Re: CHAT: relative tense
From: | Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> |
Date: | Wednesday, March 24, 1999, 1:23 |
FFlores wrote:
> That _kitabu_ "book" is a Semitic loan, isn't it?
> Or does the first syllable ki- have anything to do
> with the _ki_ for object "it"? I'm sure I've heard
> of languages which mark nouns this way (not that
> this is one of them, but maybe...)
Swahili does mark for various genders. The ki- is the gender-marker, I
think. And the same marker is presumably used in the verb. Much in the
same was as Spanish uses the same marker for definite article as it does
for object pronouns (except for masculine singular). Veo la plaza/La
veo. If Spanish had that kind of marking that Swahili does, you'd say
something like Laveo laplaza.
--
"It's bad manners to talk about ropes in the house of a man whose father
was hanged." - Irish proverb
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