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Exploring Intensification: Synchronic, diachronic and cross-linguistic perspectives
Edited by Maria Napoli and Miriam Ravetto
[Studies in Language Companion Series 189] 2017
► pp. 79–98

Chapter 4
Noun classification in Kiswahili

Linguistic strategies to intensify or to reduce

| Università del Piemonte Orientale

The evaluation strategies in Kiswahili display an ambiguous status between inflection (as it was in Proto-Bantu, where classes 12–13, 19 expressed diminution, and classes 20–23 intensification) and derivation. In Modern Kiswahili these classes are lost, and the evaluative category arises by means of a highly productive derivational rule shifting a noun stem to another class: to class 5 for augmentatives, to class 7 for diminutives, because of the semantics of these classes.

The morpheme (−)ji-, originally the prefix marker of class 5, is actually admitted also within a word after another class prefix, sanctioning the birth of noun derivational morphology in Kiswahili: in most cases it has become a morpheme of intensification, but sometimes it can mark a change in size, either augmentative or diminutive.

Keywords: evaluation, intensification, diminution, Kiswahili, noun classes
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Noun class system in Kiswahili
  • 3.Noun classes in Kiswahili: Are they semantic or arbitrary?
    • 3.1The point of view of the scholars
    • 3.2The weight of diachrony
  • 4.Evaluation from inflection towards derivation
    • 4.1Inflection or derivation?
  • 5.The morpheme (-)ji- from class prefix to evaluation marker
    • 5.1 ji- as cl. 5 prefix
    • 5.2-ji- as evaluation affix
  • 6.Diminutives
    • 6.1 ki-ji-
  • 7.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 30 September 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.189.05cas
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