Jita language

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Jita is a Bantu language of Tanzania, spoken on the southeastern shore of Lake Victoria/Nyanza and on the island of Ukerewe.

Contents

Jita
Ecijita
Native to Tanzania
Region Mara Region
Ethnicity Jita people
Native speakers
210,000 (2005) [1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3 jit
Glottolog jita1239
JE.25 [2]
Title page of the New Testament in Jita Jita New Testament title page.png
Title page of the New Testament in Jita

Classification

Guthrie (1967) classifies Jita in Bantu Zone E, Group 20 because, like other languages in this zone, it has double prefixes (preprefixes or augments [3] ) on nouns, an “unparalleled wealth” of verb tenses and true negative tenses with a distinctive negative prefix. More recent work (Bastin 2003, Maho 2009) classifies Jita as part of an Interlacustrine Bantu group (Zone J). More specifically, Jita is a member of the Suguti Bantu group, with the Guthrie code JE.25.

Kwaya (KYA, JE.251); Kara (REG), Regi/Leki (both JE.252); and Ruri/Rori (JE.253) are closely related to Jita. While Glottolog considers Ruri a dialect of Kwaya, [4] Massamba's (1977) comparative study of Jita, Ruri and Kwaya suggests that Ruri is quite similar to Jita, while both Jita and Ruri show a number of differences from Kwaya.

Phonology

Vowels and vowel processes

Jita has the five vowel system - plus length contrasts - illustrated in the table below.

FrontCentralBack
Closei iːu uː
Mide eːo oː
Opena aː

As in many Bantu languages, vowel height harmony (VHH) affects the quality of vowels in verbal suffixes, so that only the root-initial vowel of verbs contrasts for vowel quality. Vowel length is neutralized following consonant-glide sequences and preceding NC sequences, where only long vowels are found due to a process known in the Bantu literature as compensatory lengthening. (See Downing 1990, 1996 and the Jita Orthography Statement [5] for illustrations of these processes from Jita; see Hyman 1999 and Odden 2015 [6] for general discussions of these phonological processes.)

Consonants

Jita has the following IPA consonant phonemes.

LabialLabio-velarAlveolarAlveo-palatalVelarGuttural
Plosivevoicelessptk
voiceddg
Fricativevoicelessfsʃh
voicedβvz
Affricatevoicelessʧ
voicedʤ
Nasalmnɲŋ
Liquidl/r
Trill
Approximantwj

The Jita Orthography Statement [5] notes that [p] and [d] are mostly found in borrowed words. There seems to be considerable variation in the realization of the liquid phoneme. Downing (1990, 1996) says that the liquid is variably realized as [l] or [r] and chooses [l] as the phoneme, since it seems to be the variant most consistently attested in root (morpheme) initial position. Van der Weken (2002) notes variation between [l] and a retroflex lateral [ɭ], rather than a trill [r]. The Jita Orthography Statement [5] lists [r] as the phoneme and doesn't mention variation in its realization.

Tone

Like most Bantu languages, Jita is tonal. A detailed analysis of the Jita tone system has been made by Downing (1990), (1996), and (2014), as well as Rolle (2018). [7] Work like Downing (2011), Kisseberth & Odden (2003), Marlo (2013) and Philippson (1991) put Jita tonal processes in a wider Bantu perspective.

Nominal morphology

Nouns in Jita, which also include infinitives, have the following morphological structure: Preprefix (PP) - Class Agreement Prefix (CP) -  Stem. Below is a chart of nominal agreement prefixes. Note that the IPA alphabet is used in all chart in this article; see the Jita Orthography Statement [5] for Jita orthography equivalents. Note that N indicates a nasal that assimilates in place to a following consonant:

ClassPPCPExampleGloss
  1omuomu nuperson
  2aβaaβa nupeople
  3omuomu fukobag
  4emiemi fukobags
  5(e)lili naʤicoconut palm
  6amaama naʤicoconut palms
  7eʧieʧi nuthing
  8eβieβi nuthings
  9i:(N)i:m beʤoadze
10ji:(N)ji:m beʤoadzes
11oluolu gójeeyelash  (Cl. 10 plural)
12akaaka gójestring
13otuotu gójestrings
14oβuoβu nénebigness  (no pl.)
15okuoku té:kato cook  (no pl.)
15aokuoku βókoarm  (Cl. 6 plural)

In Class 5, the preprefix only occurs with some vowel-initial or monosyllabic roots.  In all other classes, the preprefix occurs with all nouns. Nominal modifiers follow the noun. The preprefix and class agreement prefixes also occur on adjectives. Non-adjectival modifiers take a different set of agreement prefixes, which lack preprefixes:

ClassCP2
  1u
  2βa
  3gu
  4ʤi
  5li
  6ga
  7ʧi
  8βi
  9i
10ʤi
11lu
12ka
13tu
14βu
15, 15aku

Verbal morphology

The morphological structure for verbs is:

Subject Prefix (SP) - (Negative Prefix-) Tense/ Aspect Marker (TAM) - ( Object Prefixes (OP)-) Root - (Derivational Suffixes-) (Tense Marker (TAM)-) Final Vowel.

The Root plus following suffixes comprises the Stem; this grouping plus object prefixes comprises the Macro-Stem. Jita is one of the Bantu languages which allow two object prefixes to occur before the Stem.

Subject and object prefixes

Subject and object prefixes for verbs are identical to the CP2 prefixes listed above, except for Class 1. The first, second and third (Classes 1 and 2) person singular and plural subject and object agreement prefixes for verbs are as follows:

SP / OP (singular)SP / OP (plural)
Ini ~ N / Nweʧi / ʧi
youu / kuyou pl.mu / βa
s/he (Cl.1)a / muthey (Cl.2)βa / βa
-self (reflexive OP, singular and plural)i

Derivation al suffixes (extensions)

Derivational suffixes in Jita, as in other Bantu languages, change the argument structure of the verb to express grammatical notions such as causative, benefactive, locative, reciprocal, reversive and passive. Below are listed some common derivational verbal suffixes (extensions) in Jita. Note that some extensions have two contextually determined forms due to vowel height harmony, mentioned above.

-(is)j- / -(es)j-causative
-ir- / -er-Benefactive; locative
-an-reciprocal
-urur- / -oror-reversive

The extended form of some Jita Infinitives is found in the table below (oku- is the infinitive prefix; an acute accent on a vowel indicates High tone):

oku-má:m-ato sleep; lie down
oku-ma:m-ír-ato sleep somewhere (applied)
oku-má:m-j-ato make lie down (causative)
oku-βwí:r-ato tell
oku-βwi:r-án-ato tell each other (reciprocal)
oku-ʤí:ng-ato wind
oku-ʤi:ng-úrur-ato unwind (reversive)

TAMs

As noted by Guthrie (1967), Jita has a "wealth" of verb tense/aspect/mood (TAM) paradigms. Downing (1990, 1996, 2014) and Odom & Robinson (2016) provide comprehensive lists of the paradigms. Note, however, that Odom & Robinson (2016) do not mark tone, even though the melodic tone patterns assigned to each pattern are a crucial part of the expression of TAM. (See Odden & Bickmore 2014 for an overview of the properties of Bantu melodic tone.) Below is the Appendix from Downing (2014), providing an overview of the melodic tone patterns assigned to frequently used TAMs in Jita. Note that not only the TAM but also the negative prefix, as well as relative verb forms, can determine the melodic tone pattern:

InflectionTone pattern
Infinitivenon-melodic
Distant Past Imelodic – penult H
   Negativemelodic – penult H
   Relativemelodic – penult H
Distant Past IImelodic – final H
   Negativemelodic – final H
   Relativemelodic – final H
Perfectivenon-melodic
Yesterday Pastnon-melodic
   Negativenon-melodic
   Relativenon-melodic
Today Pastnon-melodic
   Negativenon-melodic
   Relativemelodic – final H
Present Continuousmelodic – ‘chaotic’
   Negativenon-melodic
Distant Futuremelodic – final H
   Negativenon-melodic
   Relativemelodic – final H
Imperativemelodic – ‘chaotic’
Subjunctivemelodic – ‘chaotic’

When no consistent melodic tone pattern could be determined for a paradigm, Downing labeled the pattern "chaotic." Rolle (2018) develops an analysis of Jita melodic tone which finds a pattern even in the "chaotic" paradigms

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References

  1. Jita at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
  2. Jouni Filip Maho, 2009. New Updated Guthrie List Online
  3. De Blois, K.F. (1970). "The augment in the Bantu languages". Africana Linguistica (in French). 4 (1): 85–165. doi:10.3406/aflin.1970.879. ISSN   2033-8732.
  4. "Jita".
  5. 1 2 3 4 "Jita orthography statement" (PDF).
  6. Odden, David (2015-12-10). "Bantu Phonology". Oxford Handbook Topics in Linguistics. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935345.013.59. ISBN   978-0-19-993534-5.
  7. Rolle, Nicholas Revett (2018). Grammatical Tone: Typology and Theory (PhD dissertation). University of California, Berkeley.

Bibliography

Works on Jita/Sources of information for this article

Other works cited