Locative prepositions in Runyakitara

From TypeCraft

Beermann, D. and Allen Asiimwe (2008) Locative prepositions in Runyankitara - A study in Bantu

Keywords: lexical semantics, spatial semantics, prepositional phrases, locative expressions, prepositional functions, attribute-value matrices, meaning spaces

Runyakitara provides a rich grammatical inventory for hosting spatial concepts. Next to three nominal class markers which encode deixis as well as topological notions, verbs may carry spatial suffixes. Also spatial nouns are used, some of which combine either with omu, corresponding to English in, or aha, which can mean on, at, near or around. Both omu and aha may occur in isolation as locative prepositions. Dependent on the grammatical context they can have several meanings. (1) illustrates the locative use of omu while (2) illustrates a partitive construction.

(1)

(2)

As already observed by Taylor 1985 omu and aha can undergo morphological changes. Taylor observes that extended prepositional forms occurs when the prepositions precede a pronominal or a proper noun. We further observed that extended forms occur when the locative phrase internal nominal is preceded by a demonstrative.

In our work on Runyakitara we have identified several senses for both prepositions; a table listing senses for omu is given below:

we use the abbreviation PALP.LVL to refer to palpability levels, a term used to characterize the tangibility of a reading.

From the perspective of Indo-European languages, the concept embodied by aha is clearly less familiar than that associated with omu. The latter, when used spatially, denotes an inside-location clearly delineated by the GROUND. Aha on the other hand refers to a place external to, but nevertheless included in the space conceptually related to the GROUND. Aha can mean on, at , near, or around and expresses a typological notion that seems to encompass several independent spatial concepts in e.g., English. Grounding an object by locating it in the vicinity or on top of another object without specifying a more exclusive place is to our knowledge not a concept lexicalized at least in the Germanic languages. Aha refers to a space which is only dimensioned by the fact that it is in some sense determined by the presence of the GROUND. A typical use of the preposition aha is given below with another example from the TypeCraft database:

For a complete list of examples browse TypeCraft.

For more examples from Runyakitara go to SEARCH FOR PHRASES and specify under LANGUAGE Runyankore-Rukiga.

The text was last updated: December 2009