(Im)perfectivity and actionality in East Ruvu Bantu

: Temporal/aspectual morphology often serves as a diagnostic for actional classes. Bantu languages are known for their highly developed tense, aspect (and mood) systems. The East RuvuBantu languages ofTanzaniaareunusual inthat they exhibit a decidedly reduced set of temporal/aspectual morphemes. This paper contributes to the growing body of research on Bantu actionality in showing that despite not being encoded overtly, perfective distinguishes between at least two actional classes. We suggest, however, that imperfective, morphologically encoded by present and non-past tense morphology, does not clearly delineate between the two verb classes. This discussion highlights the complex interaction between tense and aspect.


Introduction
Temporal/aspectual (TA) morphology is often used as a diagnostic to distinguish among the actional classes of a given language (e.g., Dowty's 1979 claim that only non-statives occur in the English progressive).Various tests are language-specific (e.g., non-statives have habitual interpretations in simple present tense in English).Narrowing in on the role of aspectual morphology, Tatevosov (2002) proposes that while a large number of aspectual categories can be found crosslinguistically, an inventory of actional types can be determined based on the behaviour of verbs in combination with perfective and imperfective morphology.Tatevosov emphasizes the importance of aspectual morphology in distinguishing among actional classes: "actionality reveals its true character in interaction with aspectual grams rather than with grams expressing temporal reference and modality" (Tatevosov 2002: 343).
Actional classes in languages of the Bantu family have been the focus of an increasing amount of recent research (e.g., Botne and Kershner 2008;Crane 2011;Kanijo 2019;Kershner 2002;Persohn 2017;Roth 2018, among others).These studies have yielded new perspectives on both the inventories of actional classes in Bantu, as well as the diagnostics used to classify them.Recent work on Bantu languages has suggested that further diagnostics are needed to capture actional classification across the Bantu language family (e.g., Crane and Fleisch 2019;Crane and Persohn 2019;Persohn 2019).
Bantu languages are known for their "extraordinarily rich" TA systems (Dahl 1985: 39).Though the minimum shape for the verb is the root and a final vowel,1 the structure is generally more morphologically complex and includes numerous TA affixes.TA grammemes are often represented by split morphemes: formal markers occurring in different morphosyntactic slots in the verb phrase combine to express dozens of TA categories (see Nurse 2008).The East Ruvu Bantu (henceforth ER) languages, spoken in the Morogoro region in Tanzania, are highly unusual in the Bantu language family in that they exhibit a greatly reduced set of TA morphemes and paradigms.Reduced TA systems such as these raise an important question for the study of actionality: how does this reduction impact the application and results of diagnostics used in classifying actionality?
The goal of this paper is to explore the role that perfectivity and imperfectivity (henceforth (im)perfectivity) plays as a diagnostic for actional classes in the ER languages.In doing so we examine how (im)perfectivity is encoded and how (im)perfectivity interacts with verbs of different classes in these languages.We draw on comparisons with other South-East Bantu languages whose actional systems have been explored in detail.We show that despite the reduced TA systems, the perfective, encoded by the absence of tense morphology, distinguishes between verbs of different classes.However, imperfective, encoded by present and non-past tense morphology, does not clearly delineate between verb classes.This paper contributes to research on actionality in Bantu languages by revealing variation in the ways that (im)perfectivity is encoded across Bantu and further testing the cross-linguistic application of actional class diagnostics.
The six ER languages include Kagulu (ISO 639-3: kki, Guthrie Bantu code: G12), Kami (ISO 639-3: kcu, Guthrie Bantu code: G36), Kutu (ISO 639-3: kdc, Guthrie Bantu code: G37), Kwere (ISO 639-3: cwe, Guthrie Bantu code: G32), Luguru (ISO 639-3: ruf, Guthrie Bantu code: G35), and Zalamo (ISO 639-3: zaj, Guthrie Bantu code: G33).All six languages are under-described; Kutu and Kwere are completely undescribed (though see Bloom Ström and Petzell forthcoming;Petzell and Hammarström 2013).This study is based on fieldwork data primarily collected in the Morogoro region in 2018 and 2019, though they are supplemented by data collected by Petzell 2014-2017 (see Jordan and Petzell, in press) and more recent digital communication.The speakers are all native speakers of the respective ER languages and were born in the area where the target languages are spoken.All speakers are bilingual in the national language Swahili.The central data collection method used is elicitation, including translations to/from English and to/from Swahili into the target languages, as well as acceptability judgments.A number of non-verbal stimuli were also used, including video clips, drawings and acted-out contexts.
This paper is organized as follows: we begin with a brief overview of the TA systems of the ER languages (Section 2).Next we examine (im)perfective as a diagnostic for actionality in two South-East Bantu languages.Taking Southern Ndebele (ISO 639-3: nbl, Guthrie Bantu code: S407), spoken in South Africa, and Nyakyusa (ISO 639-3: nyy, Guthrie Bantu code: M31), spoken in Tanzania, as case studies, we outline the readings that arise with (im)perfective morphology in verbs of two actional classes in those languages: activities and inchoatives (Section 3).In Section 4 we present our findings of (im)perfective as a diagnostic for actional classes in East Ruvu languages; we show that despite a reduced inventory of tense and aspect morphology, perfectivity still serves as a diagnostic for activities and inchoatives in East Ruvu, though imperfective only does so to a lesser extent.We conclude in Section 5 with a discussion of implications and remaining questions.
2 A brief overview of the East Ruvu TA systems Unlike most Bantu languages, which have extensive TA categories (Dahl 1985: 176), the ER languages have significantly reduced inventories of TA morphology (see Petzell and Aunio 2019 on Kami; and Petzell and Khül 2017 on Luguru).For example, there are no morphologically marked temporal remoteness distinctions in any of the six languages, which are otherwise present in 80% of the Bantu languages (Nurse 2008: 103).In this section we provide a brief overview of some of the ways in which TA is encoded in the ER languages.

Tense in ER
The ER languages show some degree of variation in their tense systems.Kami, Kutu, and Zalamo exhibit a two-way tense contrast: verbs with overt tense morphology have non-past (present or future) interpretations, as in (1)-(2), 2 while verbs without overt tense morphology have past tense interpretations, as in (3)-(4).Unlike most Bantu languages where tones are lexically and/or grammatically distinctive (Marlo and Odden 2019), there is no lexical or grammatical tone in the ER languages; hence there is no tone marking in the examples in this paper.The plus sign (+) in the interlinear gloss indicates a phonological merger between vowels. 3 (12) Kagulu Chi-ku7 -gend-a.8SM.1PL-NON.PST-go-FV 'We go/are going./Wewill go.'However, like Kwere and Luguru, Kagulu also has a distinct future morpheme (13): (13) Kagulu Chi-ka-lim-a.
SM.1PL-FUT-cultivate-FV 'We will cultivate.' In all the ER languages, sentences without overt tense morphology encode past tense interpretations, as illustrated in examples (3)-( 6), and ( 11) above.This is unusual, not just for Bantu languages, in which we find extensive remoteness distinctions in the past (see Botne 2012), but also cross-linguistically.In their language sample, Bybee et al. (1994) find that "[p]erfective is sometimes zeromarked, but past is not" (95).

Aspect in ER
While the inventory of tenses vary across the Bantu language family, the number of aspect markers is more restricted (Nurse and Devos 2019: 211).Nurse and Devos propose that six aspectual categories are widespread in Bantu: perfective, imperfective, perfect, progressive, persistive and habitual/iterative.They suggest that while few of the languages in their database exhibit all six categories, the perfective and imperfective are attested in every language in the sample (Nurse and Devos 2019: 212).

Perfective
In Bantu languages in which the perfective is overtly encoded, it is typically encoded by the suffix -ile.Nurse labels the suffix 'anterior' but adds that it is also used as a (past) perfective (Nurse 2008: 264).Nurse (2008) suggests that 66% of Bantu languages exhibit the suffix -ile or variations thereof.-ile typically renders simple past/perfective and/or perfect translations in English, as seen in ( 14) below.In ER languages, -ile is not used in simple constructions (see Petzell 2008 for Kagulu; Petzell and Aunio 2019 for Kami; Mkude 1974 andPetzell 2020 for Luguru).This was noted by Guthrie who stated that there are some languages in this region where -ile behaves atypically in that it does not occur in 'regular' affirmative sentences (Guthrie 1948: 49).The ER data suggest that -ile is only used in dependent and in negative clauses; our language consultants do not produce -ile in simple constructions in any of the languages.Sentences in the past (i.e., without overt tense morphology) with perfective interpretations (15), perfect interpretations ( 16), or either ( 17) cannot be suffixed with -ile. 10 If they were, they would be interpreted as dependent clauses.
(15) Kutu Amina ka-fagil-a jana.Amina SM1 11 -sweep-FV yesterday 'Amina swept yesterday.'( 16) Kutu Amina vi-a-ingil-e mgati ka-vik-a Sarah ka-fagil-a Amina TEMP-SM1-enter-FV inside SM1-find-FV Sarah SM1-sweep-FV mwaka.already 'When Amina entered she found that Sarah had already swept.' 9 Source glossing has been simplified for the purpose of this paper.10 The verb stem meaning 'enter' (e.g., in example 16 and elsewhere) is lexicalized as ingil (potentially with a remnant of the applicative), which may misleadingly resemble -ile when the final vowel (FV) is -e.Similarly, the verb stem fagil 'sweep' with the final vowel -e may resemble -ile.While there may be historical explanations for these similarities, there is no evidence that fagil or ingil should be analyzed in these examples as morphologically complex verb stems consisting of the -ile suffix.11 Subject and object markers for noun class 1, as in all the singular classes, are the equivalent of third person singular (3SG), but since the subject may belong to another noun class, the Bantu noun class numbers are used in the glossing in this paper.
(18) Kagulu Amina ha-ka-bilim-a fo-ya12 -i-on-ile i-simba.Amina PST-SM1-run-FV TEMP-SM1.DEP-OM9-see-ILE13 9-lion 'Amina ran when she saw a/the lion.' ( 19) Kami Fi-ni-fik-ile Amina ka-andus-a ku-som-a.We take the restriction of -ile to complex constructions, and the lack of any other morpheme that yields specifically perfective or past meaning, as evidence that ER languages lack an overt perfective morpheme.Although we are not committed to a particular analysis of perfective as a null aspect marker (or as encoded in null past), for simplicity in this paper, we will refer to perfective in ER as Ø.

Imperfective
The most common imperfective morpheme across Bantu is the affix -ag which occurs in almost all Bantu languages (Nurse 2008: 262).The affix -ag is "largely attested" (Meeussen 1967: 110) in Bantu languages and yields progressive and habitual interpretations.The -ag affix does occur in each of the ER languages, and it appears in both progressive (24) and habitual (25) contexts.

SM.1PL+PRS-go-FV
'We go/are going.' The remaining ER languages have non-past morphology that encode present and future meanings (see examples (1)-( 2) and (12) above).Thus, although the ER languages exhibit the -ag imperfective morpheme, for the purpose of examining diagnostics for actionality in ER languages, we focus here on the morphology that results in present tense interpretations, namely present tense and non-past morphology.

(Im)perfectivity as an actionality diagnostic in Bantu
Actionality has been the focus of extensive research from several different theoretical approaches and within several different languages and language families.A growing body of work focusing on the classification of actional classes in Bantu languages has emerged in recent years (e.g., Botne and Kershner 2008;Crane and Fanego 2020;Crane and Fleisch 2019;Crane and Persohn 2019;Crane 2011;Kanijo 2019;Kershner 2002;Persohn 2017Persohn , 2019;;Roth 2018, among others).While these studies have yielded new perspectives on both the inventories of actional classes as well as the diagnostics used to classify them, our focus in this section is a brief overview of the role of (im)perfectivity in the classification of actionality in two South-East Bantu languages.As Crane and Persohn (2019: 338) suggest "[t]he complex tense/aspect systems typical of Bantu languages can be exploited" to test for actional classes and their internal structures.But what about Bantu languages that lack a typical complex TA system?
We set aside the question of how many actional classes there are in ER languages (or Bantu languages more generally).Instead, we take two classes of verbs as a starting point: activities and inchoatives.These two verb types behave differently both in the Bantu literature, as well as in ER languages.Although the literature points out that even in closely related languages verbs can vary in their classification, Nyakyusa (Persohn 2017) and Southern Ndebele (Crane and Persohn 2019) serve here as sample comparative languages given the detailed descriptions of their actional systems and of the detailed comparisons between activity and inchoative verbs in these languages.

Perfective in Southern Ndebele
Perfective in Southern Ndebele is morphologically encoded by the suffix -ile.Perfective constructions encode "a past state of affairs" (Crane and Persohn 2019: 305).In Southern Ndebele, activity verbs with the perfective suffix -ile "can be rendered in English as Perfect or Simple Past".Crane and Persohn suggest that the difference between the two renderings is determined by context.The perfective in Southern Ndebele also allows for a state change reading in which "the process leading to the state is highlighted" (Crane and Persohn 2019: 306) 17 Crane and Fleisch refer to this language as isiNdebele in this publication.They also refer to inchoative verbs as "change of state" verbs and this construction as "past perfective".See also Crane and Fleisch (2019: fn. 11) for discussion of the be-prefix as imperfective.

Imperfective in Nyakyusa
The simple present in Nyakyusa, morphologically encoded by a present tense prefix kʊ-, is considered the "imperfective counterpart to the present perfective" (Persohn 2017: 152).Depending on the context, kʊ-with activity verbs yields a "continuous/progressive reading" (152), can be used in "habitual and generic statements" (153), and can refer to future eventualities.Present imperfective inchoative verbs in Nyakyusa yield state changes in progress, or a "coming-to-be reading".For states that can recur (e.g., get angry, grow fat), a habitual reading is also available: In sum, the imperfective in Nyakyusa and Southern Ndebele, illustrated here with Nyakyusa, also distinguishes between at least two actional classes.Activity verbs in the imperfective yield events in progress or habitual event readings.Inchoative verbs in the imperfective yield habitual state changes and, for some verbs, state changes in progress.This is summarized in Table 2.

Summary
We have evidence in some South-East Bantu languages, illustrated by Nyakyusa and Southern Ndebele, that (im)perfectivity serves as a diagnostic to distinguish between (at least) two actional classes.Perfective, overtly encoded by the suffix -ile, depicts a past state of affairs, rendered in English as Perfect or Simple Past with activities.With inchoatives, the perfective yields present stative and state change readings; with additional morphology, the perfective yields past stative readings with inchoatives.Imperfective, encoded by the simple present construction, yields event in progress or habitual event readings for activities, and habitual state changes and, for some verbs, state changes in progress for inchoatives.This is summarized in Table 3 below.
In the following section we examine (im)perfectivity in the ER languages and show that despite the reduced TA systems, (im)perfectivity can still serve as a diagnostic for actional classes.

(Im)perfectivity as an actionality diagnostic in ER languages
Recall that ER languages have reduced TA morphology as compared to other Bantu languages.ER languages do not morphologically encode perfective with the suffix -ile and the imperfective marker -ag is not obligatory.Two of the six ER languages (Kwere and Luguru) have present tense morphology, while the remaining four languages (Kagulu, Kami, Kutu, Zalamo) have non-past morphology that encodes present as well as future.In this section we examine the readings associated with perfective in ER (verbs without overt tense/aspect morphology), and the readings associated with imperfective in ER (verbs with overt non-past or present tense morphology).The goal is to determine whether (im)perfectivity in these languages is a useful diagnostic between actional classes.Tatevosov (2002: 344) suggests that "[t]ypically there is no difficulty to identify a language specific-gram as manifesting either perfective or past, as the range of uses of the former forms a subpart of the range of uses of the latter".He thus uses perfective as a diagnostic if available, and in absence of perfective, he uses past.As languages vary with respect to the manifestation of progressive, imperfective and present, Tatevosov opts for present or general imperfective as a diagnostic.As a comprehensive exploration of actional classes in ER languages has not yet been undertaken, for the purpose of this discussion and for comparison with other Bantu languages, we focus on two types of verbs and take them to be representative of activity verbs and inchoative verbs.Further research will confirm the number and types of actional classes in ER languages.This analysis will thus serve as a starting point.construction.In fact, if 'now' is added to a clause with an activity verb that lacks overt tense morphology in any of the ER languages, it yields English Perfect translations, as in ( 42)-( 43 Luguru Amina ka-gend-a sambi.Amina SM1-leave-FV now 'Amina has left now.'That said, the verbs without overt tense morphology seem to encode only that the event took place, not that a result state holds.In at least two of the ER languages, a clause containing a verb lacking overt tense morphology can be followed with a clause indicating that the result state no longer holds at speech time, without inducing a contradiction or an infelicity due to a tautology.This is illustrated in ( 44)-( 45 Kutu Amina ka-gevuzik-a kabili Amina SM1-be/get_angry-FV again 'Amina became angry' (from English 'Amina got angry again') In sum, activity verbs lacking overt tense morphology can be translated into English as Simple Past or Present Perfect, while inchoative verbs either get a present stative or a state change reading.Inchoative verbs without overt tense morphology are also compatible with past stative readings in combination with past adverbials.This is summarized in Table 4: 4.2 Non-past/present in ER languages [imperfective] Recall that the ER languages exhibit different ways of encoding present tense: three of the languages (Kami, Kutu, Zalamo) have a non-past morpheme (which encodes present and future), two of the languages (Kwere and Luguru) have a present morpheme (which encodes present tense only), and Kagulu has both a non-past morpheme as well as a future morpheme.While the presence of a separate future morpheme in the Kagulu system might impact the meanings encoded by the non-past morpheme in the language, the Kagulu non-past yields future readings, thus we treat it on a par with the other three ER languages that have a non-past morpheme.

Summary
A comparative summary of the readings that arise with (im)perfective activity and inchoative verbs in ER languages and Nyakyusa and Southern Ndebele is given in Table 6: Focusing on the perfective, we see that Nyakyusa and Southern Ndebele exhibit overt perfective morphology, -ile, which distinguishes between activity and inchoative verbs in that it yields different readings when combined with verbs of the two classes.ER languages, on the other hand, lack overt perfective morphology, yet the readings that arise for activity and inchoative verbs without overt tense morphology are different between the two classes, parallel to other Bantu languages: activity verbs yield past events while inchoative verbs yield present state and state change readings.While -ile with inchoative verbs in Southern Ndebele can yield a past stative reading when combined with an imperfective prefix, ER languages have no such prefix yet can get a past stative interpretation, typically with the addition of a past temporal adverbial.This suggests that despite the fact that it is not encoded overtly, perfectivity in ER languages serves as a diagnostic for actionality, distinguishing between at least two classes of verbs: activities and inchoatives.
The imperfective, morphologically encoded by a tense category in ER languages, seems to behave the same as it does in Bantu more generally: imperfective activity verbs yield events in progress as well as habitual events, while imperfective inchoative verbs yield state change in progress and habitual state change readings.However, we suggest that the readings that arise are in effect the same across the two classes of verbsan in progress reading and a habitual reading.Thus, imperfective alone does not distinguish between actional classes in ER languages (and perhaps for Bantu more generally), though perfective does.

Conclusions
Bantu languages, with their extensive TA morphology, have been shown to be ideal places to test the limits of actional classes and the diagnostics used to categorize them.The ER languages, with their reduced TA morphology, are also an important testing ground.Thus far, examination of the ER languages has revealed that regardless of the complexity of the TA system, the readings associated with (im)perfectivity seem to yield the same results as in the two sample South-East Bantu languages that have been investigated.Perfective and past are not overtly encoded in ER (Bantu perfective marker -ile is absent from independent clauses); however, verbs from two actional classes, activities and inchoatives, behave differently in clauses lacking overt tense or aspect morphology.In other words, even in absence of overt morphology, perfective can distinguish between actional classes.Imperfective in ER languages is morphologically encoded by present/nonpast tense.While ER imperfective verbs yield similar readings to other South-East Bantu languages, we suggest that as a diagnostic for actional classes, the these issues for further research, these data provide further evidence that, as Nurse (2003: 102) reminds us, "aspect and tense are interlocking members of a system".

'
Sipho sang.'/'Sipho has sung' An inchoative verb in Southern Ndebele has a "present state reading"(Crane and  Persohn 2019: 306) when it appears with perfective morphology.In fact, this is described in the literature as the most common way to express a present state reading in Bantu.

Table  :
.In sum, the perfective in Nyakyusa and Southern Ndebele, illustrated here in Southern Ndebele, distinguishes at least two classes of predicates.Perfective -ile encodes a past state of affairs with activity verbs, and present state or past state with inchoative verbs.This is summarized in Table1: Perfective in combination with Southern Ndebele activities and inchoatives.

Table  :
Imperfective in combination with Nyakyusa activities and inchoatives.

Table  :
Perfective and imperfective in Nyakyusa and Southern Ndebele.
-ile [perfective] PRS [imperfective] Activities -Past state of affairs (rendered in English as Perfect or Simple Past) -Event in progress -Habitual event Inchoatives -Present stative -√/# State change in progress -Process and state change also possible -Habitual state change -[be.PFV+-ile] Past stative ) below.

Table  :
Activity and inchoative verbs without overt tense/aspect morphology in ER languages.In sum, activity verbs morphologically encoded by the imperfective in ER languages (non-past tense morpheme in Kagulu, Kami, Kutu, Zalamo; present tense morpheme in Kwere and Luguru) yield events in progress or habitual events.Inchoative verbs yield state change in progress and habitual state change readings.This is summarized in Table5:

Table  :
Imperfective (non-past/present) activity and inchoative verbs in ER languages.

Table  :
A comparison of (im)perfective activity and inchoative verbs in East Ruvu and Nyakyusa and Southern Ndebele.