Date of Award
Spring 5-2021
Document Type
Honors Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Linguistics
Advisor/Committee Chair
Lee Bickmore
Abstract
The Bantu languages Nyanja and Chichewa are considered dialects of the same language in some circles; Town Nyanja is one of three different dialects among Nyanja itself, spoken in Zambia’s capital city, Lusaka. This piece of research delves into morphological data provided by a Town Nyanja native speaker through a series of remote video elicitations. While potentially (and likely) not comprehensive, this paper includes a morphological inventory of tense, aspect, and mood markers for Town Nyanja verbs, and contrasts these morphemes with those present in Chichewa; it is the belief of this researcher that there is significant evidence that the two languages’ verbal morphologies are contrastive enough to challenge the prior beliefs that Chichewa and Town Nyanja are the same language or dialect.
Recommended Citation
Beers, Jonathan, "Tense, Aspect, and Mood in Town Nyanja: A Morphological Inventory and Contrastive Analysis from Chichewa" (2021). Linguistics. 5.
https://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/honorscollege_ling/5