The continuative aspect ( abbreviated CONT or CNT ) is a grammatical aspect representing actions that are 'still' happening. English does not mark the continuative explicitly but instead uses an adverb such as still .
49-430: Ganda uses the prefix -kya- to mark the continuative aspect. For example, nsoma (unmarked for aspect) means 'I'm reading', while nkyasoma (continuative) means 'I'm still reading'. Similarly, Pipil marks the continuative aspect using the clitic -(y)uk- . For instance, nitakwa means 'I am eating' or 'I eat', while nitakwayuk (continuative) means 'I'm still eating'. This grammar -related article
98-517: A /ⁿʔ/ . Prenasalized stops may be distinguished from post-oralized or post-stopped nasals (orally released nasals), such as the [mᵇ nᵈ ɲᶡ ŋᶢ] of Acehnese and similar sounds (including voiceless [mᵖ] ) in many dialects of Chinese. (At least in the Chinese case, nasalization, in some dialects, continues in a reduced degree to the vowel, indicating that the consonant is partially denasalized , rather than actually having an oral release.) No language
147-631: A lateral approximant [l] elsewhere. However, there is considerable variation in this, and using one allophone instead of the other causes no ambiguity. So lwaki /lwáːci/ 'why' may also be pronounced [rwáːci] , [ɾwáːci] , [ɹwáːtʃi] etc . Treating the geminate and prenasalised consonants as separate phonemes yields the expanded consonant set below: This simplifies the phonotactic rules so that all syllables are of one of three forms: where V = vowel , C = consonant (including geminate and prenasalised consonants), N = nasal stop , S = semivowel ( i.e. either /j/ or /w/ ). Vowel length
196-415: A nasal stop ). This consonant will be [m] , [n] , [ɲ] [ɱ] or [ŋ] according to the place of articulation of the consonant which follows, and belongs to the same syllable as that consonant. The liquid /l~r/ becomes /d/ when geminated or prenasalised . For example, ndaba /n̩dába/ 'I see' (from the root - laba with the subject prefix n -); eddagala /edːáɡala/ 'leaf' (from
245-529: A bántú mú Úg áń da 'people in Uganda', there is a plateau from the phrasal tone of abántú to the lexical tone of Ug áń da , and in t ú gen dá mú lúgúú dó 'we are going into the street', there is a plateau from the phrasal tone of t ú gendá to the phrasal tone of lugúúdó . Again there are certain exceptions; for example, there is no plateau before the words ono 'this' or bonn â 'all': muntú onó 'this person', abántú bonn â 'all
294-439: A prenasalized consonant is described as "voiceless", it is only the oral portion that is voiceless, and the nasal portion is modally voiced . Thus, a language may have "voiced" [ᵐb ⁿd ᶯɖ ᶮɟ ᵑɡ ᶰɢ] and "voiceless" [ᵐp ⁿt ᶯʈ ᶮc ᵑk ᶰq] . However, in some Southern Min (including Taiwanese ) dialects, voiced consonants are preceded by voiceless prenasalization: [ᵐ̥b ⁿ̥d ⁿ̥ɺ ᵑ̊ɡ] . Yeyi has prenasalized ejectives . Adzera has
343-522: A prenasalized stop in his name, as does the capital of Chad , N'Djamena (African prenasalized stops are often written with apostrophes in Latin script transcription although this may sometimes indicate syllabic nasals instead). The sound [ g͡b] can also be found in approximately 90 languages in Africa. In Southern Min languages, such as Teochew , prenasalized stops are also found. The prenasalized stops in
392-460: A road?'. Syllables can take any of the following forms: where V = vowel , C = single consonant (including nasals and semivowels but excluding geminates), G = geminate consonant , N = nasal stop , S = semivowel These forms are subject to certain phonotactic restrictions: The net effect of this is that all Luganda words follow the general pattern of alternating consonant clusters and vowels , beginning with either but always ending in
441-415: A sentence, the lexical tones (that is, the high tones of individual words) tend to fall gradually in a series of steps from high to low. For example, in the sentence kye kib ú ga ekik ú lu mu Ug áń da 'it is the chief city in Uganda', the lexical high tones of the syllables bú , kú and gá stand out and gradually descend in pitch, the toneless syllables in between being lower. This phenomenon
490-557: A short vowel is followed by a geminate consonant, is very slightly shorter than tuuk or tung . The table below gives the consonant set of Luganda, grouping voiceless and voiced consonants together in a cell where appropriate, in that order. Apart from /l~r/ , all these consonants can be geminated , even at the start of a word: bbiri /bːíri/ 'two', kitto /cítːo/ 'cold'. The approximants /w/ and /j/ are geminated as /ɡːw/ and /ɟː/ : eggwanga /eɡːwáːŋɡa/ 'country'; jjenje /ɟːéːɲɟe/ 'cricket'—from
539-494: A very high sound-to-letter correspondence: one letter usually represents one sound and vice versa. The distinction between simple and geminate consonants is always represented explicitly: simple consonants are written single, and geminates are written double. The distinction between long and short vowels is always made clear from the spelling but not always explicitly: short vowels are always written single; long vowels are written double only if their length cannot be inferred from
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#1732845547653588-621: A vowel followed by a prenasalised consonant ( Abagândá 'Baganda people'), and those following a consonant plus semivowel ( okulwâlá [okulwáalá] 'to fall sick'). They can also be heard on final vowels, e.g. ensî 'country'. Words in Luganda commonly belong to one of three patterns (other patterns are less common): (a) without lexical tone, e.g. ekitabo 'book'; (b) with one high lexical tone, e.g. ekib ú ga 'city'; (c) with two high lexical tones, e.g. K á mpal á which link together to make HHH, i.e. [Kámpálá] or [Kámpálâ] . At
637-493: A vowel is not affected by its length. Long vowels in Luganda are very long, more than twice the length of a short vowel. A vowel before a prenasalised consonant , as in Bugáńda ' Buganda ' is also lengthened, although it is not as long as a long vowel; laboratory measurements show that the vowel + nasal takes the same length of time to say as a long vowel. Before a geminate , all vowels are short. A segment such as tugg , where
686-925: A vowel: where V = vowel , X = consonant cluster , (V) = optional vowel This is reflected in the syllabification rule that in writing, words are always hyphenated after a vowel (when breaking a word over two lines). For example, Emmotoka yange ezze 'My car has arrived' would be split into syllables as E‧mmo‧to‧ka ya‧nge e‧zze . The palatal plosives /c/ and /ɟ/ may be realised with some affrication — either as [cç] and [ɟʝ] or as postalveolars /tʃ/ and /dʒ/ respectively. In speech, word-final vowels are often elided in these conditioning environments: For example, ekiddugavu /ecídːuɡavu/ 'black' may be pronounced [ecídːuɡavʷu] or [ecídːuɡavʷ] . Similarly lwaki /lwáːci/ 'why' may be pronounced [lwáːci] , [lwáːc] or [lwáːtʃ] . Long vowels before prenasalised fricatives (that is, before /nf/ , /nv/ , /ns/ or /nz/ ) may be nasalised , and
735-399: A word, e.g. ekib ú ga 'city'; (b) phrasal tones, which are automatically added to a word in certain contexts, but which are absent in other contexts (e.g. ekítábó or ekitabo 'book'); (c) plateaux tones, where the pitch remains high between two lexical tones, e.g. k í rí mú Úg áń da 'it is in Uganda'; (d) grammatical tones, which are associated with certain tenses or uses of
784-668: Is Uganda's de facto language of national identity as it is the most widely spoken Ugandan language used mostly in trade in urban areas. The language is also the most-spoken unofficial language in Rwanda 's capital Kigali . As a second language, it follows English and precedes Swahili in Uganda. Lusoga , the language spoken in Busoga to the east of Buganda, is very closely related to Luganda. The two languages are almost mutually intelligible , and have an estimated lexical similarity of between 82% and 86%. A notable feature of Luganda phonology
833-520: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Luganda Ganda or Luganda ( / l uː ˈ ɡ æ n d ə / loo- GAN -də ; Oluganda [oluɡâːndá] ) is a Bantu language spoken in the African Great Lakes region. It is one of the major languages in Uganda and is spoken by more than 5.56 million Baganda and other people principally in central Uganda, including
882-418: Is at least one low-toned mora after the lexical tone. When this happens, the high tones which follow the low tone are slightly lower than the one which precedes it. However, there are certain contexts, such as when a toneless word is used as the subject of a sentence or before a numeral, when this tone-raising rule does not apply: Masindi kib ú ga 'Masindi is a city'; ebitabo kk ú mi 'ten books'. In
931-409: Is believed to contrast the two types of consonant, which are distinguished primarily by a difference in timing (a brief nasal followed by longer stop, as opposed to a longer nasal followed by brief stop). The Bantu languages are famous for their prenasalized stops (the "nt" in "Bantu" is an example), but similar sounds occur across Africa and around the world. Ghana 's politician Kwame Nkrumah had
980-436: Is called ' downdrift '. However, there are certain types of phrase, notably those in the form 'noun + of + noun', or 'verb + location', where downdrift does not occur, and instead all the syllables in between the two lexical high tones link together into a 'tonal plateau', in which all the vowels have tones of equal height, for example mu mas é réngétá g á Úg áń da 'in the south of Uganda' or k í rí mú Úg áń da 'it
1029-460: Is in Uganda'. Plateauing also occurs within a word, as in K á mpál â (see above). A plateau cannot be formed between a lexical tone and a following phrasal tone; so in the sentence k í ri mu Bunyóró 'it is in Bunyoro' there is downdrift, since the tones of Bunyóró are phrasal. But a phrasal tone can and frequently does form a plateau with a following lexical tone or phrasal tone. So in
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#17328455476531078-439: Is its geminate consonants and distinctions between long and short vowels. Speakers generally consider consonantal gemination and vowel lengthening to be two manifestations of the same effect, which they call simply "doubling" or "stressing". Luganda is also a tonal language ; the change in the pitch of a syllable can change the meaning of a word. For example, the word kabaka means 'king' if all three syllables are given
1127-436: Is no tendency in Luganda for penultimate vowels to become long; in fact they are very frequently short, as in the city name Kampala Kámpalâ , pronounced [káámpálâ] , in which the second vowel is short in Luganda. All five vowels have two forms: long and short . The distinction is phonemic but can occur only in certain positions. After two consonants, the latter being a semivowel , all vowels are long. The quality of
1176-419: Is one of only three languages reported to have a contrast between prenasalized consonants and their corresponding clusters, along with Fula and Selayarese , although the nature of this contrast is debated. For example, Sri Lankan Malay has been in contact with Sinhala a long time and has also developed prenasalized stops. The spectrograms on the right show the word gaambar with a prenasalized stop and
1225-611: Is pronounced as though written Yuganda and Teso is pronounced Tteeso . Prenasalised consonant Prenasalized consonants are phonetic sequences of a nasal and an obstruent (or occasionally a non-nasal sonorant ) that behave phonologically like single consonants . The primary reason for considering them to be single consonants, rather than clusters as in English finger or member , lies in their behaviour; however, there may also be phonetic correlates which distinguish prenasalized consonants from clusters. Because of
1274-807: Is spoken by people in Papua New Guinea who have similar phonologies in their languages, voiced consonants are prenasalized. For example, the preposition bilong (from English belong ) is pronounced [ᵐbiloŋ] by many Melanesians . The prenasalization behaves as a phonetic detail of voicing, rather than a separate segment. Prenasalized stops are also found in Australia. The Eastern Arrernte language has both prenasalized stops and prestopped nasals , but does not have any other word-initial consonant clusters . Compare [mʷarə] "good", [ᵐpʷaɻə] "make", [ᵖmʷaɻə] " coolamon ". When unambiguous, prenasalized consonants may simply be transcribed e.g. ⟨ mb ⟩. In
1323-400: Is then only distinctive before simple consonants ( i.e. simple plosives, simple fricatives, simple nasals, approximants and liquids)—not before geminate or nasalised consonants or at the end of a word. Luganda spelling , which has been standardized since 1947, uses a Latin alphabet , augmented with one new letter ŋ and a digraph ny , which is treated as a single letter. It has
1372-422: Is usually pronounced [e:kítábó] and ssomero 'school' is pronounced [ssóméró] (where the long consonant /ss/ counts as the first mora). These tones automatically added to toneless words are called 'phrasal tones'. The tone-raising rule also applies to the toneless syllables at the end of words like eddw â liro [eddwáalíró] 'hospital' and t ú genda [túgeendá] 'we are going', provided that there
1421-641: The Hmong–Mien language family of Southern China and Southeast Asia. In dialects of northern Japan , standard voiced stops are prenasalized, and voiceless stops are voiced. For example, /itiɡo/ "strawberry" is [it̠͡ɕiɡo] in most of the south, but [id̠͡ʑɨᵑɡo] in much of the north. Prenasalized stops are also reconstructed for Old Japanese . In Greek the orthographic sequences μπ, ντ γκ and γγ are often pronounced as prenasalized voiced stops [ᵐb] , [ⁿd] , and [ᵑɡ] , respectively, especially in formal speech and among older speakers. Among younger Athenian speakers
1470-434: The addition of an object-marker such as mu 'him' adds further complications. In addition to lexical tones, phrasal tones, and the tonal patterns of tenses, there are also intonational tones in Luganda, for example, tones of questions. One rather unexpected phenomenon for English speakers is that if a yes–no question ends in a toneless word, instead of a rise, there is a sharp drop in pitch, e.g. lúnó lúgúúdò? 'is this
1519-402: The additional difficulty in both articulation and timing, prenasalized fricatives and sonorants are not as common as prenasalized stops or affricates, and the presence of the former implies the latter. Only three languages ( Sinhala , Fula , Selayarese ) have been reported to have a contrast between prenasalized consonants ( C) and their corresponding clusters (NC). In most languages, when
Continuative aspect - Misplaced Pages Continue
1568-514: The beginning of a word, but it does not allow other consonant sequences. Thus the prenasalized stops behave like ordinary consonants. In some Oceanic languages , prenasalisation of voiced consonants depends on the environment. For example, in Raga , b and d are prenasalized when the preceding consonant is nasal ( noⁿda "ours"), but not elsewhere ( gida "us"). Uneapa has prenasalization word-medially, but not word-initially ( goᵐbu "yam"). When Tok Pisin
1617-436: The context. Stress and tones are not represented in the spelling. The following phonemes are always represented with the same letter or combination of letters: The following phonemes can be represented with two letters or combinations of letters, with the alternation predictable from the context: The following phonemes can be represented with two letters or combinations of letters, with unpredictable alternation between
1666-508: The country's capital, Kampala . Typologically , it is an agglutinative , tonal language with subject–verb–object word order and nominative–accusative morphosyntactic alignment . With at least 5.6 million first-language speakers in the Buganda region and 5.4 million second language speakers fluent elsewhere in different regions especially in major urban areas like Mbale , Tororo , Jinja , Gulu , Mbarara , Hoima , Kasese etc. Luganda
1715-426: The end of a sentence, a final lexical tone becomes a falling tone, i.e. [Kámpálâ], but in other contexts, e.g. when the word is used as the subject of a sentence, it remains high: Kámpálá kibúga 'Kampala is a city'. Although words like ekitabo are theoretically toneless, they are generally subject to a tone-raising rule whereby all but the first mora automatically acquire a high tone. Thus ekitabo 'book'
1764-516: The fact that some verbs have a high lexical tone on the first syllable of the root, while others do not, and also by the fact that the sequence HH generally becomes HL by a rule called Meeussen's rule . Thus asóma means 'he reads', but when the toneless prefix a- 'he/she' is replaced by the high-toned prefix bá- 'they', instead of básóma it becomes básomá 'they read'. The tones of verbs in relative clauses and in negative sentences differ from those in ordinary positive sentences and
1813-402: The nasal is then often elided. Additionally, when not elided (for example phrase-initially), the /n/ usually becomes a labiodental in /nf/ , /nv/ . For example: The liquid /l~r/ has two allophones [l] and [r] , conditioned by the preceding vowel. It is usually realised as a tap or flap [ɾ] after a front unrounded vowel ( i.e. after /e/ , /eː/ , /i/ or /iː/ ), and as
1862-443: The one belonging to the prenasalised consonant. The initial vowel of words like ekitabo 'book' is considered to have one mora, even though such vowels are often pronounced long. No syllable can have more than two morae. Falling tones can be heard in syllables which have two morae, e.g. those with a long vowel ( okukóoká 'to cry'), those with a short vowel followed by a geminate consonant ( okubôbbá 'to throb'), those with
1911-399: The people'. Prefixes sometimes change the tones in a word. For example, Bag áń da [baɡá:nda] 'they are Baganda' has LHHL, but adding the initial vowel a- [a] gives Abag â ndá [abaɡâ:ndá] 'Baganda people' with a falling tone on ga and phrasal tone on the final syllable. Different verb tenses have different tonal patterns. The tones of verbs are made more complicated by
1960-483: The prenasalization often disappears and in fast speech the voiced stop may be replaced by a fricative. The Guaraní language has a set of prenasalized stops which are alternate allophonically with simple nasal continuants; they appear only within a word, to the left of a stressed vowel that is oral. The Indo-Aryan languages Sinhala and Dhivehi have prenasalized stops. Sinhala script has prenasalized versions of / g / , / ʥ /, / ɖ / , / d̪ / and / b / . Sinhala
2009-496: The root - lagala with the singular noun prefix e -, which doubles the following consonant). A consonant cannot be both geminated and prenasalised. When morphological processes require this, the gemination is dropped and the syllable /zi/ is inserted, which can then be prenasalised. For example, when the prefix en - is added to the adjective - ddugavu 'black' the result is enzirugavu /eːnzíruɡavu/ . The nasals /m/ , /n/ , /ɲ/ and /ŋ/ can be syllabic at
Continuative aspect - Misplaced Pages Continue
2058-415: The roots - wanga /wáːŋɡa/ and - yenje /jéːɲɟe/ respectively, with the singular noun prefix e - that doubles the following consonant. Historically, geminated consonants appear to have arisen when a very close [i] between two consonants dropped out; for example - dduka from *- jiduka 'run'. Apart from /l~r/ , /w/ and /j/ , all consonants can also be prenasalised (prefixed with
2107-402: The same pitch. If the first syllable is high then the meaning changes to 'the little one catches' (third person singular present tense Class VI ka - of - baka 'to catch'). This feature makes Luganda a difficult language for speakers of non-tonal languages to learn. A non-native speaker has to learn the variations of pitch by prolonged listening. Unlike some other Bantu languages, there
2156-624: The start of a word: nkima /ɲ̩címa/ (or [n̩tʃíma] ) 'monkey', mpa /m̩pá/ 'I give', nnyinyonnyola /ɲ̩ɲiɲóɲːola/ or /ɲːiɲóɲːola/ 'I explain'. Note that this last example can be analysed in two ways, reflecting the fact that there is no distinction between prenasalisation and gemination when applied to nasal stops. Luganda is a tonal language , with three tones: high ( á ), low ( à ) and falling ( â ). There are, however, no syllables in Luganda with rising tone [àá] , since these automatically become [áá] . There are various types of tones: (a) lexical tones, which are always present in
2205-468: The syllabification of sambal sam.bal. An example of the unitary behavior of prenasalized stops is provided by Fijian . In this language, as in many in Melanesia and also reconstructed for Proto-Oceanic , there is a series of voiceless stops, [p, t, k] , and a series of prenasalized stops, [ᵐb, ⁿd, ᵑɡ] , but there are no simple voiced stops, [b, d, ɡ] . In addition, Fijian allows prenasalized stops at
2254-447: The two: It is therefore possible to predict the pronunciation of any word (with the exception of stress and tones) from the spelling. It is also usually possible to predict the spelling of a word from the pronunciation. The only words where this is not possible are those that include one of the affricate–vowel combinations discussed above. Note, however, that some proper names are not spelled as they are pronounced. For example, Uganda
2303-447: The verb; (e) boundary tones, which affect the last syllable of a word or phrase and can indicate such things as interrogation. According to one analysis, tones are carried on morae . In Luganda, a short vowel has one mora and a long vowel has two morae. A geminate or prenasalised consonant has one mora. A consonant + semivowel (e.g. gw or ly ) also has one mora. A vowel followed by a prenasalised consonant has two morae including
2352-619: The vernacular readings of Southern Min languages evolved not from the different Middle Chinese initials and thus are historically different from the voiced obstruents found in Wu and Xiang languages. Prenasalized consonants are widely utilized in the Loloish languages of the Lolo–Burmese family, such as Yi and Naxi . The following table illustrates the prenasalized consonants in northern Yi. The prenasalized stops also occur in several branches of
2401-514: The word sambal with a sequence of nasal+voiced stop, yet not prenasalized. The difference in the length of the [m] part is clearly visible. The nasal in the prenasalized word is much shorter than the nasal in the other word. This phonetic information is complemented by phonological evidence: The first vowel in gaambar is lengthened, which only happens in open syllables in Sri Lanka Malay. The syllabification of gaambar must be gaa.mbar then, and
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