Publisher:Société d’études linguistiques et anthropologiques de France (SELAF)
Citation:Botne, Robert D. (1983). “On the notion ‘inchoative verb’ in Kinyarwanda.” In Le KinyaRwanda, langue bantu du Rwanda: études linguistiques, edited by Francis Jouannet, 149-180. Paris: Société d’études linguistiques et anthropologiques de France.
Rights:This material is the copyright of Peeters Publishers. Please contact Peeters for information about reproduction or reuse.
Certain verbs in KinyaRwanda—kú-rwáàrà “to be(come) sick” and gú-túùrà “to live/reside,” for example—have been considered by many linguists (cf. Coupez 1980, Overdulve 1976, Kimenyi 1973) to be stative verbs. The present analysis suggests that it would be better to consider them as “inchoative verbs,” of which three sub-classes can be defined according to linguistic evidence proper to KinyaRwanda itself. The significant aspect of the characterization of inchoatives is the punctual nature attributed to the nucleus of the events named by these verbs; a phenomenon which determines to a great extent their observed linguistic behaviour.
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This article is published with the permission of Peeters Publishers.
