Yuning Shen’s study deals with transitivity and verb valency in Kiswahili using a corpus-based approach. The author relates the methods used and results with previous studies dealing with the same topic, namely Whiteley (1968), Abdulaziz (1996) and Olejarnik (2005). He uses the meta-function-rank-matrix (MF/R) from Chinese to point out the fallacy of adopting such a matrix from one language and imposing it on another. Using the parts of speech annotation TreeTagger (Schmid 1994, 1995) to examine previous verb classifications, the author discusses the divergent use of concepts such as verb radicals, verb stems and verb bases as used in different theoretical approaches. / Kitabu hiki cha Yuning Shen kinahusu uelekezi na mpangilio wa vitenzi katika lugha ya Kiswahili kwa kutumia mkabala wenye msingi wa kopasi ya kiisimu. Mwandishi anazihusisha mbinu zilizotumika na matokeo yake na kazi za utafiti zilizotangulia zilizoshughulikia mada hiyo yaani Whiteley (1968), Abdulaziz (1996), na Olejarnik (2005). Shen anatumia mkabala wa mpangilio wa viwango tofauti vya matumizi ya lugha (meta-function-rank-matrix, MF/R) iliyotumika kwa utafiti wa lugha ya Kichina kwa ajili ya kuonesha udhaifu wa mkabala huo kwani unaiga mfumo unaofanya kazi katika lugha moja na kuutumia kwa lugha nyingine bila kuzingatia kuwa lugha ni tofauti. Kwa kutumia njia ya matawi ya kutenganisha vipashio vya maneno (TreeTagger) iliyobuniwa na Schmid (1994, 1995) kwa lengo la kuchunguza njia za awali za kuainisha vitenzi, mwandishi anayajadili matumizi yanayotofautiana ya dhana mbalimbali kama vile viini vya vitenzi, mashina ya vitenzi, na mizizi ya vitenzi jinsi ambavyo zimetumika katika mikabala mbalimbali ya kinadharia.

Recently we have seen the appearance of an interesting and provocative book on the Swahili. This book, by Ali Amin Mazrui and Ibrahim Noor Shariff (1994), takes a serious look at the question of Swahili identity and origins. This paper has at least two goals. One is to help define the nature of the debate about origins, and in so doing I will explicate and critique the Mazrui and Shariff hypothesis. The second is to reiterate the theme of the study of Swahili by Derek Nurse and the present author (1993), entitled Swahili and Sabaki · A Linguistic History (hereafter N&H). The linking of Swahili and Sabaki in the title was deliberate: the history of Swahili is inextricably intertwined with that of Sabaki and we cannot speak of the former without direct reference to the latter. The paper is divided into several sections. The first reviews the position taken by Mazrui and Shariff, the second discusses the view of N&H, implicit in their work on Sabaki, that Swahili is an integrated development from its Afiican heritage, the Sabaki languages. Finally, a critique of the Mazrui and Shariff hypothesis will conclude the paper.

Kiswahili has many ways to express different relations that may hold between two events occurring at the same time. In this paper I examine and contrast the meanings of two types of verbal forms: those with the class 16 relative concord marker -po- and those with the tense marker -ki-. All examples are taken from a single small novel. I conclude that forms with PO tell us where or, more frequently, when something else occurred, whereas events presented in the KI-tense describe the situation existing at the time of some other event (`situative´). When that other event is non-factual the situation presented in the KI-tense expresses a condition. Elsewhere, the situation presented in the KI-tense may be backgrounded (in the discourse analysis sense of the term), but it may also be the main event that is hidden behind a more superficial situation (pace Contini-Morava 1989).

Swahili has a larger inventory of (more or less \"basic\") colour terms than most Bantu languages. The aim of this article is to present this colour terminology and to point out semantic, syntactic and morphological divergences. We also look at the etymology of the various colour terms and try to establish a chronology of the growth (and decline?) of Swahili colour terminology.

In this paper I discuss the distribution of the so-called stem marker -ku- in Swahili, which is found with some, mostly monosyllabic verbs when used with certain tense morphemes. After introducing the data, I show that there are three potential analyses to explain the data, which I discuss in turn. Two of these analyses are phonological in nature and relate the distribution of -ku- to stress assignment. The first stress related analysis, which I call the `prevent-stress`rule is popular in textbooks and teaching manuals of Swahili (e.g. Ashton 1944, Russell 1996, Maw 1999), but turns out to be wrong. According to the second, more satisfactory stress rule, first proposed by Meinhof (1910a, 1910b, 1933), -ku- is deleted throughout except in stressed syllables and before vowels. While this analysis provides a sufficient diachronic account of the distribution of -ku-, I provide an alternative synchronic analysis, according to which the distribution of -ku- results from a number of alternative lexical entries for the relevant verbs.

Kiswahili hat ein doppeltes System der nominalen Klassifikation. Das erste System ist das aus dem Bantu (Niger-Congo) bekannte System der konkordierenden nominalen und \"pronominalen\" Präfixe; das zweite, jüngere System gründet sich auf das Bedeutungsmerkmal [belebt]. Die grammatische Kategorie NUMERUS (SINGULAR::PLURAL) gilt nur im zweiten System; innerhalb des ersten Systems ist die Bildung der Nominalpaare, z .B. mtulwatu, ein derivationeller Prozeß und bezieht Konkordanz sich ausschlieBlich auf die Kategorie KLASSE.

This paper presents a description of sentential negation in Kiswahili and attempts a partial analysis of sentential negation in Kiswahili within the Principles and Parameters framework, in particular, following Pollock\''s (1989) proposal to split IP into several functional categories including NegP. The main claim is that negation mruking in Kiswahili is an instance of negation projection, NegP. The main evidence for this is found in relative clauses and conditional clauses where negation blocks I -to-C movement. The paper is organized into 5 sections. Basic theoretical assumptions are outlined in Section 1. Section 2 presents a description of the basic facts about four strategies of expressing sentential negation in Kiswahili and highlights problems that the data raise. Section 3 discusses the interaction between negation and relative marker. In Section 4, the location of NegP in IP is proposed. Section 5 presents some general conclusions and summarizes questions for further research.

The aim of this paper is to show that Swahili has several strategies to resolve verbal agreement with conjoined noun phrases. In section 2, I give a brief summary of the situation as depicted in grammatical descriptions of Swahili. I then present a number of examples - mainly taken from Muhammed Said Abdulla`s (1976) novel Mwana wa Yungi hulewa - illustrating different strategies of agreement with conjoined NPs. In section 4, I present an analysis of one of the strategies discussed and argue that the choice of different strategies is not only based on dialect or speaker variation, but rather can be related to information structure and the dynamics of interpretation.

This article discusses one particular issue of Swahili standardization. which is, in Kiswahili Sanifu, the correct concordial agreement to be applied to the lexeme -ingine (‘other’)? Should it be treated like an adjective, as ‘classical’ works in Swahili grammar claim as well as current educational books do? How can efforts in favour of standardization comply with the appearance of different variants of concordial agreement?

In recent years, the Bantu object affix that is commonly known as the object marker (OM) has attracted considerable debate regarding its status in generative grammar. One view takes the OM to be an incorporated pronoun (see for example, Bresnan and Mchombo 1987; Bresnan 1993). Their analysis is based mainly on the contrast between object marking and subject marking. The subject marker (SM), they point out, behaves as an agreement marker while the object marker behaves like a bound pronoun, freeing the noun from word order restrictions, permitting contrastive focus like a bound pronoun, and permitting non-local anaphoric relations. The other view takes OM to be an agreement marker which licenses a null object (see for example, Bergvall 1987; Kinyalolo 1991; Ngonyani 1996). In this paper I take the second position and, on the basis of Kiswahili constructions in which the lexical object is not realized, I argue that a null object analysis is consistent with VP ellipsis facts, idiom chunks, and co-occurrence between OM and the lexical object. It is consistent with the general analysis of agreement as instantiation of Spec-Head relation (Chomsky 1986a, Kinyalolo 1991). I demonstrate using the elliptical constructions that the verb moves to an Inf-position.