The Nature and Direction of Meaning of -Kali in Kiswahili

Abstract

This paper examines the collocations of an adjective stem -kali to create several meanings, showing how -kali can be used to express a wide range of distinct concepts in different occasions of its utterance. It is noted that the few existing studies of Kiswahili adjectives (Ashton 1947, Myachina 1981, Kahigi 2008) which have focused mainly on semantics in determining their meanings, are therefore incomplete because they have overlooked many further meanings of these adjectives in use. Here it is argued that meanings of Kiswahili adjectives can best be exhausted if one takes pragmatics into consideration. This study demonstrates that –kali generates an infinite number of meanings; some of these connotations extend in the direction of negative pole of undesirable attributes and others towards a positive pole. The paper further demonstrates that although the meaning of the adjective stem -kali connoting ‘harsh’ or ‘rude’ can be adjusted pragmatically in context, the different meanings created when this qualifier co-occurs with different nouns derive interestingly from the same stem meaning: ‘harsh’ or’ rude’.