The morphology and tone patterns of causative constructions in Luganda

Abstract

This study describes the morphology of causative verbs in Luganda. Causative verbs are words that carry a causative morpheme. As a verb extension, the causative is a suffix that is added to the root resulting in a new verb stem. All studies on the causative in Bantu languages note that as a morphological category, a causative has a meaning of “to cause” or “to make somebody do something” or “to cause something to become something different” (see for example Mutaka & Tamanji 2000, p.177).

The major aim of this study was to investigate the morphology and effects of the subject plus tense marking on the tone patterns of causative verbs. The study looked at the tone patterns of causative constructions and the way the causative manifests itself in Luganda. This study is descriptive with a qualitative approach. The data used in this study was extracted from Kiingi’s (2007) monolingual dictionary of Luganda, and the primary data from respondents.

The study provides additional evidence of the property of the Luganda tone system of allowing at most one H(igh) to L(ow) pitch drop per word, well known since McCawley (1970), as cited in Hyman and Katamba (1993). It is shown in this study that in Luganda verbs, the tone on glide clusters and on the syllables made of a glide and a vowel is, in most cases, underlyingly falling (HL), especially in monosyllabic verbs. This behavior of tone in Luganda is the basis on which tone patterns of verbs are determined in categories of monosyllabic, disyllabic, trisyllabic, and multisyllabic verbs.

The study further shows that -l- is another causative morpheme in Luganda, in addition to -į-and -is- morphemes found in the literature. In the causative constructions, it was found out that the morpheme -į- with its allomorphs of -s-, -y-, -z- do not affect the tone pattern of verbs in Luganda. However, -į- affects the root-final consonant especially “k, t, l, d, r” by changing them to fricative s or z. For, -is- as another causative morpheme, it increases the syllable number of a stem, hence changing the tone patterns. It was further noted that both tense and subject marking have an effect on the tone patterns of verbs in Luganda. In the same way, all causative constructions that have only one mora on the stem-final syllable acquire a second mora, hence a falling (HL) in the recent and near past tenses.