Living Language. Laura M. Ahearn
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Table 1.3 Noun classes in Swahili
Class number | Prefix(es) | Typical meaning (though there are many exceptions) |
---|---|---|
1 | m-, mw-, mu- | singular: persons |
2 | wa-, w- | plural: persons (a plural counterpart of class 1) |
3 | m-, mw-, mu- | singular: plants |
4 | mi-, my- | plural: plants (a plural counterpart of class 3) |
5 | ji-, j-, Ø- | singular: fruits |
6 | ma-, m- | plural: fruits (a plural counterpart of class 5, 9, 11, seldom 1) |
7 | ki-, ch- | singular: things |
8 | vi-, vy- | plural: things (a plural counterpart of class 7) |
9 | n-, ny-, m-, Ø- | singular: animals, things |
10 | n-, ny-, m-, Ø- | plural: animals, things (a plural counterpart of class 9 and 11) |
11 | u-, w-, uw- | singular: no clear semantics |
15 | ku-, kw- | verbal nouns |
16 | pa- | locative meanings: close to something |
17 | ku- | indefinite locative or directive meaning |
18 | mu-, m- | locative meanings: inside something |
Source: Adapted from Wilson (1970:240) and from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noun_class, accessed February 19, 2020. Ø means no prefix. Some classes are homonymous (esp. 9 and 10). The Proto-Bantu class 12 disappeared in Swahili, class 13 merged with 7, and 14 with 11.
Other categories across various languages also differ dramatically from those of English. Verb tenses and aspects vary enormously, as do the number and type of case markings. In some languages, it is obligatory to indicate whether an assertion is made as a result of direct or indirect knowledge – whether you know something from firsthand knowledge, in other words, or from hearsay. This form of grammatical marking is known as evidentiality. In Eastern Pomo, a Native American language spoken in California, for example, there are four suffixes from which speakers must choose when reporting an event, depending on whether the person (1) has direct (probably visual) knowledge; (2) has direct nonvisual sensory knowledge (such as feeling or hearing something); (3) is reporting what others say; or (4) is inferring from circumstantial evidence what must have happened. While it is certainly possible to indicate the source and reliability of the information one reports in English, in languages such as Eastern Pomo in which evidentiality is expressed obligatorily through grammatical categories speakers do not have a choice about doing so (Aikhenvald 2004).
Languages, in other words, are extremely variable and “force quite different sets of conceptual distinctions in almost every sentence: some languages express aspect, others don’t; some have seven tenses, some have none; some force marking of visibility or honorific status of each noun phrase in a sentence, others don’t; and so on and so forth” (Levinson 2003a:29). And yet, as Roman Jakobson noted, “Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey” (cited in Deutscher 2010:151).
We will examine in much greater detail linguistic diversity and its potential relationship to thought and culture in chapter 5. For the purposes of this introductory chapter, it is helpful to note that just as there is enormous diversity found across the languages of the world, there is a similar multiplicity of subjects chosen by linguistic anthropologists to research.
Examples of Diversity in Research Topics in Linguistic Anthropology
While linguistic anthropologists hold in common the view that language is a form of social action, there is nevertheless great variety in topic choice and research methods within the field. Chapter 3 will examine many of the research methods used by linguistic anthropologists, so what I present here are some examples of classic ethnographies written by linguistic anthropologists and an explanation of how the topics they chose for their research have contributed to our understanding of language as a form of social action. We will explore many more examples of both classic and contemporary research throughout the book. These studies illustrate, but by no means exhaust, the wide-ranging diversity of contemporary linguistic anthropology.
Keith Basso
Keith Basso’s (1996) ethnography, Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache, explores “place-making” as a linguistic and cultural activity. This book was written after Ronnie Lupe, chairman of the White Mountain Apache tribe, asked Basso to help make some maps: “Not whitemen’s maps, we’ve got plenty of them, but Apache maps with Apache places and names. We could use them. Find out something about how we know our country. You should have done this before” (Basso 1996:xv). When Basso took up this suggestion and traveled with Apache horsemen to hundreds of locations in the region, he began to notice how place names were used in everyday Apache conversations in ways that were very new to him. He also spoke with consultants, asking about the stories associated with various places. Through entertaining vignettes and engrossing storytelling, Basso explains how the richly descriptive Western Apache uses of language and place names (such as “Whiteness Spreads Out Descending to Water,” “She Carries Her Brother on her Back,” and “Shades of Shit”) help reinforce important Apache cultural values. For example, Western Apache speakers invoke these place names in conversations to allude indirectly to cautionary tales from recent or ancient history that may be relevant to the current speakers’ dilemmas. This practice, called “speaking with names,” is a verbal routine that “allows those who engage in it to register claims about their own moral worth, about aspects of their social relationships with other people on hand, and about a particular way of attending to the local landscape that is avowed to produce a beneficial form of heightened self-awareness” (Basso 1996:81). In this book, then, Basso shows how the physical environment is filtered through language to solidify social relations and strengthen Western Apache notions of wisdom and morality.
Marjorie Harness Goodwin
In her book, He-Said-She-Said: Talk As Social Organization Among Black Children, Marjorie Harness Goodwin (1990) chooses a