- Verbs
Swahili morpheme English gloss
"write""ask""read""see""know""hit""kiss"B. List the order in which morphemes occur in the Swahili words given in
examples 1-20. Use terrns such as verb, subject, and object.
C. Bonus. The morphemes for second person plural subjects and third person
singular objects involve a certain phonological complication: as examples 2 1-25
show, each morpheme appears in two different forms, and the shape that
occurs in a particular word can be predicted from the phonological
environment (the surrounding sounds) in which the morpheme appears.
The forms in 24 and 25 contain another present tense marker, -a-, which
indicates that the action of the verb either is an established state or is generally
the case. The English present tense is very close in meaning to the Swahili
tense marked with -a-.
2 1. nilimwandika "I wrote him/herW- tulimwona "We saw him/herV
- unamwuliza "You (sg.) ask him/herV
- mwamwandika "You (pl.) write him/herM
- mwasoma "You (pl.) read"
Considering examples 2 1-25 and referring back to examples 1-20, describe the
environment that conditions the appearance of each of the two forms in the
most general statement you can devise.