Beyond Time - Linguistics - University of California, Berkeley

1.3.8 Other conventions
Following Comrie (1976) and Dahl (1985) I use capital-initial words to indicate the names of
language-particular tense and aspect categories, e.g. the Simple Present in English. Lowercase
forms indicate more general categories. 35
Bantu languages are referenced together with their Guthrie codes, from a partially genetic
and partially areally based system for the classification of Bantu languages. The Guthrie
codes cited in this study were introduced in Guthrie (1967-1971) and updated in Maho
(2009). Guthrie references consist of a letter, indicating the language “zone”, followed by
a number, together creating a unique reference to a Bantu variety. The first digit of the
number indicates the language “group” within the larger zone. For example, the reference
number for Totela of Zambia is K.41(Maho 2009:66). 36
Abbreviations used are listed in table 1.7. Abbreviation meanings are also indicated
throughout the text as they are introduced.
BB Bantu Botatwe
C Coda
D-domain Dissociative Domain
H High (Tone)
HTA High Tone Anticipation
IS Information Structure
L Low (Tone)
N Nucleus
NT Namibian Totela
O Onset
PB Proto-Bantu
PBB Proto-Bantu Botatwe
P-domain Primary (Associative) Domain
TA(M) Tense, Aspect (and Mood)
ZT Zambian Totela
Table 1.7: Abbreviations used
35 In fact, Dahl (1985:34) distinguishes three levels: language-specific, “universal” semantic, and crosslinguistic
grammatical categories. Following Comrie (1976) and general practices, in this study I only
distinguish language specific and “universal” semantic categories, as differentiating between cross-linguistic
grammatical categories and universal semantic categories does not significantly add to the analysis.
36 I choose to write the references with a dot between the letter and the number, although this is not
obligatory.
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