Auxiliary Verb Constructions in Mankanya
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Auxiliary Verb Constructions in Mankanya Tim Gaved 576800 MA Linguistics This dissertation is submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of MA Linguistics of the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London). Date: 15 September 2014 Number of Words: 10,001 Declaration I have read and understood regulation 17.9 of the Regulations for students of the School of Oriental and African Studies concerning plagiarism. I undertake that all material presented for examination is my own work and has not been written for me, in whole or in part by any other person. I also undertake that any quotation or paraphrase from the published or unpublished work of another person has been duly acknowledged in the work which I present for examination. I give permission for a copy of my dissertation to be held for reference, at the School’s discretion. Tim Gaved 15 September 2014 i Acknowledgements My thanks go to all those who have made my time at SOAS so fruitful and interesting; to all the speakers Mankanya with whom I have worked over the years; and to my wife and family for the their support, particularly as I completed this dissertation. ii Abstract Mankanya is an under-described language spoken by about 75,000 people in Guinea-Bissau, Senegal and the Gambia. Tense, aspect and mood are mostly expressed in Mankanya by means of auxiliary verb constructions. This dissertation describes some of those structures, and looks at them in within the context of grammaticalisation, the processes whereby over time lexical items become functional items. iii iv Table of Contents 1. Introduction......................................................................................................................................1 2. Sociolinguistic background..............................................................................................................2 3. Methodology.....................................................................................................................................5 4. Language Overview..........................................................................................................................7 4.1. Phonology.................................................................................................................................7 4.2. Orthographic conventions.........................................................................................................9 4.3. Morpho-Syntax.........................................................................................................................9 5. Theoretical orientation....................................................................................................................16 6. Auxiliaries Verb Constructions in Mankanya.................................................................................21 6.1. Overview.................................................................................................................................21 6.1.1. Tense constructions.........................................................................................................21 6.1.2. Aspectual constructions...................................................................................................22 6.1.3. Modal constructions........................................................................................................24 6.2. Individual constructions in more detail..................................................................................25 6.2.1. Past – bi...........................................................................................................................25 6.2.2. Future tense – luŋ, ya, bi.................................................................................................27 6.2.3. Habitual – ji.....................................................................................................................34 6.2.4. Ingressive – do................................................................................................................36 6.2.5. Progressive, Obligative and Epistemic – wo...................................................................39 7. Complex Auxiliary Verb Constructions..........................................................................................43 8. Conclusion......................................................................................................................................46 9. Bibliography...................................................................................................................................48 10. Appendix – Abbreviations used in glosses...................................................................................50 v vi Auxiliary Verb Constructions in Mankanya Tim Gaved 576800 1. Introduction Mankanya is a language of Guinea-Bissau and the Casamance area of Senegal. Though there are about 75,000 speakers (Lewis, Simons, and Fennig 2013), it is under-described with the only published work being a study of the basic phonology and morphology (Trifkovic 1969). It is, however, officially recognised as a national language in Senegal, and in recent years there been active promotion of the language by both local and international organisations. In this dissertation I aim to increase the amount of available description by concentrating on a small part of the grammar – auxiliary verb constructions. Many tense, aspect and mode distinctions are made in Mankanya by the use of such constructions, and they show a range of different structures. They also reflect different stages of grammaticalisation, the observed process whereby a lexical item changes over time to become a grammatical marker. I hope that this work will be useful to those studying other Atlantic languages as well as those studying auxiliaries and grammaticalisation more broadly. I hope also that it will be in some way useful to the Mankanya themselves, and will be the first step in a more detailed description of the language. 1 Tim Gaved 576800 Auxiliary Verb Constructions in Mankanya 2. Sociolinguistic background According to the Ethnologue (Lewis, Simons, and Fennig 2013), Mankanya is a language spoken by approximately 75,000 people across the countries of Senegal, Guinea-Bissau and the Gambia. Mankanya is an exonym, and they call themselves bahula, the people of Hula, (the original name for their chief town which is now called Bula), and the language is referred to as uhula. A small number of Mankanya refer to themselves as bawuh, reflecting their origins in the town of Co1. Bula and Co are towns in the Cacheu region of Guinea-Bissau. However, over the years there has been a steady migration of Mankanya northwards. Trifkovic (1969:3) cites Carreira (1960) as putting the start of this migration in the first quarter of the 19th century. The same sources indicate that the migration was due to a number of causes: insufficient cultivable land, internal conflicts and abuse of power by the colonial authorities. The Mankanya first moved into southern Senegal, (the area known as the Casamance), particularly around Ziguinchor the regional capital, and eastwards along the southern bank of the River Casamance. Later they also moved into the Gambia. Like virtually all Senegalese languages, urban migration has additionally created Mankanya communities in most major urban centres. Mankanya has been in contact with Upper Guinea Creole, a Portuguese based creole, probably since its origins around the beginning of the 17th century (Kihm 1994:4). For over 400 years this creole has been the language of wider communication in what is now Guinea-Bissau and the Casamance area of Senegal. In the past 30 years Wolof has begun to take over that role in the Casamance. Mankanya had no widely accepted written form until recently. It is only in the last 20 years that an orthography was developed, resulting in Mankanya's official recognition as a “National Language” by the Senegalese government in 2005 (Republic of Senegal 2006). The Mankanya cultural association, Pkumel, has been running literacy classes (mostly in the Casamance and Guinea- 1 Bula/hula and Co[ko]/wuh may indicate a historical system of consonant mutation which no longer exists. 2 Auxiliary Verb Constructions in Mankanya Tim Gaved 576800 Bissau) since 2001 and a translation of the part of the Bible (Genesis and the New Testament) was published in 2014. Mankanya, along with Manjaku and Pepel, form a group of closely related languages, often referred to as Manjaku, the largest of the three. This group is part of the Atlantic family of languages, which in turn is part of the Niger-Congo phylum. Recent work by Segerer (2010) (and Personal Communication 22 May 2014) structures the Atlantic family as follows: Central Northern Southern In the Central group, all the languages apart from Bijogo were originally classified as part of the BAK group in earlier work e.g. Sapir (1971). The BAK group has the common feature that some version of the bak- morpheme appears as a marker of the third person plural. 3 Tim Gaved 576800 Auxiliary Verb Constructions in Mankanya Variation within Mankanya has not been formally described. Trifcovic (1969) treats Mankanya as one language without dialects. Anecdotally, Mankanya people say that there are only two dialects – the main one uhula, and a second minor one uwuh, spoken by Mankanya living in the region of Co. More significant differences are influences from the languages of wider communication. For example, code