The Nature and Direction of Meaning Of -Kali in Kiswahili

Abstract

This paper examines the collocations of an adjective stem -kali to create several
meanings, showing how -kali can be used to express a wide range of distinct concepts
in different occasions of its utterance. It is noted that the few existing studies of
Kiswahili adjectives (Ashton 1947, Myachina 1981, Kahigi 2008) which have
focused mainly on semantics in determining their meanings, are therefore incomplete
because they have overlooked many further meanings of these adjectives in use. Here
it is argued that meanings of Kiswahili adjectives can best be exhausted if one takes
pragmatics into consideration. This study demonstrates that –kali generates an
infinite number of meanings; some of these connotations extend in the direction of
negative pole of undesirable attributes and others towards a positive pole. The paper
further demonstrates that although the meaning of the adjective stem -kali connoting
‘harsh’ or ‘rude’ can be adjusted pragmatically in context, the different meanings
created when this qualifier co-occurs with different nouns derive interestingly from
the same stem meaning: ‘harsh’ or’ rude’.

Key words: linguistic pragmatics, semiotics, Kiswahili adjectives,
cognitive semantics