Nairobi Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

A semantic analysis of Lubukusu cut and break verbs

Annemartha Wafula — 2023-01-12

This paper analyses the separation events, as manifested in the cut and break verbs in Lubukusu. This is done with a particular reference to the intention behind the separation, the instrument used in the disintegrating event and the manner in which the Cutting and Breaking events are expressed in Lubukusu. Video recordings of activities involving separation were compiled and presented to selected Lubukusu native speakers. Discourses on the various types of verbs used to describe the separation of fruits/crops from their trees/plants, separation events involving animals, people and items such as paper and clothes were also recorded. The corpora of the separation events were organized and grouped using the Bohnemeyer elicitation tool. Out of the 100 verbs of Cut and Break that were collected, the study systematically sampled 30 CUT verbs and 20 BREAK verbs. The study shows that meanings of Lubukusu CUT and BREAK verbs can either be constricted or widened contextually to suit the use. The paper contributes to the existing studies on CUT and BREAK verbs, and in the formulation of further cross-linguistic generalizations on this topic.

An analysis of stylistic features in Ronald Ontiri Onchuru’s popular music

Joel Atuti Osubo — 2023-03-21

This paper examines the stylistic features utilized in Ronald Ontiri Onchuru’s popular music as he seeks to represent the cognitive reality in the Abagusii society. The article shows that style plays a pivotal role in articulating societal reality through popular music. As such music is regarded as a very powerful medium to an extent that in some societies there have been attempts to control its use. It is powerful at the level of the social group because it facilitates communication which goes beyond words, enables meanings to be shared, and promotes the development and maintenance of individual, group, cultural and national identities. It is powerful at the individual level because it can induce multiple responses – physiological, movement, mood, emotional, cognitive and behavioral. Few other stimuli have effects on such a wide range of human functions. The power of music lies on the language deployed by the artiste to convey the intended message. Consequently, this article examined how Ronald Ontiri Onchuru, popularly known as Bikundo, deploys language in his popular music to foreground various issues in the Abagusii community. Ronald Ontiri Bikundo is one of the popular musicians among the Abagusii of western Kenya. The study was premised on the understanding that style is one of the tools available to any creative artist in articulating issues affecting society. Consequently, it sought to identify and analyse various features of style in Bikundo’s popular music and how they are used to bring out diverse thematic concerns in the music. The study delimited itself to the analysis of Bikundo’s purposively sampled popular songs. The study relies on Semiotics and Sociological theories. The study reveals that Bikundo uses various styles such as metaphor, symbolism, personification and idiomatic expressions to foreground themes such as HIV/AIDS, hardwork, poverty, and love.

Noun Classes and Agreement in Lutsotso

Hellen Odera — 2023-02-13

One of the most noticeable grammatical features of Bantu languages, is the presence of noun classes. Although each noun (or noun stem) in the majority of Bantu languages is classified into one of 15–18 noun classes, Lutsotso language captures 21 classes. While it is frequently hard to distinguish between noun classes semantically, basic meanings or semantic trends of subsets of members may frequently be identified. Lutsotso nouns consist of a noun prefix and a root. The two elements of the Lutsotso nominal are crucial because the prefix, for example, denotes the class. Complex agreement morphology in the noun phrase and the sentence is controlled by class membership, which is indicated morphologically on the noun by a class prefix. As such, the prefix functions as a classifier. Affixes are appended to the nominal root to form the noun. Agreement is a type of syntactic connection in which a word's or phrase's inflectional behaviour is dictated by the features of a nominal element to which it is closely connected. Number, person, case, and gender are examples of agreement markers. The class to which the head noun belongs must be reflected throughout the phrase in Bantu languages. This is accomplished through the use of concordial prefixes, which have distinct forms for the parts of speech to which they are attached. There is no discrete number morphology in Bantu languages, but the noun class system mediates number; numerous noun classes are paired according to number, forming singular-plural pairs. The Noun (N) component element of the simple sentence exists as a complex Noun phrase (NP) with nominal qualities indicated by affixes. Several nominal inflectional morphemes are included in the Lutsotso NP. Accordingly, concord prefixes control and impact the words connected with them in the Lutsotso noun phrase. The study discovered that concord prefixes sustain the grammatical relationship between the headnoun and the rest of the noun phrase. This study suggests that further research be conducted on other Lutsotso phrases in order to achieve a proper documentation of this language.