Can the a- in anacheka communicate any meaning by itself? No, it needs the rest
3. Most Bantu words, especially verbs, contain grammatical indicators which must be there, in order to make sense. We will look at them next week. That means that
you have a part of a word which carries most of the “wordness.” In order to really make sense in a Bantu language, you have to add something to the verbal root,
making something mzizi such as a-na-cheka. Just briely, what information
do you get from this verb and its grammatical attachments? Many more things can be added to a Bantu verb, giving much more information, but this much is
essential. This much grammatical information is usually essential to a Bantu verb in order for it to make sense, so it is all part of one word an aix, not a word.
4. Can the a- in anacheka communicate any meaning by itself? No, it needs the rest
of the word in order to make any sense at all.
5. A word can move around in a sentence. For example, take the word nyumba. You can put it at the front of a sentence: Nyumba yake ni kubwa. You can put it after
a verbal phrase: Wanapenda nyumba ya mtu huyu. The a in anacheka cannot
move from that exact place in the verb. It must be right there at the front, telling the listener or the reader who is doing the laughing, and it has no meaning on its
own. As you probably know by now, a- in anacheka is an aix, not a word.
6. Words can be written separately when other words can come in between them.
For example, in Swahili, ya in a sentence like Nyumba ya mdogo wangu ‘the house of my younger sibling’, is it possible to put another word between ya and mdogo?
Yes, you can say nyumba ya huyu mdogo wango. So it should be written
separately because it is possible. 7. Sometimes you have very little words in Bantu languages; they carry their own
little bit of meaning, but people always say them with a noun. The following is a locative example from Nyiha. People recognize them as separate words because
the nouns nyumba and mbwa can stand all by themselves. It’s easy to recognize
mbwa and nyumba by themselves. But a spelling problem always arises when
the noun starts with a vowel, and you put the locative before it Then you get
spellings like the noun ikwi becoming pikwi, kwikwi, and mwikwi. Two words
have been written as one, because the vowels at the end of the locative changed
and so did the vowels at the beginning of the noun ikwi. Now the noun is
merged with another word and it’s hard for the reader to recognize the noun. 8. Locatives and associatives for your languages will probably turn out to be small,
separate words. Other words can intervene between them, they have meaning of their own, and they’re movable.
What should we do to resolve the writing problem above? The Niha have choices: 1. Write the locative the same everywhere and write the noun the same everywhere.
Then you have pa ikwi, ku ikwi, and mu ikwi. Native speakers will eventually learn to say the words naturally in luent reading: pikwi, kwikwi,
mwikwi, because this is how they talk. 2. Write the locative attached to the noun it describes, with a hyphen: pa-ikwi, ku-
ikwi, etc.
3. Write the locative combined with the vowel preix from the noun, like this: pi kwi, kwi kwi, mwi kwi. This makes the noun look diferent, harder to recognize
now because its prepreix has been removed. It also makes the locative harder for
the reader to recognize because the a, u, and i are no longer there as
a clue. 4. Write all the changes as people say them, with the locative attached to the noun it
preceded: piwki. It makes the noun harder for people to read, because it is no
longer standing alone, and it always looks diferent because it has these locatives stuck onto it in such a way that it’s hard to cut apart the locative from the noun—
but it’s written the way it sounds, making it easy for a new reader to sound out, letter by letter. It will slow reading for a luent reader.
5. The irst two options are the best. Today we will be looking at locatives, associatives, and possessives and tackling these problems for writing. You
actually have the same issue with your preixes on your nouns. Any questions?
140
Appendix I
Lesson 8: Story Editing
Objectives:
• People remember their writing rules. • They can apply them to editing a story.
• They test their rules by reading the story aloud. • They note any unnoticed linguistic elements which need to be documented, while
editing.
Materials:
• A handout chart for each group to put up, like the Ngoreme one at bottom.
Activities:
• Review the concepts we taught earlier, re: what makes a word and the reason for word breaks.
• Look at their charts to see what spelling rules they have established already. List them, for:
• Locatives: Example from Ngoreme:
ko-mugabo mo-mugabo
ko-moona mo-moona
ko-monto mo-monto
• Associatives Table 1
egikoba kyo
moona kya baana kye
nyumba ebikoba
byo moona bya baana
bye nyumba
engoha yo
moona ya baana
ye nyumba
• Copulas—do they want to write the copula as attached, but to write the na conjunctive separately?
Focus marker n- is written adjoiningly. There seems to never be an underlying vowel with it. Since they have the copula n- which is very snugly attached to
the following noun or adjective, do they always want to write it adjoiningly? Or do they want to write it with an apostrophe after it? It will look just like the
conjunction if they write them both at the front of a word usually a noun with no vowel after either one.
• Augmentsdiminutives—nothing unusual • Negatives—written as part of the verbal phrase tu
• Other, including tone: extensions causative and passive are interesting—they are just i and u, respectively
• Vowel length? Ask us when problems arise, and we’ll talk At issue: simplicity of spelling rules versus morphology. Kwaya example: woone.
Table 2: Ngoreme example
-rogota -agura
-engeri -ikara
-ogu -u
‘-tambaa’ ‘-ongezea’
‘-kaa’ ‘-sikia’
twakarogota ‘twaokota’ twakaagura twakeengeri
twagaikara twakoogu turarogota
‘tunaokota’ turaagura
tureengeri turaikara
turoogu nturogotire
‘tumeokota’ ntwagurre ntwengeriiri ntwikaire
ntoogure ntwarogotire ‘tuliokota’
ntwaagurre ntweengeriiri ntwaikaire ntoogure tukarogota
‘tukaokota’ tukaagura
tukengeri tugaikara
tukoogu tokurogota
‘tukiokota’
n-tu-rogot-ire n-tu-ogu-ire = ntoogure
n-tu-a-rogot-ire = ntwarogotire n-tu-a-ogu-ire = ntoogure
Sheria za Kuandika Kingoreme 1. Mahali: ko-mugabo, mo-mugabo, mo-moona,
ko-moona, ko-monto