Difference between revisions of "Annotating Runyankore-Rukiga"

Revision as of 22:13, 13 October 2011

Runyankore-Rukiga refers to two of the four closely related languages of Uganda which form part of a new standardized language of Uganda together with Runyoro and Rutooro. Sometimes Runyakitara is used to refer to the standardized form of these four languages; see for example the following still incomplete wikipedia article .

Here we discuss questions related to the annotation of Runyankore-Rukiga texts and sentence collections in TypeCraft. The material is annotated by Allen Asiimwe who is a lecturer at Makerere University. She is a speaker of Rukiga. In addition Justus Turamyomwe and Misah Natumanya both graduate students at the Linguistic Department at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology NTNU annotate.

Annotating in TypeCraft

The following example shows three tiers of a TypeCraft annotation. The TCEditor allows the annotations on 6 tiers, a free translation tier, a morph tier, a baseform tier, a meaning tier, a gloss tier and a part-of-speech tier. When interlinear glosses (IG) are exported from TypeCraft the meaning and the gloss tier are collapsed for presentational reasons. You need to have a login to TypeCraft in order to annotate. Go to *login* in the upper right corner of your browser window to request a login to TypeCraft.

(1)

Annotating the Participle form of the verb

The participle form of the verb is indicated by the morpheme -riku-. Although this morpheme is complex, it should not be split into -ri- and -ku- in this case, since it is the combination of these two morphemes that marks the participle as such. --Justus Turamyomwe 11:13, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi Justus, I have seen your message about annotating and marking the participle in RR, however i have some reservations about -riku- as a marker:

1. Does it apply to all participles in RR (I.E PRESENT, PERFECT, 'ALREADY', AND 'NOT YET'? OR Is it an exclusive participle marker in RR?

2. Could it be that "-ku-" is a mere verb infinitive form used in compound structures, because "Another form of the verb often used in compound verbs is the infinitive" and -ri- is a tense marker. as suggested here; http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/morphology.html

3.Must we combine two morphemes each with its own independent meaning to mark participle, and in any case what kind of participle?

4. Do we have enough literature in Bantu languages to support this claim, because if it is indeed true, it should at least have some varriants or at least cognates in lanuages like Rotooro and Runyoro, LAGANDA and maybe Ruhaya --natumanyam 15:27, 13 October 2011 (UTC)--natumanyam 15:27, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Dear Misah,

I have copies your above interesting comment from Justus' usepage to this page in the hope that more people see it. --Dorothee Beermann 16:09, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

The free morphemes aha and omu

The free forms aha and omu are derived from the locative classes ha- and mu- via the affixation of an initial vowel. Both forms may occur as part of a locative expression, as determiners or as pronouns. In the example below aha is categorised as a preposition. On of the projects the Runyankore-Rukiga group is working on is to develop a better understanding of the role that both elements play in the grammar of Runyankore-Rukiga.

The following two phrases taken from the TC-database represent one of the interesting phenomena that we came across while annotating Runyankore-Rukiga: (1)

In (1) the verb kugamba meaning speak carries the applicative suffix -ir. Interestingly it seems to be the applicative marker that forces a spatial interpretation of aha, since (2) below is ambiguous between a 'spatial interpretation' and a 'topic interpretation' of the prepositional phrase headed by aha: (3)

other examples of the use of aha and omu

Is there a preposition 'of' in Runyankore-Rukiga?

The following sentences taken from the TC database have in common that they contain a phrase that is translated using the English preposition of. The corresponding element in RR is sometimes a free, sometimes a bound morpheme.

Its forms are: we,gwe, bw, rwa, ka, za, bwa, ya. 

Following Taylor (1985) -a is the possessive marker while the variation derives from agreement. Should we call this formative a preposition?

Diverging noun class systems for Runyankore-Rukiga

Morris.H.F. and B.F.R. Kirwan(1972) and Taylor, C. (1985) see Bantu Bibliography feature two different noun class systems.