The curious case of auxiliary -manya in Lwitaxo
Lwitaxo, one of the Luhya languages of Kenya, has an auxiliary verb of the form -many’a that occurs in compound constructions that express either a generic reading (“normally do V”) or a culminative reading (“ended up V-ing”). This verb is identical in form to the lexical verb -many’a ‘(come to) kno...
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| Formato: | article |
| Lenguaje: | EN FR |
| Publicado: |
LibraryPress@UF
2009
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| Materias: | |
| Acceso en línea: | https://doaj.org/article/d2890357a2b44485a34023f8bef7963f |
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| Sumario: | Lwitaxo, one of the Luhya languages of Kenya, has an auxiliary verb of the form -many’a that occurs in compound constructions that express either a generic reading (“normally do V”) or a culminative reading (“ended up V-ing”). This verb is identical in form to the lexical verb -many’a ‘(come to) know’. However, while there are attested cases of KNOW verbs grammaticalizing as habitual/generic auxiliaries, there are no such attestations of KNOW verbs grammaticalizing as indicators of culmination. The author proposes that auxiliary -many’a is the unique result of a convergence of factors—sound change, morphophonological analogy, and semantic reinterpretation—that led an original auxiliary, -mala ‘finish’, to shift in form to resemble lexical -many’a. |
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