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Historical Linguistics 2022: Selected papers from the 25th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Oxford, 1–5 August 2022
Edited by Holly Kennard, Emily Lindsay-Smith, Aditi Lahiri and Martin Maiden
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 369] 2025
► pp. 185–198

Morphosyntactic borrowing in closely related varieties

‘False cognates’ in Swahili

| SOAS University of London
| University of Essex
The paper examines contact-induced morphosyntactic change in Swahili, where material which had historically been lost is ‘reintroduced’ through contact with closely related languages which have retained the original feature. The paper discusses three examples of these morphosyntactic ‘false cognates’: diminutive marking, habitual marking and demonstrative forms, and shows that if it were not from the evidence from different diachronic stages and varieties of Swahili, these forms could well be analysed as inherited from the reconstructed Proto-Bantu. The paper contributes to our understanding of the historical development of Swahili, patterns of variation found in Swahili and Bantu languages more widely, as well as the importance of comparative evidence for the unravelling of historical and contemporary relations between closely related linguistic varieties.
Keywords: language contact, borrowing, cognates, Swahili
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Bantu languages
  • 3.Cognacy, reconstruction, borrowing and convergence
  • 4.Swahili
  • 5.Morphosyntactic ‘reintroduction’
    • 5.1The habitual -ag-
    • 5.2The diminutive ka-
    • 5.3The fourth demonstrative series -no
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Abbreviations
  • References
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