Abstract
I investigate the paradigms of change of state verb roots in Kinyarwanda, comparing the simple state, inchoative, causative, and result state members of 81 root paradigms. I show that the morphological shape of the causative/inchoative members of the paradigm and whether there is a simple state term are both contingent upon root semantics. Certain change of state roots in Kinyarwanda lack simple state meanings and always give rise to change entailments; this correlates with the lack of the simple state in the paradigm. I further show that verb meaning also partially determines which of several derivational strategies are used by a given change of state paradigm.
Highlights
On many current event structural approaches, a verb’s meaning has two interrelated components: the root and the template
I have shown that the root of a change of state verb is crucial to determining the morphosyntactic properties of the simple state-causative-inchoative-result state paradigms
I have argued that the available derivational strategies are determined by whether change is entailed by the verbal root as well as properties of the tense and aspect of the clause
Summary
On many current event structural approaches, a verb’s meaning has two interrelated components: the root and the template. The verbal inchoative and causative forms are not morphologically related to these adjectives (e.g. kw-iyongera ‘to get bigger/to improve/to widen’ and gu-tebera ‘to become bigger’, which is the causative form for all three senses of kw-iyongera) This is somewhat surprising given the standard assumption in previous work that other paradigm members are built up from the simple state; no root in Kinyarwanda has been observed to work this way. I have provided a description of the seven observed derivational strategies in Kinyarwanda This sets the stage for the discussion regarding the various COS paradigms and the entailments of change present with certain root meanings. Result roots like those in (28) entail a change, and cannot have been always in the state described by the root. C. *Umu-gati u-ra-r-its-e. 3-bread 3.SBJ-NON.PST-eat-STAT-PRFV Intended: ‘The bread is eaten.’
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