PhD Theses

Permanent URI for this collection

http://192.168.13.253:4000/handle/123456789/3383

Browse

Browsing PhD Theses by Author "Besha, Ruth Mfumbwa"

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    A study of tense and aspect in Shambala
    (University of Dar es Salaam, 1985) Besha, Ruth Mfumbwa
    TENSE and ASPECT as grammatical categories have long been the subject of theoretical and emprical studies by linguists, anthropologists and philosophers. The present study which investigates the manifestation of Tense and Aspect in Shambala is a further contribution to those efforts. It attempts to disentangle some of the key issues involved in the area in the light of what obtains in Shambala. The study is modelled on Reichenbach’s (1947) Scheme of Temporal relationships which rests on the idea that temporal relationships encoded in natural languages can be accounted for by the relations which hold between Speech Time: Event Time: Reference Point. Reichenbach’s scheme is modified to take account of the basic theoretical principle underlying this study that “every identifiable grammatical form is assumed to have one basic meaning”. This was necessitated by the need to distinguish clearly which among the many markers of the verb-group in Shambala are tense markers, which are aspect markers, and which are manifestations of other grammatical categories. In order to identify the tense markers the “adverbial test” is developed as a basic methodological tool. Thus the various tense forms are arrived at by considering the co-occurrence relationships between the verb forms and the temporal adverbials. The study is organized into seven main chapters and a short eighth chapter of concluding remarks. In the Introductory Chapter, the aim and objectives of the study are stated and the methods used to collect and analyze the data are discussed. The second chapter contains a broad sketch of the major phonological, morphological and syntactic features of Shambala. The verb-group is given lengthy treatment here, partly because it is complex and partly because it is the carrier of various grammatical markers including those of tense and aspect. Chapter three examines two categories of literature on Tense and Aspect. Section one examines literature that deals with Tense and Aspect from an essentially “sentential” point of view. Section two is concerned with literature that incorporates the role of “context” in the study of Tense and Aspect. Chapter four examines critically the key concepts used in this study and proposes definitions which it is hoped, clarify what has been unclear in many studies of Tense and Aspect. In Chapter Five the Tense Forms are discussed. The adverbial test is used to identify the various tense forms. The distributional constraints of the various forms are discussed and the characterisation of each form proposed. The Chapter further discusses how the tense forms interact with the temporal adverbials to specify the actual TIME of events. Aspect forms are discussed in Chapter Six where they are identified and characterised. The role of the adverbials and auxiliary verbs in expressing various aspectual distinctions is highlighted. Chapter Seven illustrates how the tense and aspect forms interact in actual discourse. It demonstrates the complimentarity between the sentential and the contextual factors in the use of tense and aspect forms. The concluding chapter contains several observations. The study shows that it is possible to reduce substantially the chances of overlap between tense and aspect forms at the grammatical level by adopting the principle of one form one meaning. Secondly the study has tried to show that while tense is a temporal grammatical category, the actual time of events is only established by the co-occurrence relationships holding between the tense forms and the temporal adverbials. Thirdly the study has tried to show that Shambala has limited grammaticalised aspectual distinctions; that many of the aspectual oppositions are manifested through the co-occurrence relationships between the tense forms and various lexical units in the language. Fourthly the study has tried to demonstrate that the use of present tenses in recounting past events can be successfully accounted for by employing the concept of different anchorage points for events in a communicative act.