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Auxiliary Verb Constructions in the Languages of Africa

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Studies in African Linguistics Volume 40, Numbers 1&2, 2011 AUXILIARY VERB CONSTRUCTIONS IN THE LANGUAGES OF AFRICA Gregory D. S. Anderson Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages National Geographic Society Auxiliary verb constructions–constructions with two or more elements of verbal origin, one of which expresses functional semantic categories–are widespread among the languages of Africa. In the following discussion, I present a typology of inflection in auxiliary verb constructions [AVCs] in the languages of Africa. While there are several macro-patterns of distribution seen in the various African languages, only a small selection are presented in some detail here, viz. the doubled and split/doubled inflectional patterns, along with the fusing of subject markers and TAM/polarity auxiliaries into so-called tensed pronouns that are relatively more common in AVCs across the languages of the continent than in most other parts of the world. Before launching into the presentation, a few terminological issues should be clarified. Inflection is here understood in its usual sense to mean the formal encoding1 of Thank you to University of Manchester for funding my Eleme field work in Nigeria, and to my primary consultant Enu Obare Ekakaa wanenu for your good nature and patience. Thank you to National Geographic Society Missions Programs for their role in funding a portion of the research for this study. Thanks to Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages for its support of this research. All of this support is gratefully acknowledged. I would also like to thank Dr. Oliver Bond in particular and the audiences of WOCAL 4 and ACAL 37 for comments on earlier presentations of this material. I would also like to thank the Editor of the journal and three anonymous referees for cogent and insightful comments and critiques which were invaluable in making this final version a much better study. Finally, thanks to Oliver Anderson for editorial assistance. All errors of course remain the responsibility of the author. 1 By ‘formal encoding’ I mean what is usually a morphological instantiation of this process with a segmental morpheme. However, functional categories can be encoded by something other than a bound segmental morpheme, as this would exclude several things that must count equally as inflection from any defensible cross-linguistic position. In the specific case of 2 Studies in African Linguistics 40(1&2), 2011 grammatical or functional properties of a well-formed utterance. With respect to the verb in African languages, this includes the indexation of tense, aspect, referent categories (person, number, gender), etc. Auxiliary verb is understood in the way it has been in the specialist literature in the last two decades (Heine 1993, Kuteva 2001, Heine and Kuteva 2002, Anderson 2006) rather neutrally as: a verbal element on a diachronic form-function continuum standing between a fully lexical verb and a bound grammatical affix. Auxiliary verb construction is defined by Anderson (2006:7) as “a mono-clausal structure minimally consisting of a lexical verb element that contributes lexical content to the construction and an auxiliary verb element that contributes some grammatical or functional content to the construction”.2 The present investigation adopts this understanding of this term. Some comments should be offered on the database that constitutes the foundation for this study of auxiliary verb constructions in the languages of Africa. I have my own specific criteria for a maximal ideal sample in a typological study such as this, but it is informed by many different approaches to language sampling that have been offered in the literature (e.g., Bell 1978, Nichols 1986, Dryer 1989, 1992, 2009, Rijkhoff et al. 1993, Rijkoff and Bakker 1998, Perkins 2001, Blake 2001, Song 2001 just to name a African languages, tonally marked inflection is found not infrequently in Moru-Ma’di or Nilotic languages, and one most certainly does not want to exclude these languages nor these structures from the sets of those that express the grammaticalized functional categories that represent ‘inflection’ as usually understood. Furthermore, such functional elements can be fully dependent, partially integrated or independent phonologically from other parts of the construction (either the auxiliary verb and/or the lexical verb). Thus, it is compeletely irrelevant whether an obligatory functional inflectional exponent must be considered an affix or a clitic, etc., in the analysis of a particular language, as this has nothing to do with the functional semantic properties of the exponent, but rather with its phonological or phrasal prosodic properties. Thus I am hesitant to use the expression ‘morphologically encoded by a fully phonologically dependent segmental element’ although this is the only way to honestly formulate this, because such a phrase is both overly narrow as well as cumbersome, and anything else does not constitute ‘morphological’ encoding in a conventional or pre- theoretical understanding of that term. 2 Auxiliary verb is thus in some very broad sense a functional element, but may eventually drift semantically into an empty element that serves only as a placeholder of other (obligatory) grammatical or inflectional content as has happened in a number of languages, e.g., the South American language Jarawara (Dixon 2002). This is what has happened in various northern African languages like Zaghawa/Beria, Tama and Kanuri with a light verb stem (deriving from) ‘say’, as well as Fur and Aiki (also in Tama) with ‘do’ as the light verb stem; see sections 4.1 or 13 below for examples. Auxiliary verb constructions in the languages of Africa 3 few). Based on recent and on-going work of mine relating to the quantization of linguistic diversity and the threat thereto (Anderson and Harrison 2006, Anderson 2010, in preparation), I use a quasi-standard sampling level that I call the genetic unit, which is roughly equivalent to the Germanic or Romance language families. As such, I identify more relevant sampling levels than has been (until recently) traditional with regards to Africa, though more researchers appear to be moving in that direction (Güldemann 2008, Dimmendaal 2001a, 2008, Sands 2009). In addition to the largest possible number of genetic units that I sought representative data from, my sample also includes, where merited and possible, data from multiple members of the same genetic unit. This is because these genetic units display particularly noteworthy or robust and varied systems of auxiliary constructions, and not incorporating this kind of micro-variation within genetic units would have led to a less comprehensive and informative database. Thus, there are many languages in the database representing the large Bantu family, as well as multiple representatives of the Chadic and Nilotic families. By my reckoning there are over one hundred potential genetic units and unclassified languages to be used in a maximally representative typological linguistic sample of African languages. Other researchers naturally may have their own valid criteria for determining a different ideal number of sampling units in a maximally representative sample. I have data in this corpus from roughly ninety such genetic units. For investigating the structure of auxiliary verb constructions and verbal tense/aspect systems, the data currently available to me is of a type that is insufficient to be included in this sample from approximately a dozen of the genetic units in Africa. All but one of these are/were in central or west Africa, mainly in Nigeria, but also Cameroon, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, and Chad. These genetic units are Akpes, Akokoid and Ayere-Àhàn, all spoken in a compacts area in Nigeria, the barely remembered (possibly Kwa) language Dompo and the apparently now extinct and unclassified [M]Pre† of Ghana, the similarly named and likewise unclassified Mbre of Côte d’Ivoire, Dakoid languages of the Nigeria/Cameroon border region, and the nearly extinct Jalaa–an unclassified language (or possible linguistic isolate) of Nigeria. The last three may represent genetic units that are remnants of a former fragmentation zone in western and central Africa (along with at least the lexical substrate in Kujargé, also not included in this sample) that pre-dates the various expansions of the component core and peripheral families of the Macro-Sudan Belt (Güldemann 2008; see 12 below). There are, of course, genetically unclassifiable languages in Africa as well, such as the Creole languages Sango or Kituba, or Pidgin varieties like Kenyan Pidgin Swahili, all three of which are included in the sample. Lastly, I have perhaps somewhat abitrarily excluded Meroïtic from this sample due to a 4 Studies in African Linguistics 40(1&2), 2011 low level of confidence in my ability to distinguish the relative merits of the various and quite different interpretations that have been offered of the materials from this extinct and still unclassified language of northeast Africa (Rilly 2010). The corpus represents approximately 500 different speech varieties coming from over ninety different genetic units of Africa, plus the three genetically unclassifiable languages mentioned above. This set of genetic units in my database includes the main representatives of the Nilo-Saharan phylum as traditionally understood: Saharan, Songhay, Fur, Berta, Kunama, Maban, Gumuz, Koman, Kuliak, Kado, the families of the East Sudanic stock: Daju, Jebel, Nera, Nilotic, Nubian, Nyimang, Surmic, Taman,
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