophonemic issues relating to the ni- morphemes. The next three chapters consider the properties of the three ni- morphemes from the point of view of morphosyntax and discourse.
45
CHAPTER 4 Ni- main
Ni- main
In Section 2.2.3, a terminological distinction was made between a ‘main clause’ and a ‘secondary clause’. This chapter and the next deal respectively with the ni- morphemes associated with main and secondary clauses, which are here referred to as ‘ni- main’ and ‘ni- secondary’ and glossed as niM- and niS-.
This chapter is structured as follows: Section 4.1 explains the role of ni- main, with examples from the text corpus, and reference to the literature on Kuloonaay morphosyntax. Section 4.2 briefly explores some factors relating to its use in narrative discourse. Finally, Section 4.3 suggests a possible grammaticalization pathway, based on evidence from other Jola languages.
4.1. The role of ni- main
Ni- main is the standard means of marking clause coordination.1 For a chain of coordinated clauses, including, but not restricted to, narrative sequence, typically only the first verb is marked for TAM. All subsequent main-clause verbs in the chain drop the TAM marking and take ni- instead. This kind of phenomenon, often called a ‘consecutive’ or ‘narrative’ tense, is very common in Niger-Congo languages
1 As demonstrated in Section 3.2, it is not morphophonemically identical to the noun-phrase conjunction niŋ, since the more phonetically augmented forms of niŋ (see rows A and B of Table IX) are not allowed for ni- main.
46 beyond the Jola cluster: see, for example, Soukka (1999, p. 259) on Noon, a language of Senegal, or Callow (1974, p. 40) on Kasem, a language of Burkina
Faso.
A corollary of the way clause coordination works in Kuloonaay is that main-clause verbs are required to take either a TAM marking1 or ni- main. This complementary distribution between ni- main and explicit TAM marking, not the case for Jola languages in general, is one of the arguments in favour of a distinction between main and secondary clauses in Kuloonaay. No such complementary distribution exists in secondary clauses, which normally take both ni- and a TAM marking (see
Section 5.1).
Examples (5) and (6) both show this kind of series of coordinated clauses. In (5) the first verb has perfective aspect; in (6) the first verb has irrealis modality (see Table
III). Subsequent ni- marked verbs in each chain indicate coordinated clauses with identical TAM.
(5) 2a e-muntuŋo e-hín-aa-hín caa-kali
C2s-hyena C2s-do-PFV-RDB INF-doubt
2b ne-e-sok Caa-kutoon
niM-C2s-say C1aa-hen
‘Hyena had doubts, and she said to Hen…’ (EKU 2a-2b)
1 In the case of irrealis modality, TAM is marked by a zero morpheme (see Table III).
47
(6) 9a ø-waa-siiŋi-yaa le
IRR-1d-stand-1pi here
9b iw-waa-tíkinool-aa pati lúutoo y-a
niM-1d-race.each.other-1pi PREP mango.tree C2s-the
9c niŋ fúlaa toko conko iw-waa-suum-aa
and from there then niM-1d-wrestle-1pi
‘Let us start from here, race each other to the mango tree, and then
wrestle each other’ (ANE 9a-9c)
The fact that narrative discourse makes extensive use of ni- main for consecutive events has led some authors to label it the ‘narrative prefix’ (Sambou, 2007, p. 121;
Gieske, 2014, p. 40). The relationship of ni- main to narrative discourse is explored in Section 4.2.
4.2. Ni- main in narrative discourse
Section 4.2.1 draws on some definitions of narrative text-type, in order to evaluate whether the label ‘narrative prefix’ is appropriate for ni- main. Following this,
Section 4.2.2 describes further properties of the distribution of ni- main in the narrative text corpus.
4.2.1. ‘Narrative prefix’ as a label for ni- main
Longacre (2013) defines narrative discourse as the text genre that displays both
‘contingent temporal succession’ (temporal succession in which ‘events or doings are contingent on previous events or doings,’ 2013, p. 9), and ‘agent orientation’
48
(‘orientation towards agents with at least a partial identity of agent reference running through the discourse,’ 2013, p.9). The texts in the corpus used here may all be said to fit this definition of narrative. Defined this way, however, ‘narrative’ is too restrictive to be useful as a label for ni- main, which is also used to coordinate clauses with no agent orientation. Gieske (2014, p. 40) gives the following example from a procedural text in Kuloonaay. In this case, the aspect is habitual, and the clauses are coordinated by ni- main.
(7) an -silo-silo in-káafiitalii ekúnt in-coop-íi yo in-kink
2s.HAB-climb-RDB niM-hack fronds niM-take-DIR OBJ niM-fence
‘…you climb and hack down fronds and bring them and make a fence.’
(Gieske, 2014, p. 40)
A broader definition of narrative is given by Labov (1999), who does not make reference to ‘agent orientation’:
We can define a minimal narrative as a sequence of two clauses which are
temporally ordered: that is, a change in their order will result in a change in the
temporal sequence of the original semantic interpretation. (Labov, 1999, p.
226, emphasis his)
This definition corresponds a little better to the sphere in which ni- main operates.
Even this broad definition, however, does not go far enough, since ni- main may also serve to mark clause coordination where there is no temporal ordering, e.g. between stative verb clauses, as in (8).
49
(8) a- al-am a-cohat-aa-cohato na-a-wálli
3s-woman-1s 3s-be.intelligent-PFV-RDB niM-3s-be.beautiful
‘My wife is intelligent and beautiful.’
Thus, given that ni- main may be used for clause coordination where there is neither temporal ordering nor agent orientation, the label ‘narrative prefix’ is not adopted here. Ni- main does, however, play an important role in narrative discourse, as discussed in Section 4.2.2.
4.2.2. Distribution of ni- main in the text corpus
As stated above, the texts in the corpus all conform to Longacre’s definition of narrative. Furthermore, all belong to his sub-category of ‘story’, in that they concern events that are ‘represented as having already taken place’ (Longacre, 2013, p. 9).
In stories, ni- main is strongly associated with perfective aspect, since this is the tense-aspect used for actions in the past. As a result, it appears that it is unnecessary, even at the start of a story or of a major section of a story, to mark a verb explicitly for perfective aspect. This is demonstrated by (9), where the ni- main verb, náamak, ‘he boasted’ is the first main-clause verb of the whole text.
(9) Hi -noom h-oonool, na-a-mák nii …
C4s-day C4s-one niM-3s-boast that
‘One day, he boasted that…’ (CIM 2a)
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Equally, a change of verbal subject does not require a TAM marked verb to signal the start of a new chain. In (10) the subject switches in 33a from ‘their mother’ to
‘her husband’, but the new subject is followed immediately by another ni- main verb, naanako, ‘he entered’.
(10) 32a Iññáa-yii na-a-ŋaŋo
mother-3p niM-3s-be.astonished
32b na-a-yeno ka-kikilan
niM-3s-be INF-tremble
33a a-yíin-oo na-a-nako páhantuwa
3s-man-3s niM-3s-enter inside
‘Their mother was astonished and was trembling. Her husband entered
inside…’ (AFA 32a-33a)
This is not to say, however, that verbs in a story are never explicitly marked for perfective aspect. The corpus as a whole contains 971 conjugated verbs, of which
328 are ni- main verbs, and 84 are main-clause verbs that are explicitly marked for perfective aspect.
The question of when a narrative verb in a story should be explicitly marked for perfective aspect and when ni- main is sufficient appears to turn on a variety of factors. The present corpus is insufficient to investigate this question in depth, given its small size and its eclectic mix of oral/written texts and speaker background, so more detailed analysis will be left as a subject for future research. Three points may, however, be stated with some certainty:
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First, a TAM-marked verb is almost always found at the start of a reported speech.
This fact may be easily understood, since the speaker must establish the TAM for what they are about to say. In example (11), Fúntaan formulates the information exactly as would be expected in a conversational context, beginning her statement with a verb that is explicitly marked for perfective aspect.
(11) 28c a-kina Fúntaan na-a-sok-oo
3s-PRO Fúntaan ni-3s-say-3s
28d ka-kaay-aa-kaay pi-haaño
3p-go-PFV-RDB INF-play
‘She, Fúntaan, said to him, “they went to play”’ (AFA 28c-d)
Secondly, a verb that carries a TAM value different to that of the previous verb must be explicitly marked. The verb in clause 36c of example (12) must be explicitly marked for perfective aspect, because a ni- verb would give the impression that it has the same TAM as the prohibitive in the previous clause.
(12) 36a paka-hoop-ii in-ka-sok-ii
3p-sister-3p ni-3p-say-3p
36b timpi ni-fiil lompo
PROH 2p-forget also
36c taak-aa-taako …
have-PFV-RDB
‘Their sisters said to them, “don’t forget, there were…”’ (PIT 36a-c)
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Thirdly, negative verbs are never permitted to take ni- main. Thus, the verbs in clauses 3 and 4a of example (13) do not take the ni- main morpheme that would be expected for positive statements following in succession like this in a narrative.
They are marked instead by the negative perfective suffix, -ut.
(13) 2 Hi-kee hi-noom e-kumpaan eete-yoo ne-e-wuulo.
C4s-INDF C4s-day C2s-house POSS-3s niM-C2s-catch.fire
3 ø-yina-at i-hoku y-o a-kina
ø-3s-be.able-NEG.PFV INF-extinguish C2s-PRO 3s-PRO
lamma-yoo.
alone-3s
4a ø-A-taak-ut an
ø-3s-have-NEG.PFV person
‘One day, his house caught fire. He could not extinguish it by himself. He
didn’t have anyone…’ (ANH 2-4a).
In summary, this section has explored the place of ni- main in narrative discourse. It has been argued that while ni- main is important in the way narrative is constructed in Kuloonaay, the term ‘narrative prefix’ is not quite adequate, because it does not account for instances of ni- main in clause coordination between manifestly non- narrative clauses.
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4.3. A possible grammaticalization pathway
As demonstrated in Section 3.2, the ni- prefix has almost certainly evolved by morphologization of the conjunction ni, the likely ancestor of the current noun- phrase conjunction, niŋ (‘and’). An obvious hypothesis for the evolution of ni- main is therefore that niŋ previously played the role of a clause-level coordinating conjunction that has become morphologized and further grammaticalized.
A survey of the situation in other Jola languages suggests that this is almost certainly the case, albeit with a slight modification that should be noted. The evidence from other Jola languages that appear to be in an earlier state of grammaticalization is that ni (or its equivalent) plays the role of a developmental coordinating conjunction, perhaps better translated into English as ‘and then’ rather than as ‘and’. Payne (1992), writing on Jola Kwatay, states:
The developmental morpheme nV is used in discourse and in stories, where
sentences follow each other in succession. In a series of events, this
morpheme accompanies the verbs that contribute to the thematic development,
or that lead the story towards its goal.1 (Payne, 1992, p. 60)
Hopkins (1995) finds a similar situation in Jola Fonyi, albeit only for non-human noun classes,2 for which the corresponding particle is di. He notes:
1 Original quote: ‘Le morphème de développement nV est utilisé dans les discours et les contes où les phrases se succèdent. Dans une série d'événements, ce morphème accompagne donc les verbes qui contribuent au développement thématique, ou qui amènent l'histoire vers son but.’ 2 The situation for human participants appears to be further grammaticalized and more akin to that in Kuloonaay (Hopkins, 1995, pp. 271–275).
54
At the level of the texts, di marks the thread of main events of the narrative that
serve to develop the theme, i.e. the events that attract the attention of the
hearer towards the main point, and that strengthen the raison d’être of the text.
Not all events are thus marked, but only those that contribute to the theme.1
(Hopkins, 1995, p. 271)
It may be posited, then, that the existing state of affairs for ni- main in Kuloonaay has arisen out of an earlier developmental conjunction, whose distribution has grown to cover not just verbs that contribute to the ‘theme’ of the text, but all main- clause verbs that are not marked for TAM. This hypothesis may be summarized by the following cline:
clause level developmental conjunction > clause level ‘default’ conjunction
All of the grammaticalization phenomena noted in Section 2.1.2 may be observed in the development of ni- main. There is gain in frequency, accompanied by loss of pragmatic (developmental) force and loss of freedom on the part of the speaker.
There is also phonological reduction, as the independent morpheme ni(ŋ) has become part of the phonological word with the following verb (which, as was noted in Section 3.2, is not necessarily the case when ni(ŋ) is used as a noun-phrase conjunction).
There is cross-linguistic support for this hypothesis. A strikingly similar process is attested by Heine and Claudi (1986, pp. 119–127) in Maa, a Nilo-Saharan language of Kenya (Lewis et al., 2015), whereby a conjunction ná, meaning ‘and, then’, has
1 Original quote: ‘Au niveau des textes, di marque le fil des événements principaux de la narration qui servent à développer le thème, c’est-à-dire les événements qui attirent l’attention de l’auditeur vers le point crucial et qui renforcent la raison d’être du texte. Ce ne sont pas tous les événements qui sont ainsi marqués, mais seulement ceux qui contribuent au thème.’
55 developed into a marker for what has come to be referred to as ‘N-tense’, a tense that ‘expresses subsequent actions and typically may occur with any non-first verb of the clause, being the primary means of marking clause-coordination’ (Heine and
Claudi, 1986, p. 119, emphasis theirs).
For a grammaticalization hypothesis of ni- main to be considered feasible, it ought to be able to account not just for the development of the ni- marker, but also for the fact that ni- main verbs are unmarked for TAM, following in succession from a TAM- marked verb at the start of the chain. There is no immediately obvious reason why the spread of the ni- morpheme should drive out TAM marking.
Evidence from related languages suggests a plausible solution to this problem. It is very possible that TAM chains existed already in proto-Jola, with ‘minimal marking’ instead of ni- marking. This minimal marking system applies in Wolof (Robert,
2011), and also appears to be current in Jola-Kwatay (Payne, 1992). If such a system indeed existed in proto-Jola, the first verb in the chain would have been
TAM-marked, and subsequent verbs ‘minimally’ marked, carrying just a subject- agreement marker. Into this system, the ni- prefix in Kuloonaay may have spread, gradually becoming the norm, until all main-clause verbs that had previously been minimally marked became ni- marked.
One final observation to make is that ni- seems to have taken a further step in some
Jola languages compared to the current situation in Kuloonaay. In both Banjal and
Fonyi (for human subjects), ni- has further spread to verbs that are marked for TAM, at least for perfective and habitual aspect (see, for example, Bassène, 2007, p. 75;
Hopkins, 1995, pp. 115–117). It would appear then, that concerning ni- main,
Kuloonaay is at a more advanced stage of grammaticalization that Kwatay, but at a less advanced stage than either Fonyi or Banjal.
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CHAPTER 5 Ni- secondary
Ni- secondary
In the system proposed here, the label ‘ni- secondary’ means simply ‘the ni- morpheme associated with secondary clauses.’ Nothing has so far been said about its role, which, at least from a synchronic perspective, is unrelated to that of ni- main.
The term ‘secondary clause’ was defined in Section 2.2.2 as the set of clause types that share the TAM marking system identified by Galvagny (1984) for argument- focus (rheme-theme) clauses. As stated in Table V (p. 29), the category of
‘secondary clauses’ includes argument-focus clauses, as well as certain realis subordinate clauses, such as:
Relative clauses with relativizer (C)eNCa
Subordinate clauses of time, place or manner introduced by Ca
Subordinate clauses of reason introduced by kamma, ‘because’
Subordinate clauses introduced by kápiliŋ, ‘when’ or ‘since’
This chapter is structured as follows: first, Section 5.1 proposes a system of rules for the role of ni- secondary in different secondary clause types. Section 5.2 presents further evidence for why this should be considered a distinct morpheme to ni- main.
Finally, Section 5.3 explores some evidence from other Jola languages, and
57 suggests a possible grammaticalization pathway for the evolution of the prefix in its current form.
5.1. The role of ni- secondary
As a starting point, the role of ni- secondary may be described as follows: it indicates that a particular pre-verbal constituent is a non-subject argument (i.e. complement or adverbial constituent). In argument-focus clauses it indicates that the focal constituent is a non-subject argument. In relative clauses, by close analogy, it indicates that the head-noun is a non-subject argument.
Examples (14) and (15) are both argument-focus clauses. In (14), the focal constituent akina, ‘he’, is the subject of the verb, so ni- secondary is absent.
(14) a- kina a-muk-e e-yen y-a
3s-PRO 3s-kill-PFV C2s-dog C2s-ART
‘it is he who killed the dog’ (PAL 26g)
In (15), the focal constituent Caañeñele is the direct object of the verb (a non- subject argument), so ni- secondary is present.
(15) Caañeñele inci in-sí-ye
Caañeñele 1s.PRO niS-hear-PFV
‘It is Caañeñele that I hear’ (AFA 22d)
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Similarly, examples (16) and (17) are both relative clauses. In (16), the head-noun is the subject of the verb so ni- secondary is absent, while in (17) the head-noun is an indirect object (non-subject) so ni- secondary is present.
(16) a- teteyan a motoo y-a aŋa a-looŋ-e
C1a-driver ART.3s car.C2s C2s-ART REL.3s 3s-hit-PFV
y-a e-yen y-a
3s-ART C2s-dog C2s-ART
‘the car driver who hit the dog’ (PAL 26c)
(17) Ka -mukut enka in-ni-yem k-a n-enko
INF.C3s-endure REL.C3s niS-2p-be.PROG C3s-ART PREP-PRO.C3s
‘the patient endurance with which you are enduring’ (lit. ‘the endurance with
which you are being,’ EPU 8a)
This rather curious ‘non-subject’ property of ni- secondary is taken as the starting point for discussion in this chapter. Later discussion will move towards an alternative definition.
For both of these clause types, there is a plausible synchronic motivation for the role of ni- secondary: it serves to disambiguate between pairs of clauses that would otherwise be identical, such as ‘a person that asked’ (18a) and ‘a person that he asked’ (18b). As such, it plays a ‘quasi pronominal’ role: an idea that is explored in more detail later in this chapter.
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(18) a. an aŋa a-cakan-e
person REL.3s 3s-ask-PFV
‘a person that asked’
b. an aŋa na-a-cakan-e
person REL.3s niS-3s-ask-PFV
‘a person that he asked’
For other types of secondary subordinate clause (i.e. non-relative subordinate clauses), ni- secondary seems to be mandatory, as in (19).
(19) la pi-tafaali p-a im-pi-yeni-ye la
where C2p-monkey C2p-ART niS-C2p-be-PFV where.ART
‘where the monkeys were’ (CIM 9b)
A noteworthy special case of argument-focus clauses is that of questions.
Questions in Kuloonaay very often make use of a fronted question particle that occupies the focus slot. If a fronted question particle is itself the subject of the verb, ni- secondary is absent, as in (20); otherwise it is present, as in (21).
(20) Ayme a-láfi-ye e-ket?
who.Q 3s-want-PFV INF-die
‘who wants to die?’ (ANE 23)
(21) puume inci in-hín-e?
how.Q 1s.PRO niS-do-PFV
‘what did I do?’ (KAM 15a)
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5.2. Evidence for ni- secondary as a distinct morpheme to ni- main
As outlined in Chapter 1, existing research in Jola languages has tended to analyse the ni- prefix in terms of a single morpheme. This dissertation adopts the alternative hypothesis that ni-, at least in Kuloonaay, is better understood in terms of three distinct morphemes. Section 5.1 has already provided supporting evidence for this hypothesis by demonstrating the role of ni- secondary, which is unrelated to that of ni- main. This section outlines two further pieces of evidence for why the two should be considered distinct morphemes.
First, the complementary distribution between ni- main and TAM marking (see
Section 4.1) does not apply for ni- secondary. In the case of secondary clauses, the
TAM is always explicitly marked, apart from certain cases of morphological neutralization addressed in Chapter 7. Table XI gives the different possible ni- verb types. While the form of a ni- main verb is invariable and its TAM is determined by the context, the TAM of a ni- secondary verb is explicitly marked at the level of the verb word itself. Thus it makes sense to talk about (for example) ‘ni- secondary perfective’ or ‘ni- secondary progressive’, whereas it does not make sense to talk about ‘ni- main perfective’ or ‘ni- main progressive’.
61 ni- verb type Example Gloss ni- main na-a-lík ‘and he touched, will
niM-3s-touch touch, etc.’ ni- secondary perfective na-a-lík-e ‘he touched’
niS-3s-touch-PFV ni- secondary habitual1 n-a-lík ‘he touches
niH2-3s-touch (habitually)’ ni- secondary progressive hi-lík-u na-a-yaake ‘he is touching’
(with auxiliary verb) INF-touch-INF niS-3s-PROG
na-a-yem ti hi-lík-u
niS-3s-COP IMPFV INF-touch-INF ni- secondary progressive na-a-lík-lík ‘he is touching’
(redoubled) niS-3s-touch-RDB ni- secondary future na-a-kaakaay hi-lík-u ‘he will touch’
(unmarked aspect) niS-3s-FUT INF-touch-INF
Table XI: Different ni- secondary verb types
Secondly, the restriction that negative verbs do not take ni- main (see Section 4.2.2) does not apply in the case of ni- secondary, as demonstrated by (22), where the verb takes both ni- secondary and a negation suffix.
(22) pi -tafaali p-a empa na-a-láfi-it p-a
C2p-monkey C2p-ART REL:C2p niS-3s-love-NEG.PFV C2p-ART
‘The monkeys that he doesn’t love’ (CIM 5a)
A similar phenomenon is identified in Jola Fonyi by Hopkins (1995, pp. 116–117), who first observes that the ‘unmarked series’ (without ni-) is employed for negative
1 Ni- secondary habitual is discussed in detail in Chapter 6. 2 The gloss niH- is used here for ni- habitual.
62 verbs, and then comments that this rule does not apply in the case where ‘an object or circumstantial element is in focus’1 (Hopkins, 1995, p. 117).
5.3. A possible grammaticalization pathway
Evidence from other Jola languages sheds some light on the grammaticalization processes which may have led to the synchronic behaviour of ni- secondary in current Kuloonaay. In both Fonyi and Banjal, the situation is similar yet subtly different to that in Kuloonaay, and may represent an earlier point on the grammaticalization cline.
In Fonyi, Hopkins notes that the equivalent morpheme to ni- is used ‘when an object or circumstantial element is in focus, without intervention of an explicit subject’2
(Hopkins, 1995, p. 117, emphasis mine). To restate that in the terminology employed here: an argument-focus clause with a non-subject focal constituent requires ni-, if and only if there is no explicit subject.3
Bassène (2007, p. 76) notes a similar phenomenon for argument-focus clauses in
Banjal, giving the following examples:
(23) a. ínje i-jug-e It is me who saw
b. Nébbaba na-kkay-e It is to Ziguinchor that he went
c. Nébbaba Atejo a-kkay-e It is to Ziguinchor that Atejo went
(Bassène, 2007, p. 76, emphasis mine)
1 Original quote: ‘un objet ou un circonstant est focalisé.’ 2 Original quote: ‘quand un objet ou un circonstant est focalisé, sans intervention d'un sujet explicite.’ 3 The category of ‘explicit subject’ here does not include the verbal subject agreement marker, which is mandatory for all conjugated verbs. It does, however, include independent pronouns, as in (23a).
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Thus, in Banjal, in the case of subject focus (23a) and of object focus with an explicit subject (23c), there is no nasal n-, but in the case of object focus without an explicit subject (23b), the n- is present.
The same appears to be true for relative clauses in Banjal. Although Bassène himself does not comment on this, the contrast may be demonstrated by a comparison of the two clauses in (24), both of which are relative clauses with non- subject head nouns. In (24a), the explicit subject ‘Atejo’ causes the n-, present in
(24b), to drop out.
(24) a. aɲɲil aku (o Atejo a-tekme) The child (that Atejo hit)
b. gaser gagu (go na-tiɲme ni go) The spoon (with which he ate)
[lit. (that he ate with it)]
(Bassène, 2007, p. 193, emphasis mine)
On the basis of this evidence, the equivalent ni- morpheme in Banjal and Fonyi appears to play the role of a ‘quasi subject pronoun’, or more precisely a ‘quasi subject pronominal prefix’. The term ‘quasi pronoun’ is used here in the sense that it shares some characteristics with pronouns (i.e. it can substitute for a noun or noun phrase) but not others (i.e. there is no person/number/noun class agreement). As such, it fulfils the same disambiguation role as noted above (Section 5.1) for ni- secondary in Kuloonaay. The difference is that in Kuloonaay, the explicit subject, where present, co-occurs with the quasi pronoun, while in Fonyi and Banjal it does not.
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There is good reason for supposing that the system for ni- secondary in Kuloonaay is further grammaticalized than the corresponding systems in Fonyi or Banjal. Ni- secondary is distributed across a wider range of contexts in Kuloonaay than the corresponding morphemes in Banjal and Fonyi, and therefore has a higher frequency of occurrence, which correlates with a more advanced state of grammaticalization (see Section 2.1.2). Furthermore, the situation in Kuloonaay, where the subject noun or noun phrase is allowed to co-occur with ni- secondary
(taken to be a quasi subject pronoun) is reminiscent of the phenomenon of ‘subject doubling’, i.e. ‘the phenomenon that one clause may contain two co-referential subject expressions’ (De Vogelaer, 2010, p. 222). Thus, it is a reasonable hypothesis that the current situation in Fonyi and Banjal represents an earlier phase in the development of ni- secondary in Kuloonaay, in which grammaticalization has led to subject doubling becoming the norm. Further research could investigate possible discourse-pragmatic motivations for this subject doubling.
Figure 4 represents diagrammatically the grammaticalization process that appears to have taken place in Kuloonaay. For object-focus clauses in proto-Kuloonaay
(bottom half of diagram), ni- secondary, in its quasi pronominal role, may have occurred in complementary distribution with a subject noun or noun phrase. Then, as the system became further grammaticalized and subject doubling became the norm, ni- secondary became mandatory regardless of whether or not a subject noun or noun-phrase was present. For subject-focus clauses (top half of diagram), the introduction of subject doubling did not have any impact, since ni- was never required in these clauses.
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Proto-Kuloonaay: S(FOC) V (O)
(Current Banjal, Fonyi)
Current Kuloonaay: S(FOC) V (O)
Proto-Kuloonaay: S O(FOC) V niS- (Current Banjal, Fonyi)
Current Kuloonaay: O(FOC) (S) niS-V
Figure 4: Possible evolution of ni- secondary in subject-focus and object-focus
clauses.
This diagram shows the specific case of argument-focus clauses with subject and direct object focus, but the same principle applies to other types of secondary clause.
On the basis of this discussion, an alternative description of ni- secondary in
Kuloonaay may be proposed, that is, ‘a quasi subject pronominal prefix for secondary clauses, that undergoes subject doubling.’
The question remains as to whether ni- secondary shares a common origin with ni- main. It is tempting to posit that the origins of the two particles are unrelated, ni- main having evolved from a developmental conjunction as seen in Chapter 4, and ni- secondary having evolved from an independent pronoun of some kind. The two would thus best be considered accidental homonyms.
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At a morphophonemic level, however, the other Jola languages surveyed here offer no evidence for such a hypothesis. In both Banjal and Fonyi, there is no evidence of any difference between the morphophonemic behaviour of ni- main and ni- secondary that would hint at a difference in origin of the two morphemes. This does not conclusively prove that there is a common origin, since it is possible that two accidental homonyms existed (a conjunction and a pronoun) that were formally identical in proto-Jola before morphologization took place. If such were the case, then it would not be surprising that the two morphologized in the same way and gave rise to the same set of allomorphs. It does, however, demonstrate that there is no positive evidence for a difference in origin.
The situation in Kwatay is very different. As shown in Section 4.3, the morpheme corresponding to ni- main in Kwatay appears to be at a rather earlier stage of evolution compared to Kuloonaay, Fonyi and Banjal. As for ni- secondary: on the basis of the evidence in Payne (1992), there is no indication of any morpheme corresponding to ni- secondary, nor is there any evidence of a pronoun that shares any commonality of distribution with it. Thus, on the basis of these four varieties of
Jola, the existence of a ni- secondary morpheme correlates with ni- main being at a relatively advanced stated of grammaticalization. This is consistent with the hypothesis that ni- secondary has indeed evolved from ni- main and the two are not accidental homonyms.
As to how this may have happened, the following suggestion may be tentatively offered: it is possible that the ni- main morpheme was, at one stage in the grammaticalization process, used to coordinate chains of clauses sharing the same subject participant. In other words, as soon as there was a change in subject participant, a new chain would begin with an explicit subject noun phrase and a
TAM-marked (non-ni-) verb. At this point, the complementary distribution between
67 ni- and the explicit subject led to ni- being reanalysed as the kind of quasi subject pronominal prefix described above, and hence became useful for disambiguation in secondary clauses. This resulted in the distribution found in current Banjal and
Fonyi, which was then further grammaticalized in Kuloonaay by subject doubling.
This discussion of the grammaticalization of ni- secondary began with the part of the pathway for which there is most evidence, and progressed towards those parts where the processes must be more tentatively hypothesized. What emerges clearly is that the curious ‘non-subject’ property of ni- secondary with which this chapter began, may be understood in terms of a quasi subject pronoun that has grammaticalized to allow for subject doubling. This latter way of understanding the morpheme, which has emerged from a study of grammaticalization pathways, allows for a more transparent insight into the synchronic system.
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CHAPTER 6 Ni- habitual
Ni- habitual
The fact that the category ‘habitual aspect’ exists in Jola languages is uncontroversial: the majority of authors who have written on Jola languages acknowledge habitual aspect as one of the principal TAM categories (e.g. Watson, forthcoming, p. 181; Wilkinson and Berndt, 2011, §2.6.7; Sagna, 2008, p. 148;
Bassène, 2007, p. 81; Hopkins, 1995, p. 134; Payne, 1992, p. 58). However, the question of exactly how it is marked appears to vary significantly from language to language and from description to description.
This chapter argues for the existence of a third ni- morpheme, ni- habitual, the function of which is to mark habitual aspect. Section 6.1 outlines the synchronic evidence for considering ni- habitual to be a morpheme that is distinct from ni- main and ni- secondary. Section 6.2 describes the behaviour of ni- habitual in both main and secondary clauses. Section 6.3 proposes a possible grammaticalization pathway by which the current state of affairs may have evolved.
6.1. Evidence for a third ni- morpheme?
Section 5.2 argued for a two-way distinction between the morphemes ni- main and ni- secondary. This section gives three pieces of evidence for the existence of ni- habitual as a morpheme that is distinct from both ni- main and ni- secondary.
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First, there is a morphophonemic difference between ni- habitual and the other ni- morphemes: ni- habitual has a set of allomorphs that are in every case identical to those for ni- main and ni- secondary (described in Section 3.1), with two exceptions.
These two exceptions are the 3rd person singular forms for class 1 (human) and class 2 nouns, which, in line with the system for glossing used here, are henceforth referred to as 3s and C2s respectively. In these cases, the vowel is shortened, behaving as in the left-hand column of Table XII:
ni- habitual ni- main ni- secondary
(perfective)
3s nacook naacook naacooke
(‘he sings habitually’) (‘and he sang/sings/will sing’) (‘he sang’)
C2s necook neecook neecooke
(‘it sings habitually’) (‘and it sang/sings/will sing’) (‘it sang’)
Table XII: Morphophonemic behaviour of ni- habitual for 3s and C2s.
Galvagny (1984, p. 436) notes this opposition between na and naa for the 3rd person singular, and labels the n- in na as a marker for habitual aspect.
Secondly, ni- habitual occurs in combination with the future tense morphemes,1 to give a habitual future. By contrast, neither ni- main nor ni- secondary is ever found in combination with these morphemes. For ni- main this is not surprising, since one of its basic properties in Kuloonaay is that it never occurs for explicitly TAM-marked verbs (see Section 4.1). The absence of ni- secondary in connection with a future tense morpheme is demonstrated by (25), where ni- secondary is absent in spite of
1 See Wilkinson and Berndt, 2011, §2.6.1; Sambou, 2007, §6.5.1 for a description of these morphemes.
70 the fact that it is a secondary (question) clause, with a non-subject question particle occupying the focus slot (see Section 5.1).
(25) ø- mí-it puume efi ø-cuk
1s-know-NEG how FUT 1s-see
‘I don’t know what I will see’ (HIY 26c-d)
The effect of ni- habitual in combination with these future tense morphemes may be seen by a comparison of (26), punctual future, and (27), habitual future.
(26) pak -áwi-yoo efi ka-yonkal-oo
3p-friend-3s FUT 3p-call-3s
‘His friends will call him’ (once)
(27) pak -áwi-yoo efi in-ka-yonkal-oo
3p-friend-3s FUT niH-3p-call-3s
‘His friends will call him’ (regularly, habitually, from time to time)
Thirdly, ni- habitual is found in combination with ni- secondary in certain cases. This kind of ‘ni- doubling’ is only found for singular human subjects, as in (28), and appears to vary slightly between speakers. While all three clauses are generally recognised as well formed, there seems to be a preference among certain speakers, perhaps those of a younger generation, for the doubled ni- to be dropped for the 3rd person (hence the parentheses in 28c). However, the fact that two different ni- morphemes may be used together to mark the same verb, even if only in relatively rare cases, is possibly the clearest direct evidence for a ni- habitual morpheme that is distinct from ni- main and ni- secondary.
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(28) a. hi-címu eehe inci ni-n-ø-cook
C4s-song DEM.C4s 1s.PRO niS-niH-1s-sing
‘this is the song that I sing (habitually)’
b. hi-címu eehe awe ni-n-ø-cook
C4s-song DEM.C4s 2s.PRO niS-niH-2s-sing
‘this is the song that you sing (habitually)’
c. hi-címu eehe Caañeñele (in-)n-a-cook
C4s-song DEM.C4s Caañeñele (niS-)niH-3s-sing
‘this is the song that Caañeñele sings (habitually)’
From a purely synchronic point of view, then, there is strong evidence that ni- habitual is distinct from ni- main/secondary. Section 6.3 gives further evidence to support this viewpoint from a diachronic perspective, with reference to other Jola languages.
6.2. Ni- habitual in main and secondary clauses
Ni- habitual can occur in both main and secondary clauses, often with no morphological difference between the two.
In a main clause, the ‘prototypical’ example of habitual aspect involves ni- habitual together with a reduplication morpheme, as in examples (29) and (30).
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(29) Kampee n-a-kéy-kéy puson-am
Kampee niH-3s-come-RDB behind-1s
‘Kampee always comes behind me’ (KAM 21d)
(30) Cím -mak c-enfakat n-a-suuwan-suuwan a-ti-yoo
3s-boasting 3s-big niH-3s-shame-RDB 3s-of-3s
‘Great boasting always shames a person who does it’ (CIM 20)
Both Wilkinson and Berndt (2011, §2.6.7) and Sambou (2007, §6.5.2) consider that the reduplication morpheme is the primary means of marking positive1 habitual aspect, and that the presence of the ni- morpheme in these constructions merely signals one more item to add to the list of contexts where ni- is required. Only
Galvagny (1984, p. 436) considers the morpheme ‘na’2 to be itself a marker for habitual aspect. In fact, there are a number of reasons for considering ni- habitual and not the reduplication morpheme to be the primary habitual aspect marker. First, the habitual future cannot take a reduplication morpheme, but does take ni-, as demonstrated in (27). Secondly, the reduplication morpheme is also found in constructions with perfective or progressive aspect: it is therefore misleading to suggest that reduplication is associated primarily with habitual aspect. Thirdly, the reduplication morpheme is found only in main clauses, never in secondary clauses with habitual aspect; the ni- morpheme is found in both. Fourthly, and of particular relevance here, even in main clauses the reduplication morpheme is not mandatory: it may be dropped without loss of habitual meaning as in (31), although doing so may, in some cases, result in ambiguity. The same is not true of the ni- habitual morpheme, which cannot be dropped without loss of habitual meaning.
1 For negative habitual aspect there is another morpheme, -antoo. 2 All Galvagny’s examples have 3rd person singular human subjects, so the form na is found in every habitual clause she cites.
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(31) Ooto a-al a a-kina n-a-pook kaa-puk-ool
So 3s-woman 3s.ART 3s-PRO niH-3s-refuse INF-bear-REFL
‘So the woman,1 she refuses (habitually) to bear children?’ (PIT 23b-c)
For these reasons, then, the morpheme ni- habitual will here be taken as the primary means for marking positive habitual aspect in Kuloonaay.
In summary, main clauses with habitual aspect take ni- habitual, which is mandatory, and a reduplication morpheme, which is optional. This reduplication morpheme may be dropped without any apparent change in meaning, and it appears that its main utility is to disambiguate between a ni- main verb and a ni- habitual verb, in cases where the morphophonemic difference between the two ni- morphemes is neutralized. All such cases of neutralization are explored in Chapter
7.
Ni- habitual verbs in secondary clauses are morphologically identical to those in main clauses, except for the fact that they are never redoubled. Thus, in (32) the habitual verb (3rd person singular) takes the shortened habitual suffix, as for main- clause habitual verbs, and no reduplication morpheme.
(32) e- pootak y-a e-te-yoo eyya n-a-kaay y-a
C2s-bag C2s-ART C2s-of-3p REL.C2s niH-3s-go C2s-ART
ney-yo leema
PREP-C2s hunt
‘his bag with which he (always, habitually) went hunting’ (CIM 18b)
1 Note that in this case the fronted constituent aal a, ‘the woman’, is a topicalized subject in left-dislocated position, as described in Section 7.1.2. The fact that it does not occupy the focus slot is evidenced by the co-referential pronoun, akina ‘he/she’ inside the clause.
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6.3. A possible grammaticalization pathway
In the previous chapters it was argued that both ni- main and ni- secondary have very likely evolved from a developmental conjunction ni in proto-Kuloonaay. It was noted that in other Jola languages that have a corresponding equivalent to both morphemes, the two are always morphophonemically identical. In the case of ni- habitual, however, the situation is very different. A study of the other Jola languages under consideration here reveals that in the majority of cases, habitual aspect is not associated with a ni- morpheme at all.
In Jola Kwatay, habitual aspect is marked by means of a series of prefixes that have the general form VŋV- (Payne, 1992, p. 58): a prefix involving a velar nasal, as opposed to the alveolar nasal in the ‘developmental morpheme’ nV (1992, p. 60).
In Fonyi, habitual aspect is associated with the habitual suffix –er plus a reduplication morpheme (Hopkins, 1995, p. 134). A ni- morpheme is also required for positive habitual aspect (1995, p. 130), but on the basis of the available evidence it is impossible to be sure if this ni- morpheme is a further grammaticalized version of ni- main (as suggested in Section 4.3) or a corresponding equivalent to ni- habitual.
In Kujireray, Watson cites two strategies for marking habitual aspect. The first uses a habitual morpheme nax; the second, as in Fonyi, makes use of the habitual suffix
–er followed by a reduplication morpheme (Watson, forthcoming, p. 182). None of her habitual-aspect examples contain a ni- morpheme.
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An equivalent to nax exists in Banjal, where Berndt notes the existence of a similar particle nahi, meaning ‘regularly’ or ‘habitually’, which is the primary means of marking habitual aspect (Berndt, 2000, p. 46).
Thus, with the possible exception of Fonyi, there is little evidence to suggest that habitual aspect is associated with a ni- morpheme in other Jola varieties. By contrast, the existence of the morpheme nax in Kujireray and nahi in Banjal provides strong evidence for another possible origin for ni- habitual in Kuloonaay. It seems highly plausible that ni- habitual has evolved from a ‘habitual’ particle corresponding to nax and nahi, rather than from ni, as was argued to be the case for ni- main/secondary.
If this is the case, the question remains as to why there is the high level of similarity between the allomorphs for ni- main/secondary and those for ni- habitual? A likely explanation is that as this word nax/nahi in proto-Kuloonaay became grammaticalized and morphologized, it became necessary to find a set of allomorphs for the whole range of possible phonological environments in which it found itself. Given that it occupied the same slot in the verbal morphology as ni- main/secondary, and given the high level of morphophonemic similarity with ni- main/secondary, it is not hard to imagine that the already existing set of allomorphs could have been borrowed to fill this gap. Only for the 3rd person singular and for class 2 singular did ni- habitual retain a slightly different form.
This theory presupposes that the allomorphs for ni- main/secondary had already evolved before the grammaticalization of nax/nahi to ni- habitual took place. On the basis of the evidence from other Jola languages, this order of events seems likely, given that the similarity between Kuloonaay and Fonyi or between Kuloonaay and
Banjal regarding ni- main/secondary is much stronger than the similarity for habitual
76 marking. It is plausible, therefore, that the current system for ni- main/secondary was already at least partly developed at the point when Kuloonaay split from the other Jola varieties. The current system for habitual marking in Kuloonaay, by contrast, appears to be a relatively recent development, which almost certainly post- dates this split.
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CHAPTER 7 Distinguishing between the three ni- morphemes
Distinguishing between the three ni- morphemes
So far, three different ni- morphemes have been identified, and the synchronic properties of each have been described in isolation. This chapter focuses on the interplay of the three morphemes, with particular reference to the question of how to distinguish between them. Section 7.1 proposes a system of rules for distinguishing between the three morphemes. Section 7.2 then presents a statistical count resulting from the application of these rules to the text corpus.
7.1. Rules for distinguishing between morphemes
In many cases, a ni- verb can be identified as ni- main, ni- secondary or ni- habitual at the level of the verb word, without reference to its wider context. In other cases, these word-level distinguishing differences are neutralized, and information from a syntax or discourse level may be necessary to determine the function of the ni- morpheme. The majority of the distinctive features associated with each ni- morpheme have already been discussed in Chapters 4 to 6. These features are briefly reiterated here, and factors resulting in their neutralization are described.
This information is stated in the form of a system of ‘rules’ that can be applied to distinguish between ni- morphemes in the general case.
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The approach here is hierarchical, having three levels: ‘word level’, ‘syntax level’ and ‘discourse level’. The relevant rules for each of these levels are given in
Sections 7.1.1 to 7.1.3.
7.1.1. Word-level rules:
The term ‘word level’ covers a variety of sub-categories: rule W1 concerns the verb root, W2 is a morphophonemic rule, W3 to W5 are morphological rules.
Rule W1: If the ni- verb root is yem or yaake, then the ni- verb is ni- secondary progressive. If the root is kaakaay, then the ni- verb is ni- secondary future
(unmarked).
These three auxiliary verbs were given in Table IV (p. 27). All three are used uniquely in secondary clauses.
W2: In the case of a ni- verb with a 3s or C2s subject, a shortened ni- prefix indicates ni- habitual.
The shortened allomorphs of ni- habitual for 3rd person singular and class 2 singular were given in Table XII (p. 70).
W3a: If the ni- verb carries the secondary perfective suffix –e, then the ni- verb is ni- secondary perfective.
W3b: If the ni- verb carries an –ē suffix (i.e. one that displaces –e, see below), then this word-level difference between ni- secondary and other ni- morphemes is neutralized.
W3c: If the verb carries no –e and no –ē, then it is not secondary perfective.
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The common secondary perfective suffix –e was mentioned in Table IV (p. 27), and is found in examples (2), (14) - (16) and (19) - (21). Any ni- verb carrying this suffix is automatically ni- secondary. However, there are certain other suffixes, here referred to as ‘–ē suffixes’ (given in Table XIII), that displace –e and result in neutralization of this morphological difference.1 Galvagny (1984, p. 454) notes this neutralization phenomenon in the particular case of the negative perfective suffix
–ut.
Suffix Gloss
-oo 3s
-ii 3p
-ee PASS
-íi DIR
-aa 1pi
-ut NEG.PFV
Table XIII: -ē suffixes
W4a: If the ni- verb carries a reduplication morpheme, then the ni- is not ni- main.
W4b: If a ni- verb with a 3s or C2s subject carries a reduplication morpheme, then a shortened prefix indicates ni- habitual (main clause), while a non-shortened prefix indicates ni- secondary progressive.
As stated in Section 6.2, and demonstrated in examples (29) and (30), a reduplication morpheme is sometimes used for main clause ni- habitual verbs. This
1 There are certain other suffixes that combine irregularly with –e. For example: -am (1s) + -e → -aam; -i (2s) + -e → -uu. These are not considered -ē suffixes.
80 does not mean, however, that a ni- verb with a reduplication morpheme will necessarily be ni- habitual, since there is another construction for ni- secondary progressive verbs that also uses a reduplication morpheme (see Table XI). Ni- main verbs, however, never carry a reduplication morpheme.
W5: If the verb has a 1s or 2s subject, then a ni- secondary habitual verb will take a double ni- prefix.
This was demonstrated in Section 6.1, example (28).
The contrasts between all the possible different ni- verb types are demonstrated in
Table XIV, which takes the verb híliku (‘to touch’) as a paradigm verb. The grey squares in this table contain the forms whose word-level distinctive features have been neutralized (i.e. the word is identical to at least one other form in the same column). The numbers W1 to W5 correspond to the five rules given above. From this table, it may be seen that verbs with a 3rd person singular or class 2 singular subject and no –ē suffix undergo the least neutralization (column 1), while those with a different subject (e.g. 3rd person plural, column 3) and an –ē suffix undergo the most.
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3s or C2s 1s or 2s 3p subject
subject subject
no –ē suffix no –ē suffix –ē suffix
ni- main náalik íllik ínkalikoo
‘he touched’ ‘I touched’ ‘they touched him’
ni- habitual (redoubled) náliklik W2, 4 ílliklik W4 ínkalikoolik W4
ain clause ni- habitual (non- nálik W2 íllik ínkalikoo
M redoubled)
ni- secondary habitual nálik1 W2 níllik W5 ínkalikoo
ni- secondary perfective náalike W3 íllike W3 ínkalikoo
ni- secondary future náakaakaay inkaakaay inkakaakaayoo
(unmarked aspect) híliku W1 híliku W1 híliku W1
ni- secondary prog. híliku híliku hílikuyoo
(present tense) naayaake W1 iyyaake W1 inkayaake W1
Secondary clause ni- secondary náaliklik W4 ílliklik W4 ínkalikoolik W4
progressive (redoubled)
Table XIV: Word-level distinctive features for different ni- verbs.
7.1.2. Syntax-level rules:
The purpose of the following syntax-level rules is to distinguish main clauses from secondary clauses, and hence ni- main verbs from ni- secondary verbs.
Rule S1: If there is coding to indicate a relative clause or other secondary subordinate clause, then the clause is a secondary clause.
1 Certain speakers use a double ni- prefix for 3s and C2s verbs as well as for 1s and 2s (see Section 6.1). However, this appears to be falling into disuse, and so is not included here.
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The different subordinate clause types that behave as secondary clauses were given in Table V (p. 29).
S2: If the clause with the ni- verb is not a subordinate clause, and there is no fronted non-subject constituent, then the clause is a main clause.
Secondary clauses are all either argument-focus clauses or subordinate clauses
(Table V). If neither of these conditions is satisfied, then the only other type of clause that is possible for a ni- verb is a main clause.
S3a: If a question particle is fronted, then it occupies the focus slot, and the clause is a secondary (argument-focus) clause.
S3b: If a complement of the verb is fronted, and there is no corresponding co- referential pronoun later in the clause, then the clause is a secondary (argument- focus) clause.
S3c: If an adverbial constituent is fronted, then more information is needed to know if it is in focus or not. See rule D3, below.
The most straightforward argument-focus clause type is that involving a question particle (rule S3a), since these question particles automatically occupy the focus slot
(see Section 5.1). If a verbal complement is fronted (rule S3b), then this constituent may be occupying the focus slot, or it may be left-dislocated, in which case there will be a co-referential pronoun in the ‘canonical position’ in the clause (Crystal, 1991, p.
197). A fronted adverbial constituent (rule S3c) may be in focus or it may be an adjunct, and there is no way to distinguish between the two at a purely syntactic level. However, the nature of this constituent (see rule D3, below) may make it more likely to be one or the other.
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7.1.3. Discourse-level rules:
In cases that cannot be distinguished at a word or syntax level, discourse-level contextual information may help to distinguish between different ni- types.
Rule D1: If the clause follows on in succession from a previous clause with nothing to indicate a change in TAM, or is part of a narrative event-line, then the ni- is ni- main.
This rule is based on the behaviour of ni- main in coordinated clauses and in narrative discourse (see Sections 4.1 and 4.2).
D2a: If the context requires a habitual interpretation, then the ni- is ni- habitual.
D2b: If the context requires a non-habitual interpretation, then the ni- is not ni- habitual.
These rules are self-evident.
D3: If a fronted adverbial constituent is topicalized in the discourse, then it is an adjunct. Otherwise it is in focus, and the clause is a secondary clause.
A topicalized constituent is one that is placed at the start of the clause or sentence, usually to indicate a ‘switch’ from a corresponding constituent in the previous clause or sentence (Levinsohn, 2012, p. 39). If this is the function of the fronted adverbial constituent in the discourse then it is an adjunct, otherwise it occupies the focus slot.
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7.2. Corpus statistical count
This section presents a statistical count for the whole text corpus based on the rules given in the previous section. An example of the application of these rules to a sample text is given in Appendix B. As intimated in Section 2.3, this count is a means of testing the validity of the proposed synchronic model for the distribution of ni-.
The count is given in Table XV. In this table, an ‘outlier’ is an instance of ni- that does not fit into any of the three categories (main, secondary or habitual), and an
‘ambiguous case’ is one that, on the basis of the rules given in the previous section, may allowably be placed in more than one category. Given the small number of outliers and ambiguous cases (2% in total), the model appears to be valid.
For the purpose of this count, ni- secondary habitual is counted as ni- habitual rather than ni- secondary. It was noted in Section 6.1 that the two morphemes co-occur for verbs with a 1s, 2s and sometimes 3s subject, leading to a double ni- prefix (not attested in this corpus). In all other cases, the double ni- has reduced to a single ni-, probably by haplology, causing the ni- secondary morpheme to drop out and only the ni- habitual morpheme to remain. The fact that it is the ni- habitual morpheme that remains is easily verified, since in the case of 3s and C2s the prefix is shortened (as explained in Section 6.1 and rule W2).
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Verb type Verb type ni- type
count count (%)
niM- ni- main 328 328 (64.6)
ni- habitual (redoubled) 2
niH- ni- habitual (non-redoubled) 3 35 (6.9)
ni- secondary habitual 30
ni- secondary perfective 117
ni- secondary progressive 9 niS- 135 (26.6) ni- secondary future 6
ni- secondary progressive (redoubled) 3
outlier 6 6 (1.2)
ambiguous 4 4 (0.8)
Total: 508 508
Table XV: Statistical count for ni- in the text corpus
Thus, for the corpus in question, ni- main accounts for nearly two thirds of the total ni- morphemes, ni- secondary for just over a quarter, and ni- habitual for around 7%.
It must be reiterated, however, that these figures apply only to narrative text, and that the relative proportions for non-narrative text may be significantly different.
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CHAPTER 8 Conclusions
Conclusions
These conclusions are structured as follows: Sections 8.1 to 8.3 summarize the findings of this dissertation in answer to the three research questions posed in
Chapter 1. Section 8.4 suggests some avenues for further research.
8.1. The role/synchronic distribution of the three morphemes
The first question considered in this dissertation concerns the synchronic behaviour of the prefix ni-. This has been described in terms of three distinct morphemes, whose properties are summarized in Table XVI:
ni- main ni- secondary ni- habitual
Form Before a vowel: underlying form is /nV-/ As for ni-
where, V [αF] / __+[V, αF] main/secondary, but
Before a consonant: underlying form is /iN-/ with shortened forms
where, N [+nasal, αF] / __+[C, -son, αF]1 for 3s and C2s.
[αF] / __+[C, +son, αF]
1 Note the exception for the environment _+h (Section 3.1).
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ni- main ni- secondary ni- habitual
Clause ‘Main’ clauses: i.e. ‘Secondary’ clauses: i.e. ‘Main’ or ‘secondary’ type independent clauses argument-focus clauses, and clauses.
with predicate focus. various types of subordinate
clause (see Table V).
TAM TAM is determined by TAM is determined by an Habitual aspect,
the context. A ni- main explicit marker. A ni- realis modality.
clause never carries a secondary clause always
TAM marking. carries a tense/aspect
marking, except in cases
where the secondary
perfective suffix -e is
displaced by another suffix.
Role Clause coordination Quasi subject pronoun. Marks habitual
between clauses of Indicates that the head- aspect.
identical TAM. noun/focal constituent is a
non-subject argument.
Other A ni- habitual verb in
a main clause often
takes a reduplication
morpheme.
Table XVI: Summary of the three ni- morphemes
8.2. Possible grammaticalization pathways
The second question concerns diachrony, and the tracing out of possible grammaticalization pathways. The pathways that have been suggested for the three
88 morphemes are summarized in Figure 5. It should be noted that this representation makes no claims about the time-scale of any part of the process.
ni (developmental nax/nahi (habitual conjunction) morpheme)
(hypothesised reanalysis)
ni- secondary (‘proto’)
subject doubling
ni- main ni- secondary (current)
borrowing of allomorphs
ni- habitual
Figure 5: Summary of suggested grammaticalization pathways for the three ni-
morphemes
One aim of this dissertation has been to provide a case study in the use of grammaticalization principles to gain understanding into ‘why languages are structured the way they are’ (Narrog and Heine, 2011, p. 11).
Grammaticalization principles have proved useful to explain a variety of phenomena relating to the ni- prefix in Kuloonaay. For example:
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How it is that different ni- morphemes can have (almost) identical sets of
allomorphs.
How the behaviour of ni- secondary, with its at first sight rather curious ‘non-
subject’ property, may have come about.
Why the situation in different varieties of Jola should be similar yet subtly
different.
Why there are certain ‘ragged edges’ in the system. It was noted, for
example, that there are difficulties in describing the allomorph of ni- in the
environment _+h in terms of the normal phonological rules (Section 3.1).
Not only can these kinds of ‘irregularities’ be explained in terms of gradual
grammaticalization and morphologization processes, but they also give clues
as to how the system has evolved.
Grammaticalization has also proved useful in understanding the wide divergence of categories that have been suggested for ni- in different Jola languages. Chapter 1 noted that among the various labels that have been given to ni- are ‘realis modality marker’ (proposed for Banjal by Sagna, 2008, p. 144), and ‘developmental morpheme’ (proposed for Kwatay by Payne, 1992, p. 60). These two very different labels may be considered as two extremes of the complex grammaticalization cline that this dissertation has attempted to draw out:
developmental morpheme > … > realis modality marker
It has been argued that neither of these labels is adequate in current Kuloonaay.
However, as the distribution of ni- has spread to a wider and wider variety of
90 contexts, almost all1 of which are limited to realis modality, the label ‘realis modality marker’ begins to look more and more appropriate. It may be the case that grammaticalization processes will continue in this direction, so that eventually ni- is mandatory for all realis verbs.
8.3. Homonymy versus polysemy
The third question is that of homonymy versus polysemy. It has been argued that there are a number of strong reasons for considering ni- habitual to be a distinct homonym, whose close morphophonemic resemblance to ni- main/secondary is due in part to the similarity of the two morphemes ni and nax/nahi (as in Figure 5), and in part to the fact that allomorphs that become necessary during the morphologization of nax/nahi were very likely borrowed from ni- main/secondary.
Concerning ni- main and ni- secondary, there is a stronger case to be made for treating them as polysemies of a single morpheme, since, as was argued in
Section 5.3, it is likely that both originated from the developmental conjunction ni.
From a diachronic perspective, then, the polysemy approach is defensible. From a purely synchronic point of view, however, it has been shown that the roles of the two
‘polysemies’ are essentially unrelated, to the extent that there seems little to be gained by trying to tie them together. A better solution, then, is to treat ni- main and ni- secondary as an instance of ‘polygrammaticalization’ (Craig, 1991), the phenomenon where multiple ‘grammaticalization chains’ (1991, p. 455) result from a single morpheme.
1 The one exception where ni- is used in connection with irrealis modality is when ni- main is used to coordinate a TAM chain in which the first verb is an irrealis verb, as in example (6), p. 47.
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8.4. Avenues for further research
As noted in Section 4.2.2, the brief investigation conducted here into when a main- clause verb should be explicitly TAM-marked and when it should take ni- main has not plumbed the depths of this subject. A future study could gather a larger corpus of narrative and non-narrative texts, taking greater care over the sociolinguistic variables and the degree of editing, and attempt to answer this question in more detail. Which constructions, for example, prefer TAM-marking, and which prefer ni- marking, and when is there the freedom for the speaker to choose? If the speaker has the freedom to choose, what nuances of meaning depend on this choice?
Another possible avenue would be to apply the methodology used here to the investigation of other morphemes in Kuloonaay that are difficult to understand at a purely synchronic level. An intriguing candidate is the verbal reduplication morpheme. Verbal reduplication is a feature that characterizes Jola languages, and is particularly prominent in Kuloonaay, where redoubled verbs may be used in connection with perfective, progressive and habitual aspect, with a variety of nuances of meaning. A future investigation into patterns in the use of these morphemes across Jola languages might give insights into the development of the phenomenon in Kuloonaay and thus contribute to a better understanding of the synchronic role of verbal reduplication.
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APPENDIX A: Text corpus summary
Text Title (Kuloonaay) Title (English) Oral/written Author Approx. Village code age (Senegal/Gambia)
AFA Afaan eenaput A bad co-wife Written Kathrine Diédhiou/ Ekiyen Jarju 15/52 Hilol (Senegal)
ANH An hipuunoo an Man’s medicine is man Written Raymond Sagna 26 Mahamouda Diola
(Senegal)
ANE Aŋesa íhampaatiinate The pursuit of eldership Written Michel Sadio 28 Mansa Konko (The
Gambia)
ASU Asúum Kasel Sweet spoon Written Man Kúumeem Jatta/ Ekiyen Jarju 80/52 Darsilami (The Gambia)
CIM Címmak apuke ñusuu Boasting leads to shame Written Simon Sambou 40 Ziguinchor (Senegal)
EKU Ekutoon niŋ emuntuŋo A hen and a hyena Oral Phosten Jarjou 26 Sifoe (The Gambia)
EPU Epuuk pilekoola School pupils Written Michel Sadio 28 Mansa Konko (The
Gambia)
ESA Esaamay asuuma Esaamay the wrestler Written Simon Sambou 40 Ziguinchor (Senegal)
eemece
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HIY Híyaani ha The tail Oral Remy Sambou 50 Marakissa (The Gambia)
KAM Kampee poko niŋ Kampee and Piliyaan Oral Phosten Jarjou 26 Sifoe (The Gambia)
Piliyaan
PAL Paliyal pa The food Oral Gilbert Jassey 26 Sifoe (The Gambia)
PIT Pitit Marriage by exchange Written Ekiyen Jarju 52 Darsilami (The Gambia)
(debate)
PUC Pucukool piti misiyoŋ The meeting of the Written Raymond Sagna 26 Mahamouda Diola
mission (Senegal)
PUL Púlukuleen pa piti The animals of the Written Simon Sambou 40 Ziguinchor (Senegal)
saatee village
PUN Punutool nawetaan The football tournament Written Raymond Sagna 26 Mahamouda Diola
(Senegal)
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APPENDIX B: Example Kuloonaay text
This appendix demonstrates how the rules given in Chapter 7 may be applied in practice to distinguish between the different ni- verb possibilities given in Table XIV.
The rules are applied to an extract from a text from the corpus (CIM, sentences 12 to 20). For the sake of simplicity here, this extract is glossed word by word rather than morpheme by morpheme, except in the case of the ni- verbs, which are shown in bold. Analysis is given below.
12a Fiye, Célimank na-a-mukutA
Now Célimank ni-3s-endure
‘Now, Celimank braced himself’
12b ápicokii pítin pa piti enuuf.
to take road the of home
‘to take the road home.’
13a Ápilohanii saatee ya,
drawing near village the
‘As he drew near to the village,’
13b pakati enuuf niŋ pakaasonoo, in-ka-síB ékili ya etiyoo
those of home and his in-laws ni-3p-hear rifle the of him
‘his family and his in-laws heard his rifle,
13c esokaa PUUUM!
it sounded BOOM!
‘it went BANG!’
14a In-ø-súum-iiC meemak, kamma efoofa ya eti
ni-IMPRS-please-3p much because of meat the of
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himisawoot ha
antelope the
‘They were very happy, because of the antelope meat,’
14b eyya in-ka-kaakaayD ya hiteñu.
that ni-3p-FUT.SEC the to chew
‘that they were going to eat.’
15 Páawo Célimank asok akina ápulantoo.
Since Celimank said he he never misses
‘Since Celimank said that he never misses.’
16a Célimank ápicolii ti enuuf,
Celimank arriving at home
‘When Celimank arrived home,’
16b na-a-muusE hank ha: fit!
ni-3s-pass compound the: ‘whoosh!’
‘he hurried past the compound.’
17a Na-a-sítenF hikawoo,
ni-3s-bow his head
‘Then he bowed his head’
17b na-a-yenoG káakumutool.
ni-3s-be to mutter to himself
‘and was muttering to himself.’
18a Na-a-fúlen-íiH ti epootak ya eteyoo,
ni-3s-remove-DIR from bag the of him
‘He removed from his bag’
18b eyya n-a-kaayI ya neyyo leema,
that ni-3s-go the with it hunting
‘that he always takes with him on the hunt,’
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18c efoofa ya eyya nkacokeJ ya nii himisawoot,
meat the that ni-3p-hold-PFV the as antelope
‘the meat that they thought was antelope,’
18d na-a-want-íiK yo: fíl!
ni-3s-throw-DIR it bosh!
‘and threw it down.’
19 Caham efaan na-a-muk-íiL pakaasonoo!
However a monitor lizard ni-3s-kill-DIR his in-laws
‘And it turned out that it was a monitor lizard that he had killed for his in-laws!’
20 Címmak cenfakat n-a-suuwan-suuwanM atiyoo.
boasting big ni-3s-shame-RDB of him
‘Big boasting always brings big shame.’
The analysis of the 13 ni- verbs (A to M) in this extract may be presented as follows:
A, E, F, G – may be classified at word level:
W1 not secondary progressive or future (no kaakaay, yaake or yem)
W2 not habitual (no shortened ni- prefix for a 3s or C3s subject)
W3 not secondary perfective (no –e or –ēsuffix)
So verbs are ni- main by elimination.
B, C – may be classified at syntactic/discourse level:
S1, S2 not a secondary clause (no coding to indicate a subordinate
clause, and no fronted constituent that may occupy the focus
slot)
D2b not ni- habitual (non-habitual meaning required)
So verbs are ni- main by elimination.
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D – may be classified at word level.
W1 ni- secondary future. (secondary future auxiliary kaakaay)
H, K – may be classified at word/syntactic level.
W2 not ni- habitual (no shortened ni- prefix for a 3s or C2s subject)
S1, S2 not a secondary clause (nothing to indicate a subordinate or
argument-focus clause)
So verb is ni- main by elimination.
I – may be classified at word/syntactic level.
W2 ni- habitual (shortened ni- prefix)
S1 secondary clause (clause is marked as relative by the relativizer
eyya)
So verb is ni- secondary habitual.
J – may be classified at word level.
W3 ni- secondary perfective. (verb carries –e suffix)
L – may be classified at word/syntactic level
W1 not ni- secondary perfective or future (not kaakaay, yem or yaake)
W2 not ni- habitual (no shortened prefix for a 3s subject)
S3b clause is a secondary clause (fronted verbal complement, efaan,
no co-referential pronoun later in the clause)
So verb is ni- secondary perfective by elimination.
M – may be classified at word level.
W2 ni- is ni- habitual (shortened ni- prefix)
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W4 clause is a main clause (reduplication morpheme plus shortened
ni- prefix)
So verb is ni- habitual (main clause).
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APPENDIX C: Sample consent form
Request for Permission for use of Kuloonaay Texts for Academic Research
EXPLANATION
In 2010, you were asked to contribute a story or stories in Kuloonaay as part of a linguistic study carried out by Mr David Lowry. At that time it was explained to you that the aim of this study was to understand better how stories are structured in Kuloonaay, and to this end you were asked to contribute either folk-tales or stories from your own personal experience. In contributing your text(s), you indicated your agreement for your text(s) to be used for this purpose. Mr Lowry is now in the process of writing his dissertation for his Masters in Linguistics, and he would like to use these same texts for his ongoing research. It is hoped that this research will contribute to a growing body of knowledge about the Kuloonaay language, and will be useful for future translation, literacy and development work. This dissertation is not aimed at the general public - only specialists in the field are likely to read it. The aim of this work is not to make money, and Mr Lowry does not anticipate any personal financial gain from it. Please sign the declaration below if you are happy to give consent for this.
DECLARATION
I give consent for Mr Lowry to use my text(s) as part of his research into the Kuloonaay language for his Masters dissertation in linguistics. I give consent for my name to be mentioned in this work as the author of my text(s).
Signed: ______
Name: ______
Date: ______
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