ling semantics

7/30/2019 Ling Semantics

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Sam Morales

Ling 330

Semantics

Lexical Concepts

Some lexical concepts in Kuk are pluralization of nouns and the use of different types

of verbs.

Nouns take affixes to make them plural or singular. Affixes are also used to show

masculinity or femininity.

yar hippo

yarn hippos

tnd giant rat

tndk giant rats

ranak squirrel

ranakan squirrels

Kuk has a total of seven affixes and the above words are examples of pluralizing

words. However, in Kuk some nouns are plural, and their affixes make the words

singular. Some examples are:

swa bees

swa-tat bee

mn fingernails

mn-tt fingernail

For humans singularity is marked with theantisuffix.

bar Bari people

bar-nt Bari person


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These are also examples of inflectional morphology.

Additionally in Kuk nouns are male or female. Noun gender is determined by modifiers,

relative pronouns, and pronouns. There are very few instances of contrastive gender,

but it does occasionally occur. For instance, ktk is language with a male modifier

and mouth with a female modifier (Cohen, 43).

ktk n-io my mouth

ktk l-io my language

In the above example the nmodifier represents female while lrepresents male; io

is the possessive pronoun and ktkis language. This is also an example of

derivational morphology.

Other words need a gender particle. Without it the word has no meaning. For example:

arabya na car

arabya l truck

In this case adding a male or female particle to arabyamakes the word mean car or

truck; without it the word has no meaning. This is an example of cliticization.

I have also noticed that in Kuk, gender can change the meaning of sentences to have

stronger meanings, like in the following example:

kata n-t a na rn youve got a bad attitude

kata l-t a na rn youve got a really bad attitude

By changing the prefix in tto a feminine particle, the meaning of the sentence

became stronger.

In Kuk verbs are classified into four different classes. The author ofAspects of the

grammar of Kukonly names two of the classes, but I will explain what they consist of.


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1. Class one are the verbs with typical roots; they are not reduplicated and maybe

high or low toned.

2. Class two is known as the Vn class. These verbs take nasal vowel suffixes; they do

not take qualitative properties; they are transitive and always high toned.

3. Class three is verbs that can take qualitative suffixes; they are always low-high-low

toned and have odd tonal behavior in some tenses.

4. Class four is also known as the CVCV class. Verbs in this class take the CVCV

form and can belong to either tonal class. They are not reduplicated and do not take

qualitative suffixes (Cohen, 49-50).

Below are examples of verbs in each of the classes:

Class 1:

ok oggu cluck disapprovingly

Class 2:

wkn run

Class 3

bbn bbndu shake

Class 4

a laugh

As we can see from the above example, class 1 and class 3 verbs have partial

reduplication. In these two classes verb affixation is used as can be seen in the

following examples:

mt look

mt-akn look for


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mt-n look towards

mt-ara look away

mt-a be seen

mt- look!

Each of these affixes, along with the right tone, uses the work look in different ways.

Temporal and Spatial Deixis

In Aspects of the Grammar of Kuk, the author does not discuss temporal nor spatial

deixis. Instead his examples focus on syntax, like sentence structure and morphology. I

found no examples of deixis in his book.

Semantic phenomena

A phenomenon in Kuk occurs in tense and aspect. Contrary to most Bari languages, in

Kuk, while there are tenses or aspects that are marked by such particles,

tense/aspect marking is primarily carried out by patterns of reduplication, by tones

assigned by the aspect, and by the distribution of the qualitative morpheme (Cohen,

75). For example:

n dr I cooked/I cook

n dr-a I am cooking

n d-dr-a I was cooking

n d-dr I will cook

As we can see in the above example, adding dcauses the tense of the verb. This can

be applied to almost every verb in Kuk.

Another phenomenon seen in Kuk is the cause of consequential imperatives in tenses.

When two clauses appear together and the latter is consequential to prior, either


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logically or temporally, the verb of the second clause is marked with an imperative

mopheme (Cohen, 97). Consequential imperativism can be seen in the following

sentences:

brn wo d w a t wo d w

When a lion roars growl, then its mother cries out growl

ni k d a mt-a a kmak klaram-aram d

Here, if you are found guilty, will be fined by the court.

In the first sentence, the imperative marker is at the end oft. Because the root in the

second sentence is bisyllabic, then the reduplicative imperative is used.

In the book I used, there is one example of homophony, when using a conjunction that

corresponds to and or with, as seen in the following example:

ada a l k mgga Jada is less tall than Moga

ada l kk mgga Jadais smarter than Moga

The book that Ive used for this paper is very basic and doesnt contain examples for

every aspect of the language. However, Kuk is a language that has a simple structure,

and isnt very complex. For this reason, it is safe to assume that things like antonymy,

synonymy and polysemy are not as common and probably not used at all in Kuk.


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Works Cited

Cohen, Kevin Bretonnel. Aspects of the Grammar of Kuk. Muenchen: Lincom

Europa, 2000. Print.

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