14 research outputs found
Pathos, Disguise and Mischief: A Celebration of the Underdog in Traditional Shona Literature
No full textTraditional Shona literature, which in the context of this article encompasses folktales, myths, and legends, as well as other oral art forms deploys devices such as pathos, disguise, and mischief, among others. Through these devices, preliterate Shona literature celebrates the struggle of the underdog to transcend the limitations imposed by their circumstances. Underdogs comprise such people as the sick, the old and the disabled, among others. This article seeks to describe the fantastic accomplishments of underdogs and demonstrate how they are delivered through the midwifery of pathos, disguise and mischief, which is carefully designed to offset the underdogs’ impoverishment in terms of wealth, health, looks, social influence and other attributes. Inter alia, the article demonstrates that the Shona worldview as expressed in traditional Shona literature is a democratic, facilitative space in which special laws of justice and retribution are deployed to catapult the underprivileged in their quest to reclaim their abused humanity.</jats:p
The noun concordance system: some remarks on nouns’ participation in Bantu languages syntactic structure
No full textNo Abstrac
Language use and the depiction of violence in pre-colonial Shona folk narratives
No full textDrawing illustrations chiefly from oral narratives, this article seeks to interrogate and dissect the imagining of violence in pre-colonial Shona society while paying special attention to the use of language of hatred, pain and injury therein. Language faithfully mirrors and gives away a society’s behavioural, spiritual, political, etc. construction. In view of the violence that has dogged Zimbabwe for several decades now, our point of departure is a polemical refutation of the traditionally held view that has one-sidedly idolised pre-colonial Shona society as peaceful and impliedly violence-free. While surely pre-colonial Shona society could never have been one marathon of violence, nevertheless, holding an analytical mirror to the past will reflect that the peaceful thesis does not constitute the whole truth either. The exaggerated image of a peaceful and innocent Shona society, we argue, was precipitated by a resurgent search for an African identity whose design was to reconnect with the past while countering the racist framing of blacks as a bloodthirsty lot to whose rescue the white man came. However folktales and romances, let alone pre-colonial history itself, betray, quite embarrassingly so for the one-sided view, as well as demonstrate that the Shona were not uniquely endowed with an incapacity for violence
Orature and Morpholexical Deconstruction as Lexicographic Archaeological Sites: Some Implications for Dictionaries of African Languages1
No full text<p>Abstract: This article takes a multidisciplinary approach to African lexicographic practice. It has as its primary premise the assumption that without words there can be no dictionaries to compile and discuss. Owing to this fact, the article focuses on a specific strategy for collecting words which belong in a special category of their own, namely archaic or obsolete words. Such words are important because of the need to mark them as such in any general purpose dictionary. Most, if not all dictionaries of African languages seem not to have this category, giving the misleading impression that there are no such words in African languages. Apart from digging up archaic or what we have also referred to as artefact words, the article also argues that the words have a substantial and intrinsic etymological value. Thus they can be used in specialised etymological dictionaries of African languages or even in standard general dictionaries. The multidisciplinary aspect resides in the methodology proposed for the recovery of archaic words. It is considered necessary that disciplines such as oral literature, oral history, historical linguistics and to a limited extent theoretical linguistics and computational linguistics, and, symbolically, archaeology and lexicography itself, be brought to bear on the subject of inquiry. The article is also an attempt at working out a method which African lexicographers can employ as an instrument to dig up artefact words for etymological and other such purposes. Hopefully the method can be refined further.</p><p>Keywords: ORATURE, MORPHOLEXICAL, DECONSTRUCTION, RECONSTRUCTION, ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES, LEXICOGRAPHY, AFRICAN LANGUAGES, DICTIONARIES, DIACHRONIC, SYNCHRONIC, HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS, PROVERBS, RIDDLES, IDIOMS, ORAL TRADITIONS, MNEMONIC, ETYMOLOGY, ARCHAIC, SHONA, DEVERBATIVE NOUNS, VERB ROOT, SEMANTIC, ARTEFACT WORDS</p><p>Opsomming: Mondelinge literatuur en morfoleksikale dekonstruksie as leksikografiese argeologiese terreine: 'n Aantal implikasies vir woordeboeke van Afrikatale. Hierdie artikel het 'n multidissiplin?re benadering tot die leksikografiese praktyk in Afrikatale. Dit het as prim?re uitgangspunt die veronderstelling dat dit sonder woorde onmoontlik is om woordeboeke op te stel en te bespreek. Op grond van hierdie feit fokus die artikel op 'n spesifieke strategie vir die versameling van woorde wat tot 'n kategorie van hul eie behoort, naamlik arga?ese of verouderde woorde. Sulke woorde is belangrik vanwe? die noodsaaklikheid om hulle as sulks te merk in enige woordeboek vir algemene gebruik. Die meeste, indien nie alle woordeboeke van Afrikatale nie skyn nie hierdie kategorie te h? nie, wat die misleidende indruk wek dat daar nie sulke woorde in Afrikatale is nie. Behalwe om arga?ese, of waarna ons ook as artefakwoorde verwys het, op te diep, word daar ook in hierdie artikel geredeneer dat die woorde 'n wesenlike en werklike etimologiese waarde het. Daarom kan hulle in gespesialiseerde etimologiese woordeboeke van Afrikatale of selfs in algemene standaardwoordeboeke gegee word. Die multidissiplin?re aspek l? in die voorgestelde metodologie vir die terugvind van arga?ese woorde. Dit word as noodsaaklik beskou dat vakgebiede soos mondelinge literatuur, mondelinge geskiedenis, historiese linguistiek, in 'n beperkte mate teoretiese linguistiek en rekenaarlinguistiek, en, simbolies, argeologie en leksikografie self, aangewend word by die onderwerp van ondersoek. Hierdie artikel is ook 'n poging om 'n metode uit te werk wat leksikograwe van Afrikatale as 'n instrument kan gebruik om artefakwoorde op te diep vir etimologiese en ander doeleindes. Hopelik kan die metode verder verfyn word.</p><p>Sleutelwoorde: MONDELINGE LITERATUUR, MORFOLEKSIKAAL, DEKONSTRUKSIE, ARGEOLOGIESE TERREINE, LEKSIKOGRAFIE, AFRIKATALE, WOORDEBOEKE, DIACHRONIES, SINCHRONIES, HISTORIESE LINGUISTIEK, SPREEKWOORDE, RAAISELS, IDIOME, MONDELINGE TRADISIES, MNEMONIESE WOORDE, ETIMOLOGIE, ARGA?ES, SJONA, DEVERBATIEWE SUBSTANTIEWE, WERKWOORDELIKE STAM, SEMANTIES, ARTEFAKWOORDE</p>
A preliminary description of the syntax and morphology of interrogatives in the Shona language
No full textThis article describes some idiosyncratic properties of interrogative particles in the Shona language from the view point of their morphological and syntactic behaviour. This arises out of the observation that in syntactic structure, there are instances in which interrogatives can substitute for the nouns about whose enquiry they are made. It would make an interesting study to determine the extent to which interrogatives can stand as surrogate nouns. Shona marks for interrogatives using both segmental and supra-segmental strategies. The following are examples of segmental interrogative markers: sei ‘why’, ko? ‘Why/how come’, saka? ‘so?’, -ei? ‘why?’, chii? ‘what?’, ani? ‘who?’, -i? ‘what/when/which?’, ngani? ‘How many?’. Supra-segmentals generally use the strategy of placing high tone marking on specific segments. Moreover certain interrogatives can simultaneously combine within the same interrogative sentence, chiefly for emphasis. At the same time, there are some interrogatives that are not compatible with each other. In addition, interrogatives seem to have semantic features that are generally associated with [±Human], [±Count], [±Affirmation], etc., in addition to the common feature [+Interrogative]. This paper sought to examine how these features influence the syntax of interrogative sentences in terms of the compatibility and incompatibility properties of certain interrogative particles as well as determine how the same features pro-actively and ‘intelligently’ select the range of potential answers in the Shona language
The metamorphosis of predicate extensions: A morpholexical study of verb extensions in the Shona language
No full textThis article explores the behaviour of verb extensions in the Shonalanguage from historical linguistics and empirical points of view. Itsmain thrust is based on two related arguments. The first is that notevery extension can pair with every other verb in the language. I referto the ability or otherwise of a given extension to couple and derivea meaningful construction with a verb as its semantic compatibility.The corollary is that there are semantic compatibility constraints thatneed to be accounted for, which impede a free-for-all co-occurrence ofverbs and extensions in the language. The second related argument isthat different extensions exhibit varying levels of semantic compatibilitywith verbs, a phenomenon that I refer to as productivity. The mainargument of this article is therefore that the interfacing of semanticcompatibility and productivity provides clues to groups of extensions’relative morpholexical evolution in the language
