Noun classification in Kiswahili

Abstract The evaluation strategies in Kiswahili display an ambiguous status between inflection (as it was in Proto-Bantu, where classes 12–13, 19 expressed diminution, and classes 20–23 intensification) and derivation. In Modern Kiswahili these classes are lost, and the evaluative category arises by means of a highly productive derivational rule shifting a noun stem to another class: to class 5 for augmentatives, to class 7 for diminutives, because of the semantics of these classes. The morpheme (−)ji- , originally the prefix marker of class 5, is actually admitted also within a word after another class prefix, sanctioning the birth of noun derivational morphology in Kiswahili: in most cases it has become a morpheme of intensification, but sometimes it can mark a change in size, either augmentative or diminutive.