Grammaticalization of tense and aspect in Mbugwe: a preliminary investigation

Mbugwe is a relatively small Bantu language spoken in Northern Tanzania, between the cities of Arusha and Babati. The formal classification is Niger-Congo, Atlantic-Congo, Volta-Congo, Benue-Congo, Bantoid, Southern, Narrow Bantu, Central, F, Nyilamba-Langi (F.30) (Lewis 2009). It is of particular interest to linguists because it is isolated from the other Bantu languages, surrounded by languages from other families, such as the Cushitic languages Iraqw and Gorowa to the west and south respectively, and the Nilotic Maasai language to the east. The Khoisan/Khoe language Sandawe is also spoken in the area, as well as the language isolate Hadza. Derek Nurse (1999: 11) states: ‘the West Tanzania area is the only place in Africa where representatives of the continent’s four language families are still spoken’. The aim of this article is to study a small part of the tense and aspect system of Mbugwe, specifically the forms with past time reference, and to present a hypothesis of how they are being grammaticalized. Hopefully the paper will give some new insight as to how this grammaticalization process takes place in Bantu languages. Language Documentation and Description, Vol. 10 (2012): Special Issue on Humanities of the lesser-known: New directions in the description, documentation and typology of endangered languages and musics