This paper speculates about the origin of the overall use of the form iko in Inland Swahili. Its functional scope comprises predication, identification, location, existence, and association. In Standard Swahili, the primary function of iko is to express the locative relation of nouns belonging to noun class 4 or 9. For the expression of identification various other means are used. As Inland Swahili is mostly acquired as a second language it will be argued here that the functional expansion of iko might be due to the crosslinguistic influence of the first language. However, first languages, such as Maasai, exhibit a formal distinction between location and predication. A conceptual merger of both functions in the second language is more likely to occur when the first language contains only one obligatory copula expressing both concepts. This obligatory copula can be found in many Indo-European languages, e.g. English or Hindi. Until today Indians speaking Swahili are characterised by the frequent usage of iko, a fact which points to the view that the overall use of iko could be due to substrate influence of Hindi.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:DRESDEN/oai:qucosa.de:bsz:15-qucosa-97725 |
| Date | 30 November 2012 |
| Creators | Drolc, Ursula Maria |
| Contributors | Universität zu Köln, Institut für Afrikanistik, Universität Mainz, Institut für Ethnologie und Afrikastudien |
| Publisher | Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig |
| Source Sets | Hochschulschriftenserver (HSSS) der SLUB Dresden |
| Language | Swahili (individual language) |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | doc-type:article |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Swahili Forum; 11(2004), S. 171-177 |
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