A Grammatical Overview of Lingala: Revised and Extended Edition

329 Pages·2020·3.191 MB·English

by  Meeuwis, Michael

A Grammatical
OverView of Lingâla
MichaelMeeuwis
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LINCOM Studies in African Linguistics
LINCOM Studies
in African Linguistics
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A Grammatical
OverView of Lingâla
Revised and Extended Edition
MichaelMeeuwis
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2020
LINCOM GmbH
ISBN 978 3 96939 004 7
LINGÁLA | 1

Preface

In the years following the publication of the first edition of my Lingála grammar with
Lincom in 2010 (A Grammatical Overview of Lingála, Lincom Studies in African
Linguistics 81), I discovered that a good number of items deserved to be treated
differently, and that features and structures that I had left uncovered needed to be
included in the analyses. Among these are specific features of Lingála’s nominal
morphology, some issues of form and use of the demonstratives, relativizers, and
quantifiers, properties of the verbal morphosyntax, the syntax of single clauses and
clause combinations, and codeswitching constraints.

Also, this new and enlarged edition offers more examples to illustrate the
grammatical features and to buttress the analyses than was the case in the first
edition, and, forthatmatter, much more examples c ulled from corpora.

Over these past ten years, I have also been able to further my investigations into the
sociohistorical background of Lingála, allowing me to significantly expand, and where
necessary revise, my description of the history of the language on the basis of newly
discovered sources.

I wish to thank all my colleagues in Bantu and wider linguistics and all my fellow
Lingála scholars for the stimulating exchanges we have had. I particularly wish to
express my gratitude to my students, who continue to force me to explain every
grammatical structure and every sociohistorical particularity in as precise terms as
possible. Above all my indebtedness goes to all the native speakers of Lingála, in
particular but not only thos e who have made this project possible.
2 | LINGÁLA
LINGÁLA | 3

Abbreviations and symbols used

In the linguistic examples:
Corp.: examples culled from corpora of actual language use
Corp.; Elic.: features found in corpora and degrees of (non-)grammaticality
subsequently tested through examples elicited from native speakers
Elic.: examples elicited from native speakers
Ling.-constr.: examples constructed by the linguist [very exceptionally used]

In the glosses (largely based on Leipzig rules):
*: ungrammatical
1, 2, 3 used in glosses of verb forms and pronouns: first person, second person, third
person
1, 2, 3, 4 etc. used in glosses of nouns: noun class membership
AN: animate
APPL: applicative
CAUS: causative
COMP: complementizer
CONN: connective
COP: copula
DEM1: proximal demonstrative
DEM2: medial-distal demonstrative
DEM3: anaphoric-only demonstrative
DEM4: distal demonstrative
EXT: extensive
FOC: focalizer
FV: the expletive verb final vowel -a
GER: gerund
H: high tone
HAB: habitual
IMP: imperative
INAN: inanimate
INDF.SPEC: indefinite-specific
INF: infinitive
4 | LINGÁLA

INTERR: interrogative
INTR: intransitive
L: low tone
NEUT: neuter
NP: noun phrase
NREL: nominal-relative (a.k.a. “demonstrative-relative”)
PASS: passive
PST: past
PST1: past 1
PST2: past 2
PL: plural
PRO: pronominalization of noun phrase head (5.4.2.1, among others)
PROGR: progressive
PRS: present
PRS1: present 1
PRS2: present 2
PRS.PROGR: present progressive
R: root, i.e. the most basic, unanalyzable, verbal bound morpheme expressing lexical
meaning
REC: reciprocal
REFL: reflexive
REL: relative
REV: reversive
SBJV: subjunctive
SG: singular
SM: subject marker
Stem: verbal base followed by a TAM suffix or the final vowel
TA: tense-aspect
TAM: tense-aspect-modality
TR: transitive
V: vowel
VB: verbal base, i.e. a root followed by one or more extensions. A verbal base
followed by a TAM suffix or the final vowel is called “stem”.
VP: verb phrase
LINGÁLA | 5

C O N T E N T S

ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS USED 3

1. THE LANGUAGE, ITS SPEAKERS, ITS HISTORY 15
1.1. Geographical and demographical situation 15
1.2. Historical background and ensuing sociolinguistic variation 18
1.2.1. 1881 - 1900 18
1.2.2. 1900 - 1960 24
1.2.2.1. Bangala splitting into Lingála and Bangala 24
1.2.2.2. Lingála during the rest of Belgian colonization 29
1.2.3. 1960 - today 30
2. PHONOLOGY AND TONOLOGY 35
2.1. Vowels 35
2.1.1. Five vowel phonemes 35
2.1.2. u for o 36
2.1.3. Length, orality 38
2.1.4. Remnants of vowel harmony 38
2.1.5. Sequences of vowels: diphthongs, hiatus, and hiatus resolution 39
2.2. Consonants and semi-consonants 45
2.3. Phonotactic constraints 47
2.4. Tones 48
2.4.1. H and L 48
2.4.2. Anticipatory (“leftward”) tone spreading 49
2.4.3. Tone stability 50
2.4.4. Downstep 51
2.4.5. Tonal processes in reduplicated stems 51
6 | LINGÁLA

2.5. Issues of Lingála orthography 52
3. NOUN 55
3.1. Noun class system 55
3.2. Some noun classes and their prefixes in detail 58
3.2.1. Variations in prefix form 58
3.2.2. Classes 1 and 1a: About animacy, humans, animals 58
3.2.3. Class 3: Homophony with class 1 60
3.2.4. Class 6: Non-count mass nouns 60
3.2.5. Class 7a: Loanwords, glossonyms, manners 60
3.2.6. Class 8: Frequentatives 62
3.2.7. Classes 9 and 10: Ø- and ba- 63
3.2.8. Class 11: Count nouns and non-count abstract nouns 64
3.2.9. Class 14: Non-count abstract nouns, non-count event nouns, gerunds 65
3.2.10. Class 15: Infinitives and verb nominalization 66
3.3. Plural formation 68
3.3.1. Plural formation by class transfer 68
3.3.2. Plural formation with ba- in prefix stacking 68
3.3.2.1. Manifestation 68
3.3.2.2. ba- with count nouns 69
3.3.2.3. ba- with non-count mass nouns 70
3.3.2.4. ba- with non-count abstract nouns 72
3.3.2.5. A future for ba- as generalized plural marker? 72
3.3.3. Associative plural and simulative plural 73
3.3.4. Pluralization avoidance for measurement nouns 74
3.4. Noun derivation 77
3.4.1. Deverbal derivation 77
3.4.1.1. Formal characteristics 77
3.4.1.2. Deverbative nouns followed by objects 79
3.4.2. Denominal derivation 80
3.4.2.1. Class transfer through prefix substitution 80
3.4.2.2. Prefix stacking with ki- 80