The Nature and Direction of Meaning Of -Kali in Kiswahili
Abstract
This paper examines the collocations of an adjective stem -kali to create several
meanings, showing how -kali can be used to express a wide range of distinct concepts
in different occasions of its utterance. It is noted that the few existing studies of
Kiswahili adjectives (Ashton 1947, Myachina 1981, Kahigi 2008) which have
focused mainly on semantics in determining their meanings, are therefore incomplete
because they have overlooked many further meanings of these adjectives in use. Here
it is argued that meanings of Kiswahili adjectives can best be exhausted if one takes
pragmatics into consideration. This study demonstrates that €“kali generates an
infinite number of meanings; some of these connotations extend in the direction of
negative pole of undesirable attributes and others towards a positive pole. The paper
further demonstrates that although the meaning of the adjective stem -kali connoting
' harsh ' or ' rude ' can be adjusted pragmatically in context, the different meanings
created when this qualifier co-occurs with different nouns derive interestingly from
the same stem meaning: ' harsh ' or ' rude ' .
Key words: linguistic pragmatics, semiotics, Kiswahili adjectives,
cognitive semantics
References
Allott, N. and Texter, M. 2012. Lexical pragmatic adjustment and the nature of ad hoc concepts. International review of pragmatics 4: 185-208.
Ashton, E.O. 1947. Swahili Grammar. London: Longman.
Barsalou, L. 1987. The instability of graded structure in concepts. In Concepts and conceptual development in ecological and intellectual factors categorization. Ed. Uhlrich Niesser. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 101-140.
Baker, M. C. 2003. Lexical Categories: Verbs, Nouns, and Adjectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Biletzki, A. and Matar, A. 2018 [2002]. Ludwig Wittgenstein. In: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Ed. Edward N. Zelfa.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/. Accessed 2nd June 2018.
Carston, R. 2002. Thoughts and utterances. the pragmatics of explicit communication. Oxford: Blackwell.
Carston, R. 2009. The explicit/implicit distinction. In pragmatics & the limits of explicit communication. International review of pragmatics 2: 13-15.
Carston, R. 2010.Metaphor: Ad hoc concepts. Literal meaning and mental images. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 110: 295-321.
Dickins, J. 2014. Associative meaning and scalar implicatature: a linguistic- semiotic account. Linguistica online. August 25.
http://www.phil.muni.cz/linguistica/art/dickins/dic-003.pdf. Accessed 19 September 2018.
Dixon, R. M. W. 1982 [1977] Where have all the adjectives gone? Studies in Language 1: 19-80. https://www.jbeplatform.com/content/journals/10.1075/sl.1.1.04dix. Accessed 24 September 2018. Revised in Where have all the
adjectives gone? and other essays in semantics and syntax. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 1-63.
Dixon, R.M.W. 2004. Adjective Classes in Typological Perspective. In Adjective Classes, a Cross-Linguistic Typological Study. Eds. R.M.W Dixon and A. Aikhenvald. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 1-43.
Forceville, Charles. 2009. Non-verbal and multimodal metaphor in a cognitivist framework: Agendas for research. In: Multimodal Metaphor. Eds. Charles Forceville and Eduardo Urios-Aparisi. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Applications of Cognitive Linguistics series, vol. 11, pp. 19-42.
Forceville, Charles. 2010. Why and how study metaphor, metonymy, and other tropes in multimodal discourse? In: Comunição, Cognição e Media, Vol. I. Eds. Augusto Soares da Silva, José Cândido Martins, LuÃsa Magelhães, and Miguel Gonçalves. Braga: Aletheia/Associação CientÃfica e Cultural,
Faculdade de Filosofia, Universade Católica Portuguesa, pp. 41-60. Also in: Ways and Modes of Human Communication. Eds. Rosario Caballero and Maria Jesús Pinar. Cuenca: Ediciones de la Universidad de Castilla La Mancha. 2010, pp. 57-76.
Goodness, D. 2014. An adjective as a distinctive lexical category. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Dar es salaam.
Goodness, D. 2016. Meaning and meaning extension of the verb kata in Kiswahili. Journal of Education, Humanities and Science, pp. 20-25. Dar es salaam University College of Education.
http://jehs.duce.ac.tz/index.php/jehs/article/view/12/.
Kahigi, K. 2008. Revisiting the adjective in Kiswahili. Kioo cha Lugha 6: 20-32.
Langacker, R.W. 2008. Cognitive grammar, a basic introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Langacker, R.W. 2009. Investigations in cognitive grammar. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Myachina, E.N. 1981. The Swahili Language. A Descriptive Grammar. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Moravcsik, J. 2001. Metaphor: Creative Understanding and the Generative Lexicon. In The language of word meaning. Eds. Pierrete Bouillon and Federica Busa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mpofu, N. 2009. Shona adjective as a prototypical adjective, Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Oslo. 1339-782X.
Recanati, F. 2004. Literal meaning. Cambridge. CUP.
Rugemalira, J. 2008. Adjectives in Bantu. In Occasional Papers in Linguistics. Languages of Tanzania (LoT) Publications, University of Dar es Salaam.
Taasisi ya Uchunguzi wa Kiswahili (TUKI). 2014. Kamusi ya KiswahiliKiingereza [Swahili-English Dictionary]. Institute of Kiswahili Research, University of Dar es Salaam.
Welmers W. M. E. 1973. African Language Structures. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1953. Philosophical Investigations. Trans. G.E.M. Anscombe and R. Rhees. Oxford: Blackwell.
