Ling Semantics

Sam Morales Ling 330 Semantics Lexical Concepts Some lexical concepts in Kuk are pluralization of nouns and
the use of different types of verbs. Nouns take affixes to make them plural or singular. Affixes are also used to show masculinity or femininity. yar yar n tnd tndk ranak ranakan hippo hippos giant rat giant rats squirrel squirrels
Kuk has a total of seven affixes and the above words are examples of pluralizing words. However, in Kuk some nouns are plural, and their affixes make the words singular. Some examples are: swa swa-tat mn mn-tt bees bee fingernails fingernail
For humans singularity is marked with the anti suffix. bar bar-nt Bari people Bari person
These are also examples of inflectional morphology. Additionally in Kuk nouns are male or female. Noun gender is determined by modifiers, relative pronouns, and pronouns. There are very few instances of contrastive gender, but it does occasionally occur. For instance, ktk is language with a male modifier and mouth with a female modifier (Cohen, 43). ktk n-io ktk l-io my mouth my language
In the above example the n modifier represents female while l represents male; io is the possessive pronoun and ktk is language. This is also an example of derivational morphology. Other words need a gender particle. Without it the word has no meaning. For example: arabya na arabya l car truck
In this case adding a male or female particle to arabya makes the word mean car or truck; without it the word has no meaning. This is an example of cliticization. I have also noticed that in Kuk, gender can change the meaning of sentences to have stronger meanings, like in the following example: kata n-t a na rn kata l-t a na rn youve got a bad attitude youve got a really bad attitude
By changing the prefix in t to a feminine particle, the meaning of the sentence became stronger. In Kuk verbs are classified into four different classes. The author of Aspects of the grammar of Kuk only names two of the classes, but I will explain what they consist of.
1.
Class one are the verbs with typical roots; they are not reduplicated and maybe
high or low toned. 2. Class two is known as the Vn class. These verbs take nasal vowel suffixes; they do
not take qualitative properties; they are transitive and always high toned. 3. Class three is verbs that can take qualitative suffixes; they are always low-high-low
toned and have odd tonal behavior in some tenses. 4. Class four is also known as the CVCV class. Verbs in this class take the CVCV
form and can belong to either tonal class. They are not reduplicated and do not take qualitative suffixes (Cohen, 49-50). Below are examples of verbs in each of the classes: Class 1: ok oggu Class 2: wkn Class 3 bbn bbndu Class 4 a laugh shake run cluck disapprovingly
As we can see from the above example, class 1 and class 3 verbs have partial reduplication. In these two classes verb affixation is used as can be seen in the following examples: mt mt-akn look look for
mt-n mt-ara mt-a mt-
look towards look away be seen look!
Each of these affixes, along with the right tone, uses the work look in different ways. Temporal and Spatial Deixis In Aspects of the Grammar of Kuk, the author does not discuss temporal nor spatial deixis. Instead his examples focus on syntax, like sentence structure and morphology. I found no examples of deixis in his book. Semantic phenomena A phenomenon in Kuk occurs in tense and aspect. Contrary to most Bari languages, in Kuk, while there are tenses or aspects that are marked by such particles, tense/aspect marking is primarily carried out by patterns of reduplication, by tones assigned by the aspect, and by the distribution of the qualitative morpheme (Cohen, 75). For example:
n dr n dr-a n d-dr-a n d-dr
I cooked/I cook I am cooking I was cooking I will cook
As we can see in the above example, adding d causes the tense of the verb. This can be applied to almost every verb in Kuk. Another phenomenon seen in Kuk is the cause of consequential imperatives in tenses. When two clauses appear together and the latter is consequential to prior, either
logically or temporally, the verb of the second clause is marked with an imperative mopheme (Cohen, 97). Consequential imperativism can be seen in the following sentences: brn wo d w a t wo d w When a lion roars growl, then its mother cries out growl ni k d a mt-a a kmak kl aram-aram d Here, if you are found guilty, will be fined by the court. In the first sentence, the imperative marker is at the end of t. Because the root in the second sentence is bisyllabic, then the reduplicative imperative is used. In the book I used, there is one example of homophony, when using a conjunction that corresponds to and or with, as seen in the following example: ada a l k mgga ada l kk mgga Jada is less tall than Moga Jada is smarter than Moga
The book that Ive used for this paper is very basic and doesnt contain examples for every aspect of the language. However, Kuk is a language that has a simple structure, and isnt very complex. For this reason, it is safe to assume that things like antonymy, synonymy and polysemy are not as common and probably not used at all in Kuk.
Works Cited Cohen, Kevin Bretonnel. Aspects of the Grammar of Kuk. Muenchen: Lincom Europa, 2000. Print.

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Sam Morales Ling 330 Semantics Lexical Concepts Some lexical concepts in Kuk are pluralization of nouns and

mt-n mt-ara mt-a mt-

look towards look away be seen look!

n dr n dr-a n d-dr-a n d-dr

I cooked/I cook I am cooking I was cooking I will cook

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