Reanalysis cause we misunderstood

[muckefuck]

Last month, I touched on the topic of morphological reanalysis in loanwords. (The example was English tamale, where the vowel of the Spanish post-consonantal plural ending -es is reinterpreted as belonging to the root.) We have a smattering of these in English, like pea by back-formation from pease (cf. French pois "pea(s)") or apron by misdivision of a napron (cf. French napperon). But the best examples I've seen in any language are from Bantu.

Swahili has a large class of nouns (mostly inanimate) which begin with ki- in the singular and vi- in the plural, e.g. kitu "thing", pl. vitu. Foreign borrowings with the same initial syllable are likely to get slotted right into it, e.g. Arabic kitāb "book" > Swahili kitabu, pl. vitabu. The favourite among my linguistics buddies is kiplefti "roundabout", from English keep left. For some speakers, the plural form is invariable, but others prefer the regular formation viplefti.

South African Bantu languages have some doozies as well. So far, the best I've found goes the other way. That is, the singular is created from the plural by back-formation: Eng. monkeynut "peanut" > Zulu amankinati (pl.), which then forms the regular singular inkinati. I also like the inanimate nouns with initial in- which get slotted into a class with that prefix, e.g. injection > injekishini, pl. izinjekishini; invoice > imvoyisi, pl. izimvoyisi.

But by far the largest class of adaptees consists of English nouns with initial s-clusters. These violate Zulu phonotactics, so they are borrowed with both a prothetic and an epenthetic vowel, e.g. speed > isipidi. This makes them look exactly like singular nouns of the isi- class, whose plural is formed with the prefix izi-, i.e. izipidi. Knowing that, can you guess the meanings of iziketi, iziponji, and izikwele? (Hint: Zulu, like many Bantu languages, lacks /r/.)

An interesting feature feature of Bantu languages is that they can derive new nouns by changing the class prefix. Thus, from the Swahili word mtu (pl. watu) "person", we get jitu (pl. majitu) "giants" and utu (no plural) "humanity". Assimilated borrowings make get the same treatment. So, from isikelemu, a borrowing of Afrikaans skelm "rogue; crook", Zulu derives ubukelemu "lawlessness".

Nouns are also formed from verb stems with the addition of a class prefix and, somtimes, a suffix or a change in final vowel. So from pima "examine; measure; weigh", Swahili gets kipimio "scale". (Who can tell me the plural?) Of course, this same process also works in reverse: Afrikaans skaal "scale" > Zulu isikalo "idem." > kala "weigh with scales". Now, given the derived Zulu verb koloba, can anyone guess what the English etymon could be?

Comments

[tyrannio.livejournal.com]

I remember my friend Nell using the form "kipilefti" instead of 'kiplefti'. I just checked with her, and she confirmed and suggested that Swahili prefers CVCV patterns in general? (She's checking with some native-speaker friends of hers.)

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Kipilefti is the form I originally learned as well. However, in my dotage, I almost never post any even slightly unfamiliar word without looking it up first and kiplefti is the only spelling given in the Kamusi project dictionary. When I'm back at work, I'll see if I can find it in the dictionaries there.

[wiped.livejournal.com]

plural of kipimio must be vipimio, and i've no idea with regards to zulu koloba but i'm interested to see... maybe i'll be able to solve simple riddles like this one when i finish undergrad? haha

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

If I recall correctly, Welmers (African Language Structures) mentions another example of this: "mudigadi" ( < Br. "mudguard"), plural "badigadi". (It's been so long since I read it that I can't recall the language, but I suspect it was from one of Britain's West African colonies, probably Nigeria.)

[(Anonymous)]

Very interesting. I've heard the "amankinati" one from my father who can speak isiZulu.

Here's some more discussion this topic:

http://www.languagehat.com/archives/004213.php