The diachronic semantics of the Dissociative Past Completive construction in the Kikongo Language Cluster (Bantu)
The diachronic semantics of the Dissociative Past Completive construction in the Kikongo Language Cluster (Bantu)
复制标题
基刚果语群（班图语）分离过去完成结构的历时语义
DOI：
10.1515/flih-2018-0011
复制
发表时间：
2018
影响因子：
0.6
通讯作者：
K. Bostoen
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Sebastian Dom;Gilles;K. Bostoen
本文对中非刚果河口一带约40余种基孔戈语变体中的一种特殊时体形式，即所谓的 *-a-B-a结构的语义反映进行了研究。我们首先提出了一个详细的分析，这些同源结构在句子层面上的多种用途，以达到一个形式和语义重建的最新共同祖先的Kikongo语言集群，即原始Kikongo。分析从使用时体结构的语言表达的整体体意义出发。因此，我们还考虑了不同的体层，如词汇和语法体，状语和的士建设的贡献。通过讨论-a-B-a结构的多种用法，我们认为它的整体意义是复杂的，结合了时间和体语义。它还表明，一个词汇方面之间的区别与过渡与非过渡的时间结构的事态是至关重要的，以了解各种用途的-a-B-a结构。从方法论上讲，原始基孔戈的形式和语义重建是基于对大量现有数据源（其中一些已有几个世纪的历史）以及原始实地考察的彻底比较。在过去的半个世纪里，这种自下而上的方法在班图语语法重建中很少被采用。
Abstract This article aims to give a semantic study of the reflexes of one specific tense/aspect form, namely the so-called *-a-B-a construction, in a cluster of about 40-odd Kikongo language varieties spoken in a wide area around the mouth of the Congo River in Central Africa. We first present a detailed analysis of the multiple uses of these cognate constructions at sentence level, in order to arrive at a formal and semantic reconstruction for the most recent common ancestor of the Kikongo Language Cluster, namely Proto-Kikongo. The analysis departs from the overall aspectual meaning of the linguistic expression in which the tense-aspect construction is used. Therefore, we also take into consideration the contribution of different aspectual tiers, such as lexical and grammatical aspect, adverbials and taxis constructions. Through the discussion of the multiple uses of the -a-B-a construction, we argue that its overall meaning is complex, combining both temporal and aspectual semantics. It is furthermore shown that a lexical-aspect distinction between states-of-affairs with transitional versus non-transitional temporal structure is crucial in order to understand the various uses of the -a-B-a construction. Methodologically, the formal and semantic reconstruction to Proto-Kikongo are based on a thorough comparison of a multitude of existing data sources, some of which several centuries old, as well as original fieldwork. This bottom-up approach has rarely been pursued over the past half century in Bantu grammatical reconstructions.