ケレウェ語のテンス・アスペクト形式と接触による変容

Abstract

In the southward of Lake Victoria there is an island called Ukerewe, where Kerewe and Jita are main native languages. These languages are members of "Great Lakes" group - a subgroup of Bantu languages. Kerewe belongs to Rutara group - a subbranch of the Great Lakes - whose original homeland is the west side of the Lake, and Jita belongs to another subbranch called Suguti, which is distributed mainly on the east side of the Lake. Kerewe and Jita encountered each other in Ukerewe island, after migrating from each side of the Lake, and they have coexisted for more than two centuries. As a result of language contact in Ukerewe, Kerewe and Jita seem to have influenced each other and experienced contact-induced changes. In this article, I focus on tense and aspect system in Kerewe and examine the influence from Jita, and show Kerewe influence on Jita vice versa. The results are as follows; 1) Kerewe borrowed the front part of a compound verbal unit from Jita, which represents "Before-Yesterday's Past" S-a-li-ga. This is a change from the typical Rutara form S-ka-V-a and S-ßa-ile, and the new form seems to have induced a change of the front part of "Today's Past", which is now the Kerewe original form sanga. 2) Jita seems to have borrowed simple forms of "Far Perfect" S-la-V-ile and "Near Future" S-laa-V-a from Kerewe. Jita also innovated front parts of compound verbal units, S-laa-ßa-ga and S-li-ßa-ga. 3) The simple form of "Past Habitual" S-a-V-a-ga is now changing to a new form S-a-li-ga ni-S-V-a-ga in Kerewe. This new form shows the tendency of the language change in Ukerewe, to say a change towards compound forms. 4) On the other hand, Kerewe and Jita retain their own TA markers -- ka- ("Far Past") and ku- ("Present Progress") in Kerewe, and maa- ("Yesterday's Past") and the subject prefix with augments in Jita --, they seem to function as signs of distinguishing these two languages as different ones.