Wikisida, AF1211 V23 Typologi och språkliga strukturer i afrikanska språk: Lesson 7 Tense, aspect and mood/modality

Wikisida
2022-10-28T07:28:28+02:00

Welcome to the last module of the course! We will now focus on the verb phrase and other aspects of the clause. In this lesson, we will give attention to tense, aspect and mood distinctions.

A. From our main textbook - Velupillai: An introduction to linguistic typology

Chapter 8 Verbal categories.

Here are study questions for sections 8.1-8.3 ; for section 8.4 ; for section 8.5

Linguistic question of this lesson.

B. After the general introduction in Velupillai (although she also gives examples from African languages!), we will add some background to the often complex TAM systems on the continent. First of all, repeat section 4.3. of Tucker Childs, chapter 4 Morphology. The chapter discusses the morphology of the verb in several African languages but also goes into TAM.

Furthermore, we read this introduction to TAM in Bantu:

Nurse, Derek and Maud Devos. 2019. Aspect, Tense and Mood. In Koen Bostoen, Mark L. Van De Velde, Derek Nurse and Gérard Philippson (eds): The Bantu languages, 204-236. London & New York: Routledge.

Following this, we read an article to illustrate the intersection of tense and modality:

Crane, Thera M. and Msuswa P. Mabena. 2019. Time, space, modality, and (inter)subjectivity: Futures in isiNdebele and other Nguni languages. South African Journal of African Languages 39:291–304.

C. Let's now zoom in on a specific issue discussed for Somali and other languages; i.e. the marking of tense on the nominal (you can skip sections 3 and 4):

Lecarme, Jacqueline. 2012. Nominal tense. In Robert I. Binnick (ed.) The Oxford handbook of Tense and Aspect: Oxford handbooks online.

See the further references in this chapter if you want to read more on the issue.

Instead of an exercise, we will discuss the chapter on nominal tense by Lecarme.