Publication date: 2003.
Number of pages: 42.
There have been several grammars written since the 1870s which cover tense and aspect in Swahili, a Bantu language. However, these grammars reveal a lack of consensus as concerns the classification of temporal and aspectual morphemes which occur in the language. This paper attempts to systematically investigate the tense and aspect system in Swahili. The study is mainly synchronic, but it will be shown that an understanding of the development of tense and aspect systems may help in accounting for seeming inconsistencies. The organization of this paper is as follows. Section 2 provides a background for the study by first presenting the Bantu languages, and then discussing the theoretical framework for tense and aspect in general. Special reference will be given here to cross-linguistic diachronic pathways involving tense and aspect. Section 3 is a study of tense and aspect in Swahili, which starts with a review of the major Swahili grammars available. A brief Swahili grammar sketch, with specific focus on the verb-group, is then provided. A synchronic study of the tense and aspect markers follows this sketch. Finally, some notes on the diachronic development within the tense and aspect system will be given, in order to account for the difficulties in the classification of the various markers, to the extent to which this is possible.