David Barasa has a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Cape Town, and is a graduate of the University of Nairobi and Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology. His research is on the fields of Linguistics, with special reference to language documentation, phonology, morphology, language policy analysis, language contact and variation, and multilingualism. Address: Nairobi, Kenya
Communities in Western Kenya have over time used drums and drumming for education, emotional expr... more Communities in Western Kenya have over time used drums and drumming for education, emotional expression, aesthetics, communication, symbolic validation, condemnation, information, therapeutic, and religious rituals, contributing to the continuity and stability of culture. However, critical aspects of traditions and rituals around the drums are likely to be lost due to a lack of sufficient documentation and the dwindling social institutions for which they were initially known (such as traditional circumcision ceremonies). This article investigated the ritualistic nuances associated with Efumbo ‘the mystical Bukusu drum’. The article argues that there is a rich cultural expression of the rituals of the Bukusu manifested through the drum tradition. As such, Efumbo in the Bukusu community is played in various functions such as circumcision, weddings, funerals, invoking spirits of barrenness, and prayer sessions when a spirit possesses one. The documentation of Efumbo and the traditions ...
This study provides first-hand information on the cultural practices during the COVID-19 pandemic... more This study provides first-hand information on the cultural practices during the COVID-19 pandemic among communities in Western Kenya. The study highlights the differentiated impact COVID-19 had on cultural practices and the central role played by communities in building the response and recovery to the global crisis. The study examined how cultural community practices were conducted in the wake of COVID-19 with a view to engineering such practices to fit in the new normal while preserving salient components of cultural traditions and values among the Luhya and Luo communities. A cross-sectional survey research design was employed. FGDs and interview schedules were used to elicit data from forty (40) respondents. Sixty percent (60%) of the respondents were from Kakamega, 25% Siaya and 15 % from Bungoma Counties. The study established that cultural practices such as greetings; cultural gatherings such as funerals; cultural bull fighting, Isukuti performances and circumcision took plac...
Communities in Western Kenya have over time used drums and drumming for education, emotional expr... more Communities in Western Kenya have over time used drums and drumming for education, emotional expression, aesthetics, communication, symbolic validation, condemnation, information, therapeutic, and religious rituals, contributing to the continuity and stability of culture. However, critical aspects of traditions and rituals around the drums are likely to be lost due to a lack of sufficient documentation and the dwindling social institutions for which they were initially known (such as traditional circumcision ceremonies). This article investigated the ritualistic nuances associated with Efumbo ‘the mystical Bukusu drum’. The article argues that there is a rich cultural expression of the rituals of the Bukusu manifested through the drum tradition. As such, Efumbo in the Bukusu community is played in various functions such as circumcision, weddings, funerals, invoking spirits of barrenness, and prayer sessions when a spirit possesses one. The documentation of Efumbo and the traditions ...
Lutsotso verbs consist of more than one morpheme expressing a particular grammatical meaning. The... more Lutsotso verbs consist of more than one morpheme expressing a particular grammatical meaning. The various morphological affixes attached to the verb indicate agreement, tense, aspect and voice. Tense and aspect morphemes in Lutsotso follow the same order for all types of verb constructions. Although tense and aspect in Lutsotso are deeply intertwined, this paper focuses on tense only. The Lutsotso tense is divided into the present, past and the future. The past and the future are distributed in four degrees as follows: remote, intermediate, near and immediate. Since the verb is the unit of analysis in this paper, we first describe the basic verb form in Lutsotso. This will entail the verb root and other crucial aspects such as the final vowel and the infinitive form that influence it. We also give agreement in the feature, person, number, subject verb markers and object markers. Finally, tense forms in Lutsotso will be discussed beginning with the present, followed by the past and the future.
This paper analyses the inflectional category of aspect in Lutsotso, a dialect of the Oluluhya ma... more This paper analyses the inflectional category of aspect in Lutsotso, a dialect of the Oluluhya macro-language. Using descriptive approach, the paper establishes that there are a number of inflectional morphemes affixed on the verb root to express, e.g. person, number, tense, aspect and mood. Among these affixes, tense and aspect categories interact largely, hence, it is difficult to study one category without referring to the other. While tense and aspect are profoundly connected in Lutsotso, this paper only identifies and describes the inflectional form of aspect. Generally, aspect in Lutsotso relates to the grammatical viewpoints such as the perfective, imperfective and iterative forms. This includes the temporal properties of situations and the situation types as well. Aspect just like other grammatical categories such as tense, mood, person, agreement and number are important in understanding the grammar of Lutsotso.
This paper is about personal names given to Turkana children at birth, during the rite of passage... more This paper is about personal names given to Turkana children at birth, during the rite of passage to adulthood and throughout one's life. Following the lexical pragmatic theory according to Wilson (2003) and Carston (2002), the paper establishes the morphosyntactic features of the Turkana names, that is, the inflectional and derivational features. It also presents the semantics and pragmatics of selected personal and nicknames, and concludes that all Turkana names are meaningful, and context plays a major role in identifying their correct interpretation. Socio-cultural factors govern the pragmatic meaning of the names and how they convey messages. Thus, approximation, narrowing and metaphorical extension are some of the processes that bring out the meaning of names-drawn from context surrounding the birth.
VITAL RELATIONS IN THE METAPHORS OF COVID-19 IN LUKABARAS, 2022
Since the emergence of Covid-19 pandemic in late 2019, the metaphorical framing of this respirato... more Since the emergence of Covid-19 pandemic in late 2019, the metaphorical framing of this respiratory disease also known as the Corona Virus, has been manifested variedly in different social contexts and discourses. The pandemic offered an opportunity to explore the cultural framing of abstract concepts through conceptual mappings. Hence, the purpose of this article was to examine the extent to which vital relations accounted for the metaphors of Covid-19 pandemic in Lukabaras, a Bantu language spoken in Western Kenya. The study relied on the tenets of Conceptual Integrated Theory (CIT) to examine vital relations as one of the components in the cognitive operations in conceptual metaphors of Covid-19 in Lukabaras. The study established and described the following vital relations; Analogy, Disanalogy, Cause-Effect, Part-Whole, Identity, Uniqueness and Similarity. The findings also revealed that the most prevalent vital relation was Disanalogy. However, it was established that vital relations such as Intentionality, and Representation, Role, Time and Change were not present in the metaphors of Covid-19 in Lukabaras. Nevertheless, the study revealed that vital relations played a role in the metaphorical conceptualization of 83
This study provides first-hand information on the cultural practices during the COVID-19 pandemic... more This study provides first-hand information on the cultural practices during the COVID-19 pandemic among communities in Western Kenya. The study highlights the differentiated impact COVID-19 had on cultural practices and the central role played by communities in building the response and recovery to the global crisis. The study examined how cultural community practices were conducted in the wake of COVID-19 with a view to engineering such practices to fit in the new normal while preserving salient components of cultural traditions and values among the Luhya and Luo communities. A cross-sectional survey research design was employed. FGDs and interview schedules were used to elicit data from forty (40) respondents. Sixty percent (60%) of the respondents were from Kakamega, 25% Siaya and 15 % from Bungoma Counties. The study established that cultural practices such as greetings; cultural gatherings such as funerals; cultural bull fighting, Isukuti performances and circumcision took plac...
This paper analyses the inflectional category of aspect in Lutsotso, a dialect of the Oluluhya ma... more This paper analyses the inflectional category of aspect in Lutsotso, a dialect of the Oluluhya macro-language. Using descriptive approach, the paper establishes that there are a number of inflectional morphemes affixed on the verb root to express, e.g. person, number, tense, aspect and mood. Among these affixes, tense and aspect categories interact largely, hence, it is difficult to study one category without referring to the other. While tense and aspect are profoundly connected in Lutsotso, this paper only identifies and describes the inflectional form of aspect. Generally, aspect in Lutsotso relates to the grammatical viewpoints such as the perfective, imperfective and iterative forms. This includes the temporal properties of situations and the situation types as well. Aspect just like other grammatical categories such as tense, mood, person, agreement and number are important in understanding the grammar of Lutsotso.  
Journal of Linguistics and Foreign Languages, Jul 1, 2021
Ng’aturukana, a language spoken by the Turkana people of North Western Kenya, gets into contact w... more Ng’aturukana, a language spoken by the Turkana people of North Western Kenya, gets into contact with English through trade, education, among other fields. As a consequence, the borrowed words have to be assimilated, especially through vowel harmony to befit Ng’aturukana. Vowel harmony which was observed to be bidirectional (both progressive and regressive) under the rule-based Generative Phonology was problematic in rule ordering. Optimality Theory was the better option to account for the vowel harmony phenomenon noted in this paper. From the analyses, this paper reports three outcomes of Vowel Harmony in the borrowed words; firstly, regressive sharing of ATR feature was observed in situations where the root or suffixes ATR feature was stronger than the preceding root vowels. Secondly, both progressive and regressive ATR harmony simultaneously occur in situations where the root ATR was stronger than the preceding and following roots vowels. Lastly, some vowels manifested opacity where regressive ATR was blocked from spreading to the preceding vowels
Received: September 24, 2019 Accepted: October 27, 2019 Published: November 30, 2019 Volume: 2 Is... more Received: September 24, 2019 Accepted: October 27, 2019 Published: November 30, 2019 Volume: 2 Issue: 6 DOI: 10.32996/ijllt.2019.2.6.31 Lwidakho is a tonal language that lacks word stress; instead, the meaning of each syllable in a word is determined by the pitch at which it is pronounced. The language is different from Englisha stress timed languagewhich relies on syllable stress to determine the meaning of words. It is against this background that the paper commented the extent to which Lwidakho influences the ability to perceive and produce English word stress. of form three secondary school Lwidakho speaking students, in Ikolomani SubCounty, Kenya, using Transfer theory, the paper examines the role of Lwidakho on English word stress perception and production. The paper used descriptive research design to identify and obtain information on how Lwidakho affects the learning of English word stress perception and production. Using simple random sampling, the paper sampled out 144 fo...
The use of politeness strategies among Abiisukha is propelled by the cultural need to maintain cl... more The use of politeness strategies among Abiisukha is propelled by the cultural need to maintain close ties and relationship. When the relationship is not maintained, there will definitely be a communication breakdown (Billow & Krauss 1988). This occurs when one interactant feels offended and the partner does not mend the offense using a polite strategy. Generally, rules of interaction are like grammatical rules as they allow social members to perform their acts according to various mutual expectations and to understand each other by making a sense of features like apologizing, requesting or complimenting. Being sensitive to these acts in the course of interaction satisfies the feelings of the offended partner (Chomsky, 1990). In this paper, we present a pragmatic analysis of politeness strategies used by Abiisukha in local public administrative meetings. Firstly, we introduce the politeness strategies used by Lwisukha speakers in local public administrative meetings. Secondly, we exp...
This paper employs Deconstruction and Relevance theories to read literary meanings in the song &a... more This paper employs Deconstruction and Relevance theories to read literary meanings in the song "Gongo la Mboto" by Diamond Platnumz and Mrisho Mpoto. The paper focuses on suprasegmental features that mark the artistes' voice. This is because the style of singing and manner of articulation in songs and performance of oral poetry significantly shapes the meaning conveyed by the artiste in Bongo music. The analysis involves application of four basic steps; identification of the message, examination of how voice production techniques are applied during song production to shape the intended meaning, application of the theories to deduce implied meanings in the song, and finally explication of the literary value the song encompasses at audio level. This analysis responds to the growing concern to transcend literary criticism of songs as literary genres beyond the basic surface meaning. To focus on the meanings, the sound and melody determines the interpretation of the lyrics. This is a current trend which takes the advancement in media technology to define new vistas of criticism of literary meaning resulting from technologizing production and mediation of songs as literary discourses. Traditionally literary criticism of songs has tended to focus on the message conveyed in the lyrics with little attention to the sound and the effect it has on literary meaning.
This paper is an analysis of tense and aspect in Ateso, an Eastern Nilotic language. Ateso distin... more This paper is an analysis of tense and aspect in Ateso, an Eastern Nilotic language. Ateso distinguishes between past and non-past tenses: the past tense is marked by a low tone on the syllable peaks of the verb, while the non-past is marked by a high tone on the verb nucleus. With regard to aspect, it distinguishes between the following: imperfective, perfective, consecutive, perfect, habitual, and iterative. The first five aspects are marked morphologically by the morphemes -i, -it, ko-, aand -nene respectively. The iterative is marked by reduplication of the verb root. Since tone, tense and aspect are assigned differently in each of the TesoTurkana subgroups, it is important that they are analysed separately for a clear view of these concepts and how they are represented specifically in Ateso.
Received: September 24, 2019 Accepted: October 27, 2019 Published: November 30, 2019 Volume: 2 Is... more Received: September 24, 2019 Accepted: October 27, 2019 Published: November 30, 2019 Volume: 2 Issue: 6 DOI: 10.32996/ijllt.2019.2.6.31 Lwidakho is a tonal language that lacks word stress; instead, the meaning of each syllable in a word is determined by the pitch at which it is pronounced. The language is different from Englisha stress timed languagewhich relies on syllable stress to determine the meaning of words. It is against this background that the paper commented the extent to which Lwidakho influences the ability to perceive and produce English word stress. of form three secondary school Lwidakho speaking students, in Ikolomani SubCounty, Kenya, using Transfer theory, the paper examines the role of Lwidakho on English word stress perception and production. The paper used descriptive research design to identify and obtain information on how Lwidakho affects the learning of English word stress perception and production. Using simple random sampling, the paper sampled out 144 fo...
Communities in Western Kenya have over time used drums and drumming for education, emotional expr... more Communities in Western Kenya have over time used drums and drumming for education, emotional expression, aesthetics, communication, symbolic validation, condemnation, information, therapeutic, and religious rituals, contributing to the continuity and stability of culture. However, critical aspects of traditions and rituals around the drums are likely to be lost due to a lack of sufficient documentation and the dwindling social institutions for which they were initially known (such as traditional circumcision ceremonies). This article investigated the ritualistic nuances associated with Efumbo ‘the mystical Bukusu drum’. The article argues that there is a rich cultural expression of the rituals of the Bukusu manifested through the drum tradition. As such, Efumbo in the Bukusu community is played in various functions such as circumcision, weddings, funerals, invoking spirits of barrenness, and prayer sessions when a spirit possesses one. The documentation of Efumbo and the traditions ...
This study provides first-hand information on the cultural practices during the COVID-19 pandemic... more This study provides first-hand information on the cultural practices during the COVID-19 pandemic among communities in Western Kenya. The study highlights the differentiated impact COVID-19 had on cultural practices and the central role played by communities in building the response and recovery to the global crisis. The study examined how cultural community practices were conducted in the wake of COVID-19 with a view to engineering such practices to fit in the new normal while preserving salient components of cultural traditions and values among the Luhya and Luo communities. A cross-sectional survey research design was employed. FGDs and interview schedules were used to elicit data from forty (40) respondents. Sixty percent (60%) of the respondents were from Kakamega, 25% Siaya and 15 % from Bungoma Counties. The study established that cultural practices such as greetings; cultural gatherings such as funerals; cultural bull fighting, Isukuti performances and circumcision took plac...
Communities in Western Kenya have over time used drums and drumming for education, emotional expr... more Communities in Western Kenya have over time used drums and drumming for education, emotional expression, aesthetics, communication, symbolic validation, condemnation, information, therapeutic, and religious rituals, contributing to the continuity and stability of culture. However, critical aspects of traditions and rituals around the drums are likely to be lost due to a lack of sufficient documentation and the dwindling social institutions for which they were initially known (such as traditional circumcision ceremonies). This article investigated the ritualistic nuances associated with Efumbo ‘the mystical Bukusu drum’. The article argues that there is a rich cultural expression of the rituals of the Bukusu manifested through the drum tradition. As such, Efumbo in the Bukusu community is played in various functions such as circumcision, weddings, funerals, invoking spirits of barrenness, and prayer sessions when a spirit possesses one. The documentation of Efumbo and the traditions ...
Lutsotso verbs consist of more than one morpheme expressing a particular grammatical meaning. The... more Lutsotso verbs consist of more than one morpheme expressing a particular grammatical meaning. The various morphological affixes attached to the verb indicate agreement, tense, aspect and voice. Tense and aspect morphemes in Lutsotso follow the same order for all types of verb constructions. Although tense and aspect in Lutsotso are deeply intertwined, this paper focuses on tense only. The Lutsotso tense is divided into the present, past and the future. The past and the future are distributed in four degrees as follows: remote, intermediate, near and immediate. Since the verb is the unit of analysis in this paper, we first describe the basic verb form in Lutsotso. This will entail the verb root and other crucial aspects such as the final vowel and the infinitive form that influence it. We also give agreement in the feature, person, number, subject verb markers and object markers. Finally, tense forms in Lutsotso will be discussed beginning with the present, followed by the past and the future.
This paper analyses the inflectional category of aspect in Lutsotso, a dialect of the Oluluhya ma... more This paper analyses the inflectional category of aspect in Lutsotso, a dialect of the Oluluhya macro-language. Using descriptive approach, the paper establishes that there are a number of inflectional morphemes affixed on the verb root to express, e.g. person, number, tense, aspect and mood. Among these affixes, tense and aspect categories interact largely, hence, it is difficult to study one category without referring to the other. While tense and aspect are profoundly connected in Lutsotso, this paper only identifies and describes the inflectional form of aspect. Generally, aspect in Lutsotso relates to the grammatical viewpoints such as the perfective, imperfective and iterative forms. This includes the temporal properties of situations and the situation types as well. Aspect just like other grammatical categories such as tense, mood, person, agreement and number are important in understanding the grammar of Lutsotso.
This paper is about personal names given to Turkana children at birth, during the rite of passage... more This paper is about personal names given to Turkana children at birth, during the rite of passage to adulthood and throughout one's life. Following the lexical pragmatic theory according to Wilson (2003) and Carston (2002), the paper establishes the morphosyntactic features of the Turkana names, that is, the inflectional and derivational features. It also presents the semantics and pragmatics of selected personal and nicknames, and concludes that all Turkana names are meaningful, and context plays a major role in identifying their correct interpretation. Socio-cultural factors govern the pragmatic meaning of the names and how they convey messages. Thus, approximation, narrowing and metaphorical extension are some of the processes that bring out the meaning of names-drawn from context surrounding the birth.
VITAL RELATIONS IN THE METAPHORS OF COVID-19 IN LUKABARAS, 2022
Since the emergence of Covid-19 pandemic in late 2019, the metaphorical framing of this respirato... more Since the emergence of Covid-19 pandemic in late 2019, the metaphorical framing of this respiratory disease also known as the Corona Virus, has been manifested variedly in different social contexts and discourses. The pandemic offered an opportunity to explore the cultural framing of abstract concepts through conceptual mappings. Hence, the purpose of this article was to examine the extent to which vital relations accounted for the metaphors of Covid-19 pandemic in Lukabaras, a Bantu language spoken in Western Kenya. The study relied on the tenets of Conceptual Integrated Theory (CIT) to examine vital relations as one of the components in the cognitive operations in conceptual metaphors of Covid-19 in Lukabaras. The study established and described the following vital relations; Analogy, Disanalogy, Cause-Effect, Part-Whole, Identity, Uniqueness and Similarity. The findings also revealed that the most prevalent vital relation was Disanalogy. However, it was established that vital relations such as Intentionality, and Representation, Role, Time and Change were not present in the metaphors of Covid-19 in Lukabaras. Nevertheless, the study revealed that vital relations played a role in the metaphorical conceptualization of 83
This study provides first-hand information on the cultural practices during the COVID-19 pandemic... more This study provides first-hand information on the cultural practices during the COVID-19 pandemic among communities in Western Kenya. The study highlights the differentiated impact COVID-19 had on cultural practices and the central role played by communities in building the response and recovery to the global crisis. The study examined how cultural community practices were conducted in the wake of COVID-19 with a view to engineering such practices to fit in the new normal while preserving salient components of cultural traditions and values among the Luhya and Luo communities. A cross-sectional survey research design was employed. FGDs and interview schedules were used to elicit data from forty (40) respondents. Sixty percent (60%) of the respondents were from Kakamega, 25% Siaya and 15 % from Bungoma Counties. The study established that cultural practices such as greetings; cultural gatherings such as funerals; cultural bull fighting, Isukuti performances and circumcision took plac...
This paper analyses the inflectional category of aspect in Lutsotso, a dialect of the Oluluhya ma... more This paper analyses the inflectional category of aspect in Lutsotso, a dialect of the Oluluhya macro-language. Using descriptive approach, the paper establishes that there are a number of inflectional morphemes affixed on the verb root to express, e.g. person, number, tense, aspect and mood. Among these affixes, tense and aspect categories interact largely, hence, it is difficult to study one category without referring to the other. While tense and aspect are profoundly connected in Lutsotso, this paper only identifies and describes the inflectional form of aspect. Generally, aspect in Lutsotso relates to the grammatical viewpoints such as the perfective, imperfective and iterative forms. This includes the temporal properties of situations and the situation types as well. Aspect just like other grammatical categories such as tense, mood, person, agreement and number are important in understanding the grammar of Lutsotso.  
Journal of Linguistics and Foreign Languages, Jul 1, 2021
Ng’aturukana, a language spoken by the Turkana people of North Western Kenya, gets into contact w... more Ng’aturukana, a language spoken by the Turkana people of North Western Kenya, gets into contact with English through trade, education, among other fields. As a consequence, the borrowed words have to be assimilated, especially through vowel harmony to befit Ng’aturukana. Vowel harmony which was observed to be bidirectional (both progressive and regressive) under the rule-based Generative Phonology was problematic in rule ordering. Optimality Theory was the better option to account for the vowel harmony phenomenon noted in this paper. From the analyses, this paper reports three outcomes of Vowel Harmony in the borrowed words; firstly, regressive sharing of ATR feature was observed in situations where the root or suffixes ATR feature was stronger than the preceding root vowels. Secondly, both progressive and regressive ATR harmony simultaneously occur in situations where the root ATR was stronger than the preceding and following roots vowels. Lastly, some vowels manifested opacity where regressive ATR was blocked from spreading to the preceding vowels
Received: September 24, 2019 Accepted: October 27, 2019 Published: November 30, 2019 Volume: 2 Is... more Received: September 24, 2019 Accepted: October 27, 2019 Published: November 30, 2019 Volume: 2 Issue: 6 DOI: 10.32996/ijllt.2019.2.6.31 Lwidakho is a tonal language that lacks word stress; instead, the meaning of each syllable in a word is determined by the pitch at which it is pronounced. The language is different from Englisha stress timed languagewhich relies on syllable stress to determine the meaning of words. It is against this background that the paper commented the extent to which Lwidakho influences the ability to perceive and produce English word stress. of form three secondary school Lwidakho speaking students, in Ikolomani SubCounty, Kenya, using Transfer theory, the paper examines the role of Lwidakho on English word stress perception and production. The paper used descriptive research design to identify and obtain information on how Lwidakho affects the learning of English word stress perception and production. Using simple random sampling, the paper sampled out 144 fo...
The use of politeness strategies among Abiisukha is propelled by the cultural need to maintain cl... more The use of politeness strategies among Abiisukha is propelled by the cultural need to maintain close ties and relationship. When the relationship is not maintained, there will definitely be a communication breakdown (Billow & Krauss 1988). This occurs when one interactant feels offended and the partner does not mend the offense using a polite strategy. Generally, rules of interaction are like grammatical rules as they allow social members to perform their acts according to various mutual expectations and to understand each other by making a sense of features like apologizing, requesting or complimenting. Being sensitive to these acts in the course of interaction satisfies the feelings of the offended partner (Chomsky, 1990). In this paper, we present a pragmatic analysis of politeness strategies used by Abiisukha in local public administrative meetings. Firstly, we introduce the politeness strategies used by Lwisukha speakers in local public administrative meetings. Secondly, we exp...
This paper employs Deconstruction and Relevance theories to read literary meanings in the song &a... more This paper employs Deconstruction and Relevance theories to read literary meanings in the song "Gongo la Mboto" by Diamond Platnumz and Mrisho Mpoto. The paper focuses on suprasegmental features that mark the artistes' voice. This is because the style of singing and manner of articulation in songs and performance of oral poetry significantly shapes the meaning conveyed by the artiste in Bongo music. The analysis involves application of four basic steps; identification of the message, examination of how voice production techniques are applied during song production to shape the intended meaning, application of the theories to deduce implied meanings in the song, and finally explication of the literary value the song encompasses at audio level. This analysis responds to the growing concern to transcend literary criticism of songs as literary genres beyond the basic surface meaning. To focus on the meanings, the sound and melody determines the interpretation of the lyrics. This is a current trend which takes the advancement in media technology to define new vistas of criticism of literary meaning resulting from technologizing production and mediation of songs as literary discourses. Traditionally literary criticism of songs has tended to focus on the message conveyed in the lyrics with little attention to the sound and the effect it has on literary meaning.
This paper is an analysis of tense and aspect in Ateso, an Eastern Nilotic language. Ateso distin... more This paper is an analysis of tense and aspect in Ateso, an Eastern Nilotic language. Ateso distinguishes between past and non-past tenses: the past tense is marked by a low tone on the syllable peaks of the verb, while the non-past is marked by a high tone on the verb nucleus. With regard to aspect, it distinguishes between the following: imperfective, perfective, consecutive, perfect, habitual, and iterative. The first five aspects are marked morphologically by the morphemes -i, -it, ko-, aand -nene respectively. The iterative is marked by reduplication of the verb root. Since tone, tense and aspect are assigned differently in each of the TesoTurkana subgroups, it is important that they are analysed separately for a clear view of these concepts and how they are represented specifically in Ateso.
Received: September 24, 2019 Accepted: October 27, 2019 Published: November 30, 2019 Volume: 2 Is... more Received: September 24, 2019 Accepted: October 27, 2019 Published: November 30, 2019 Volume: 2 Issue: 6 DOI: 10.32996/ijllt.2019.2.6.31 Lwidakho is a tonal language that lacks word stress; instead, the meaning of each syllable in a word is determined by the pitch at which it is pronounced. The language is different from Englisha stress timed languagewhich relies on syllable stress to determine the meaning of words. It is against this background that the paper commented the extent to which Lwidakho influences the ability to perceive and produce English word stress. of form three secondary school Lwidakho speaking students, in Ikolomani SubCounty, Kenya, using Transfer theory, the paper examines the role of Lwidakho on English word stress perception and production. The paper used descriptive research design to identify and obtain information on how Lwidakho affects the learning of English word stress perception and production. Using simple random sampling, the paper sampled out 144 fo...
This paper employs Deconstruction and Relevance theories to read literary meanings in the song "G... more This paper employs Deconstruction and Relevance theories to read literary meanings in the song "Gongo la Mboto" by Diamond Platnumz and Mrisho Mpoto. The paper focuses on suprasegmental features that mark the artistes' voice. This is because the style of singing and manner of articulation in songs and performance of oral poetry significantly shapes the meaning conveyed by the artiste in Bongo music. The analysis involves application of four basic steps; identification of the message, examination of how voice production techniques are applied during song production to shape the intended meaning, application of the theories to deduce implied meanings in the song, and finally explication of the literary value the song encompasses at audio level. This analysis responds to the growing concern to transcend literary criticism of songs as literary genres beyond the basic surface meaning. To focus on the meanings, the sound and melody determines the interpretation of the lyrics. This is a current trend which takes the advancement in media technology to define new vistas of criticism of literary meaning resulting from technologizing production and mediation of songs as literary discourses. Traditionally literary criticism of songs has tended to focus on the message conveyed in the lyrics with little attention to the sound and the effect it has on literary meaning.
This paper analyses academic linkages-global economic solution potential and investigates the rol... more This paper analyses academic linkages-global economic solution potential and investigates the role of academic linkages in active innovation and research in this regard. Academic linkages as a new paradigm in learning have shaped themselves to entail long-term mutually-enriching relationships between two or more institutions of learning, departments, schools or faculties. A cross-sectional design will be used to carry out this study. With the economic instability threatening the entire globe, research and innovation seem to prove the only remedy. This has led to mushrooming of alliances, consortia, coalitions and other academic partnerships. Academic linkages therefore stand out to be the ultimate platform in facilitation of these. Bazzoli, Stein, Alexander et al. 1997; Bruce and Mckane 2000; Mitchel and Shortel 2000 among a long list of scholars, in their quest to find health solutions in the United States found academic collaborations through linkages to be the only way. The main problem attracting this study was the reality that there exists a variance between the growth of regional higher learning institutions and the levels of economic development. Through case study approach and integrated literature survey, the paper constructs itself from secondary data sources among others; inter-university research documentations, focusing on academic linkages-development synergistic potential. Gray 1989 and Lasker et al. 1997 highlight that a perceived need for academic collaboration reflects a powerful force shaping America's economy. Academic linkages may differ in form, the particular goals aimed at and the parties involved but they all share a common impetus: an appreciation that, in today's global environment, most economic objectives cannot be achieved by an individual, organization or even state. This study will help executors of academic linkages and policy makers to manage the linkages successfully with the view of equipping the current scholarly generation with the prerequisite exposure and collaboration in combating the economic instability.
This book discusses the structure of Ateso, an Eastern Nilotic language. The book provides the fi... more This book discusses the structure of Ateso, an Eastern Nilotic language. The book provides the first comprehensive description of the phonology, morphology and syntax of the language. The key feature of Ateso’s phonological structure is that vowel alternation strategies are constrained by three harmony rules: root-control, feature-control, and, finally, mid-vowel assimilation. While Ateso shares this structure with the other Eastern Nilotic languages, it has its unique features as well. For example, while the other members of the Eastern Nilotic family have lost the vowel */ä/, Ateso has retained it phonetically. Ateso’s noun morphology has noun-inflectional affixes associated with gender- and number marking. The language employs noun prefixes for gender and uses suffixes to express number and to derive words from others. With regard to its verbal morphology, Ateso verb forms are inflected for a variety of functions. Inflectional categories such as person, number, tense, aspect and mood are marked on the verb either segmentally or supra-segmentally. Tense is expressed supra-segmentally by tone on the nucleus of verb roots, while different morphemes mark person, number, aspect and mood. The discussion of Ateso verb morphology covers verbal derivations and extensions; namely, causatives, ventives, itives, datives, iterative, passives and instrumentals. Regarding its syntactic structure, as a VS/VO language, Ateso allows for a complete clause made up of an inflected verb only, or an inflected verb followed by one or two NPs/or an NP and a pronoun. The language can also have sentence structures involving strategies such as coordination, subordination and clause chaining.
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Papers by David Barasa
The key feature of Ateso’s phonological structure is that vowel alternation strategies are constrained by three harmony rules: root-control, feature-control, and, finally, mid-vowel assimilation. While Ateso shares this structure with the other Eastern Nilotic languages, it has its unique features as well. For example, while the other members of the Eastern Nilotic family have lost the vowel */ä/, Ateso has retained it phonetically.
Ateso’s noun morphology has noun-inflectional affixes associated with gender- and number marking. The language employs noun prefixes for gender and uses suffixes to express number and to derive words from others. With regard to its verbal morphology, Ateso verb forms are inflected for a variety of functions. Inflectional categories such as person, number, tense, aspect and mood are marked on the verb either segmentally or supra-segmentally. Tense is expressed supra-segmentally by tone on the nucleus of verb roots, while different morphemes mark person, number, aspect and mood. The discussion of Ateso verb morphology covers verbal derivations and extensions; namely, causatives, ventives, itives, datives, iterative, passives and instrumentals.
Regarding its syntactic structure, as a VS/VO language, Ateso allows for a complete clause made up of an inflected verb only, or an inflected verb followed by one or two NPs/or an NP and a pronoun. The language can also have sentence structures involving strategies such as coordination, subordination and clause chaining.