Beyond Time - Linguistics - University of California, Berkeley

working, I have argued, more or less in parallel in a unified system dissociativity marking.
This section attempts to situate the markers historically and comparatively, and to identify
possible grammaticalization pathways. Because ka and na morphemes are both common
across Bantu, in various positions in the verb template and with disparate functions, only a
preliminary study is possible here. The following sections treat the markers in sequence.
5.5.1 Grammaticalization pathways of -ka- and na- in Bantu
5.5.1.1 -ka- across Bantu
-ka- serves a vast range of functions in Bantu, including past marking, usually distal (Nurse
2008:84). Nurse lists common functions as “negative, itive [i.e. distal, or ‘go and X’],
narrative, (far) future, (far) past, and ‘if/ when/ conditional/ situative/ persistive”’ 2008:241.
In fact, all of these functions except narrative may be found in either Namibian or Zambian
Totela, as shown in table 5.4.
ZT NT
negative
itive/distal
narrative
far future
far past:
ipfv
pfv
‘when’ ()
Table 5.4: -ka- use in ZT and NT
As noted in previous sections, -ka- is (basically) cognate with the distal -ka- marker
(which indicates that a situation occurs elsewhere than the discourse “here”), and the meanings
are similar in that they both indicate “removal” in time or space. It therefore seems
possible that the two are related.
Bybee et al. (1994:101) note three likely sources for remoteness morphology:
a. Completive and anterior markers (perfectives and simple pasts also result from this
grammaticalization path)
b. Temporal adverbs
c. Locative notions
This third type seems to have most in common with the theory that past -ka- originated
in a marker of spatial distance. Bybee et al. (1994:103) describe the following situations in
Tucano and Guaymí:
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