Past consecutive events denoted by the Xhosa verbs -za ‘come’ and -ya ‘go’

By: Stefan Savić,

Abstract

Besides their basic deictic meanings, the Xhosa verbs -za ‘come’ and -ya ‘go’ also have developed certain grammaticalised meanings (e.g. as future markers). The two verbs seem to frequently occur in the past followed by a past consecutive verb (past consecutive constructions), yet their meaning in such contexts is somewhat understudied (cf. du Plessis & Visser 1992:255, 257 and Oosthuysen 2016:294, 302). In this paper, I use data from corpora to investigate the use of -za and -ya in past consecutive constructions. While it is a known fact that in past consecutive constructions -za indicates events which occurs after the last preceding past event, the data confirm that the same applies to -ya. The difference between the two verbs concerns the situational similarities with the last (past) event in the preceding discourse. Thus, -za may denote an event which occurs immediately after the preceding event, whereas in the same context -ya implies a greater temporal distance between the events. Furthermore, while -za may indicate that the subject is the last mentioned person in the consecutive construction, cf. (1), replacing this verb with -ya would suggests another person (i.e. the nurse) is the subject. This finding is further supported by the fact that -ya frequently indicates a speaker shift in the direct speech in narrations. (1) U-mongikazi wa-bopha ama-nxeba AUG-1a.nurse sm.1.REMPST-bandage AUG-6.wound o-ku-tsha ka-Tandie, wa-za POSS.6-15-burn poss-1a.Tandie sm.1.cns-come wa-nik-w-a i-gumbi la-khe yedwa sm.1.cns-give-pass-fv aug-5.room POSS.5-1 wa-nga-dityan-is-w-a na-banye aba-guli. PRON.1 SM.1.CNS-NEG-meet-CAUS-PASS-FV COM-other aug-2.patient ‘A nurse bandaged Tandie's wounds from burning and she (Tandie) was a single room with no other patients.’