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The One-word Tenses in Cokwe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 August 2012

Guy Atkins
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Extract

The material for this study was collected during the first two months of 1954, while camping in a Cokwe village about 50 miles north-east of Vila Luso in the administrative area of Camanongue, County and District of Moxico, Province of Bié, Angola. My chief informant was Sr. Francisco Casueka, aged 44, a Cokwe- and Portuguese-speaking African from the printing press at Boma Mission near Vila Luso. He was the ablest assistant I had among many good informants during my stay in Angola.

Résumé

LES TEMPS VERBAUX SIMPLES EN COKWE

Le système des temps simples en Cokwe se compose de vingt-et-un temps et cinq modificateurs de l'aspect, ou ‘adjoints’. Les signes qui marquent les temps affirmatifs sont de trois sortes: initiaux, médiaux, finals. Les temps négatifs, la plupart desquels ont la forme nettement différente de celle des temps affirmatifs, ne possèdent pas de simples signes initiaux. Les adjoints sont ou initiaux ou médiaux: les initiaux s'excluent, les médiaux peuvent exister l'un à côté de l'autre. Le ton est une cause déterminante lexique dans deux groupes de radicaux, qui se ressemblent autrement. Certains temps se distinguent d'autres par le ton. Des groupements spéciaux de tons sont employés dans des constructions relatives. Les préfixes de la troisième personne du singulier et du pluriel se développent en cinq séries et présentent un problème assez complexe.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 25 , Issue 3 , July 1955 , pp. 261 - 273
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1955

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References

page 261 note 1 A stencilled course of 92 pages with parallel entries in Portuguese, Cokwe, Luba, and Umbundu.

page 261 note 2 Author of Subsidies Etnográficos para a História dos Povos de Angola. Provérbios e ditos dos Quiocos. Lisbon, 1951.

page 261 note 3 Chokwe-English, English-Chokwe Dictionary and Grammar Lessons. Biula, Vila Luso, Angola. Revised edition 1947/1949. A supplement of 18 pages of errata and addenda, dated 1950 and 1952, is supplied with the book. The same author has published a collection of 543 Chokwe Sayings and Proverbs, Biula, 1952.

page 261 note 4 Bantu Grammatical Archives, ii, Johannesburg, 1949.

An excellent dictionary of Luena, indexed by stems and giving particular attention to derivative forms, has recently appeared by the same author: A Dictionary of Luvale. Lithographed in U.S.A. 1953, pp. 434, issued by the Kavungu Mission, Alto Zambeze, Angola.

page 263 note 1 It seems that some Luena tenses are in a similar state of partial atrophy. Cf. Horton's Grammar, op. cit., paras. 272, 278, 295, 298.

page 264 note 1 In Hungu, spoken in Northern Angola, there are four varieties of subject prefix for use with different tenses. Cf. Atkins, G. ‘An outline of Hungu grammar’. Garcia de Orta, Revista da Junta das Missões Geográficas e de Investigações do Ultramar, vol. ii, No. 2, 1954, p. 155.Google Scholar

page 265 note 1 C. M. Doke regards the ‘striking sub-division of the noun classes into animate and inanimate’ as one of the chief characteristics of the West-Central Zone of Bantu languages. Cf. Bantu, . Modern Grammatical, Phonetical, and Lexicographical Studies since 1860, London, 1945, p. 105.Google Scholar

page 265 note 2 There is a tonal difference between ú- (2nd Pers.) and ù- (3rd Pers.).

page 266 note 1 Terms like ‘indeterminate vowel’, ‘tense sign’, and ‘verbal base’ belong to M. Guthrie's system of analysis, as set out in The Classification of the Bantu Languages, O.U.P. 1948, pp. 11, 23, 53.

page 267 note 1 ‘The structure of the disyllabic tense suffix in Cokwe’, African Studies, vol. xiii, no. 2, 1954, pp. 85–86.

page 267 note 2 The possibility of semantic stress cannot be ruled out in Cokwe. The syllable -zal- here is given a prominence which is not merely tonal.

page 270 note 1 I was told of this usage by Mr. Crawford Allison who has spent some twenty years as a missionary in Saurimo. He kindly checked the manuscript for me and made a number of valuable suggestions.