Perfectives and perfects and pasts, oh my

On the semantics of -ILE in Bantu

Bibliographic Data

ID22334154
AuthorsRobert Botne (corresponding author), Robert Dale Olson Botne
Year2010
Volume16
Issue1
Pages31-64
Publication date2010-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAfricana Linguistica (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2033-8732 • E-ISSN: 2034-8436
PublisherPERSEE Program (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.3406/aflin.2010.987
OpenAlexW2976496983
LanguageEN
Citations received8

The widespread Bantu verb suffix -ILE manifests a variety of temporal notions across the Bantu domain, ranging from perfective aspect to perfect to past tense. The most common function assigned to -ILE seems to be Perfect (or Anterior in some accounts) marker. In this paper, the author proposes a detailed analysis differentiating perfective and perfect, demonstrating through the analysis of -ILE use in four languages – Luwanga and Lusaamia, and Rutooro and Runyoro– that -ILE is a type of perfective (not perfect !) marker that developed into a tense marker in some languages. The analysis distinguishes resultative from completive perfective uses, showing how the paths of development from earlier stages to the modern languages differed in the two sets of languages, and differ from the developmental path set out by Bybee, Perkins, and Pagliuca (1994)

Bantu languages · Infinitive · Linguistics · Morpheme · Resultative · Suffix · Verb · History · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Mathematics · Multilingual Education and Policy · Philosophy · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation

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