spoken in Tanzania (official language), Burundi, Kenya, Mayotte, Mozambique, Oman, Rwanda, Somalia, South Africa, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, USA
Typological Information
• SVO
• highly agglutinative
• extensive noun class system
Reduplication Form-Function
• full: word class derivation, intensification, pluralization, lexical enrichment, diminution
Relationship Form-Function
one form - various functions
Reduplication System
• lexical reduplications tend to be expressive and/or to have negative connotations (cf. Novotna 2000: 69)
Productivity
• multiple reduplication is rather rare, partial reduplication is not productive (cf. Novotna 2000: 58)
Repetitive Operations
in general not grammaticalized, not productive as regards the lexicon and entirely emphatic from the functional point of view (cf. Novotna 2000: 58)
• iteration without any functional element (Novotna 2000: 59): Wakaenda wakaenda msitu na nyika. "They went on and on through the forest."
• iteration with functional elements (Novotna 2000: 59): Haba na haba hujaza kibaba. "Little and little fills the measure."
Stylistic Information
repetition (including reduplication) is generally distinctly marked in Swahili poetry (see Wamitila, Kyallo Wadi. 1999. 'A Rhetorical Study of Kiswahili Classical Poetry: An Investigation into the Nature and Role of Repetition'. In Research in African Literatures 30: 58-73.)
Terminology