Browsing by Author "Choti, Jonathan"

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    Descriptive And Theoretical Approaches To African Linguistics
    (2022-03-15) Sibanda, Galen; Ngonyani, Deo; Choti, Jonathan; Biersteker, Ann
    Descriptive and theoretical approaches to African Linguistics contains a selection of revised and peer-reviewed papers from the 49th Annual Conference on African Linguistics, held at Michigan State University in 2018. The contributions from both students and more senior scholars, based in North America, Africa and other parts of the world, provide a glimpse of the breadth and quality of current research in African linguistics from both descriptive and theoretical perspectives. Fields of interest range from phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics to sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, discourse analysis, language documentation, computational linguistics and beyond. The articles reflect both the typological and genetic diversity of languages in Africa and the wide range of research areas covered by presenters at ACAL conferences.
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    The Augment In Haya And Ekegusii
    (2022-03-29) Choti, Jonathan
    This article examines the behavior of the augment in Haya (E22) and Ekegusii (E42), two Bantu Zone E languages, revealing many similarities and a few differences between the Haya and Ekegusii augment. In both languages, morphosyntactic, semantic, and pragmatic requirements regulate the behavior of the augment. The common shape of the augment is a vowel (V, namely /a/, /e/, and /o/. Besides, Ekegusii has the CV shape in ri- and chi- of class 5 and 10, respectively. Augmented nouns in both languages are the default but are ambiguous between a specific and non-specific reading. In Haya and Ekegusii, the augment is not marked on proper names, most kinship terms, and vocative nouns because these pick out specific referents. Nouns used as adverbs of location, time, and manner omit the augment in both languages. The two languages require the augment in predicative and associative constructions. In complex nouns, both elements require the augment but in compound nouns, only the first is augmented in both languages. The two languages allow the augment in gerunds but not in infinitives. Most pronominals require the augment in the two languages. Haya and Ekegusii disallow the augment in interrogative and negative constructions, proverbs, and nouns modified by 'any' to signal non-specific reference. In both languages, affirmative declaratives require the augment. Emphatic nouns in topic and contrastive focus positions require the augment to mark emphasis and specificity even in negative contexts. These features of the augment in Haya and Ekegusii confirm that the so-called augment is actually a bound article.