Beyond Time - Linguistics - University of California, Berkeley

NC Bare Cmpl
1/1a a- a-
2/2a ba- a-
3 u- wa-
4 i- ya-
5 li- lya-
6 a- a-
7 chi- cha-
8 zi- za-
9 i- ya-
10 zi- za-
11 lu- lwa-
12 ka- ka-
13 tu- twa-
14 bu- bwa-
15 ku- bwa-
16 a- a-
17 ku- kwa-
18 mu- mwa-
Table 3.4: Totela noun class subject markers: bare and completive
also tend to pattern with the durative category rather than the change-of-state category in
many cases. Perception statives like -bona ‘see’ and -suwa ‘hear, feel’ also often pattern with
the durative category, although they have some added variability and are therefore discussed
separately in 3.2.2.4.
When used with durative verbs, -a- generally refers to a completed action or situation,
as in the following sentence used to describe a stimulus action during elicitation. When
speakers were presented with drawings of people and objects in particular locations, these
usually elicited -ite responses (see chapter 6), while descriptions of live action tended to elicit
the -a- marker, as in (106), given after I jumped into a circle drawn in the sand.
(106) mwásòtòkèlá mùchífùndà
mwa-sotok-el-a mu-chifunda
2pl.cmpl-jump-appl-fv cl18(loc)-cl7.circle
‘you jumped into the circle’ (ZT2009Elic70)
The use of the -a- form to describe live actions, but not pictures of people and objects
in locations, indicates that it is not referring to a resultant state, but to the action itself,
completed at the time of utterance. 4
4 This finding suggests that trends for use of different TAM marking for live actions vs. pictures should
be noted and taken into account when conducting field elicitation with various kinds of prompts.
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