MORPHOLOGICAL STRUCTURE IN KIHAYA

The term morphology is generally attributed to the Germany attributed to the German poet, novelist, playwright, and philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 – 1832), who coined it early in the nineteenth century in a biological context. Its etymology is Greek: Morph – means “shape, form”, and morphology is the study of form or forms. In linguistics that deals with words, their internal structure, and how they are formed. (Anoroff & Fudeman, 2011). According to Lieber (2009), morphology is the study of word formation, including the ways new words are coined in the languages of the world, and the way forms of words are varied depending on how they’re used in sentences.

Morphemes are the4 minimal meaningful units that are used to form words. Some of the morphemes in Kihaya can stand alone as words: Ngemu “banana tree”, mae “mother”, /“toe”, tata “father”, ishoke “hair”. These are called free morphemes. The morphemes that cannot stand alone are called bound morphemes. For example Tu-, -la-, -gend- and –a in “Tulagenda” meaning “We shall go”. Bound morphemes come in different varieties. Those in above are prefixes Tu-, la- and suffixes –a; the former are bound morphemes that come before the base of the word, and the latter bound morphemes that come after the base. Together, Prefixes and suffixes can be grouped together as affixes. Lieber (2009). New lexemes that are formed with prefixes and suffixes on a base are often referred to as derived words, and the process by which they are formed as derivation. The base is the semantic core of the word to which the prefixes and suffixes attach. It can also be in bound – base category Lieber (2009) pg: 33. For example, genda- “go” is the base of olugendo “jouney”, -l- the bound base of “eat” is the base of omulyo “meal”.

Number of morphemes involved in Bantu Verb templates

The Bantu very template described in many studies suggests that there are about 8 t 15 morpheme slots, which may be represented as follows:

Slot	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
Meaning	Pre- initial	Initial	Post inial	Tense marker	OM	Verb	Base	Final	Post final
Morpheme	NEG	SM	NEG	Tense	Objective marker	Root	Verb ext	Mood aspect NEG

Table 1: Bantu verb template (Nurse & Philipson 2003).

Slop	Meaning	Morpheme	Word formed	Gloss
0	Verb root	U root	Gend – a	Go
1	Verb extensions (VEXT)	Ca – causative (es) Apl – applicative (er) Ree – reciprocal (an) Pas – passive (erer) Stat – stative (ek) Rev- reversive	Gend – es –a Gend – er- a Gend – and – a Reeb- w- a Gend – erer- a Gend – ek- a Teck – uur – Also possible: Gen –es – ibw- a Gend-an-is-aGend-an-is-ibw-a	Make to go Go for Go with Be seen Go specifically for Remove  (one stack)
2	Verb and (VE)	Ind – indicative (A) Subj – subjunctive (e) Past – past tense (ire)	y-aa-gend-a n-gend-e n-genz-ire	He has gone May I go I went
3	Post final	Pfd1 – adverbial (ho, yo, mu) Pf2 – mitigator (ga)	Gen-a-yo Ti-n-ka-gend-a-ga	Go there I have never gone
4	Aspect maker	Asp – reflective (e)	Ku-gend-a	to see oneself
5	Object pronouns	Op1 – ob pronouns (18) Op2 – ob pronouns (18)	Ba-gend-e Mu-mu-n-reeb-er-e	Let them go You see him for me
6	Tense / aspect markers	Inf – infinitive Hab – habitual Pf – perfective (aa) Ff – far future (rea / rya) Rp – remote past (ka)	Ku-ta-gend-a n-gend-a n-ka-gend-a n-da-gend-a n-ka-gend-a	To go I go (every day) I have gone I will go (far future) Went (last year)
7	Negation marker	Ng2 – negative (ta)	Ku-ta-gend-a	Not to go
8	Subject maker	Sp-sb. Pronouns (18)	n-aa-gend-a tw-a-gend-a	I have gone We have gone
9	Aspect marker	Asp – progressive (ni)	Ni-ba-gend-a	They are going (now)
10	Negation marker	Neg 2 – negative 1(ti)	T-baa-gend-a	They have not gone

Word structure

When you divide up a complex word into morphemes, as in (i),  it’s easay to get the impression that words are put together like the beads that make up a necklace – one after the other in a line.

(i)                 Bu+shom+el+o = bushomelo. (Place for reading)

But morphologists believe that words are more like onions than like necklaces: Onions are make up to layers from innermost to outermost. Consider a word like unhappiness. We can bread this down into its component morphemes bu-shom-el-o but given what we learned above about the properties of the prefix bu- and the suffisxed –el, -o, and we know something more about the way in which this word is constructed beyond just its constituent parts. We know that bu- (place indicative) must first go on the base shomelo.

Kihaya has the typical characteristics of the template morphology outlined by Spencer. As noted by Spencer (1991), template morphology poses a computational challenge because t represents a morphological system in which a verb stem or root consists of one or more obligatory affix (es) as well as a set of optional affix (es). Such combinations of morphemes make automatic analysis difficult because it is first necessary to identify the affixes attached to the root required to compose specific verb forms.

Adding to the  number of morphemes involved , subject and object pronominal markers display agreement with the classes of the  nouns to which they refer. If the subject is not otherwise indicated, they serve as subject and object pronouns. These are therefore as many as 18 subjects and object pronoun markers in each case. In addition, R-R are type 3 languages according to the classification provided by Maho (2007). Which means that they may have two or more objects in a given construction. Specific evidence from Kihaya confirms that these languages can have a double object construction, which means that a verb can have a marker for both direct and indirect objects in the same construction. An example in this case is mu-mu-n-kwat-ire (you grab/hold him for me), where m-n indicates both direct objects representing him and me. This will add to the number of morphemes, increasing the challenge that the morphological multitude poses.