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On the intransitive usage of transitive verbs in Tooro, a Bantu language of Western Uganda

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Abstract

In some Bantu languages of western Uganda, we find an interesting construction in which typical transitive verbs such as “to cut (a tree),” “to bend (a wire),” “to smoke (meat),” “to tear (paper),” “to open (a door),” etc., are used intransitively, without any additional suffixes such as passive and neuter. I call this construction the syntactically intransitive construction of transitive verbs, and illustrate it with examples from Tooro, a Bantu language of western Uganda. However, two important restrictions apply regarding the use of this construction. One is that among transitive verbs, only those causing a change of state that take human agents and inanimate objects may be used intransitively, with inanimate objects being promoted to the subject position. The second restriction is that this construction may only be used with the perfective ending -ire/-ere. This last point indicates that this construction is distinct from typical labile verb constructions that, in principle, occur in all tenses, aspects and moods. The analysis of the intransitive construction of transitive verbs inevitably raises the issue of the stative nature of perfective actions.

Funding statement: This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 24320077.

Abbreviations

ACC

Accusative

ASP

Aspect

AUG

augment (a type of article)

cl.

class number

FIN

final vowel

INF

infinitive

INTR

intransitive

NEG

negative

NFUT

near future

NOM

nominative

PASS

passive

PERF

perfective ending

PPR

pronominal prefix

PREFIN

prefinal (tense/aspect marker)

PRES

Present tense

PRO

pronoun

PROG

progressive

PST

past

REV

reverse

RPST

remote past

SPR

subject prefix

TM

tense marker

TR

transitive

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Published Online: 2017-12-2
Published in Print: 2017-12-20

© 2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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