Re: Feminization of plurals?

On Wed, 11 Feb 2009 12:05:20 +0100, Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets
<tsela.cg@...> wrote:

>Interesting phenomenon. Is anything like that also happening in class
>systems like the Bantu system? (Swahili and related languages) I.e. have we
>got evidence of reanalysis of classes and conflating due to similar or
>identical surface forms?
But of course.  In Swahili, for instance, the ancestral Bantu classes 11
(/lu-/, long thin things) and 14 (/bu-/, abstracts) have fallen together in
a single /u-/ class with the regular loss of the initial /l/ and /b/.
Further discussion of the consequences this had for the resulting class at
  http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/swahili/sect4-4.html ,
part of Ellen Contini-Morava's analysis of the semantic structures in the
Swahili noun classes which, for those who haven't encountered it, is a great
read for fuel for the conlanging fire.

Alex

Reply