Noun Formation in Mashami

Abstract

This paper examines the morphology of the noun in Mashami, a TanzanianBantu language (E62) spoken on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro, anddescribes the various ways in which a noun may be formed. Mashamiillustrates the continuing modification of the grammatical and semanticstructure of the Bantu noun class system, showing that the system has becomequite arbitrary and is comparable to grammatical gender systems in manylanguages of the world. At the same time, an underlying semantic motive isclearly operative and gets exploited in creative ways to derive new forms forthe lexicon. And this creativity, based on shifting and expanding worldviews,wreaks havoc to the traditional distinction between inflection and derivation.