A morphosyntactic and semantic description of augment in Kipangwa

Abstract

his paper describes the morphosyntactic and semantic meaning of augments in Kipangwa (G64), the pre-prefix that precedes the noun. The main objective was to describe the morphosyntactic and semantic properties of the augment in the Kipangwa. The study was conducted in Ludewa District of Njombe Region in Tanzania. With regard to the research approach, the study employed a qualitative approach. The data for this study were collected through the text collection method. Using this method, the researchers collected sentences with NPs from 18 informants and three storybooks in Kipangwa. These informants were sampled through snowball sampling, while the storybooks in Kipangwa were purposefully sampled.  The study reveals that there are augments in Kipangwa, specifically in vowel forms. It also exposes that syntactic and semantic factors mainly trigger the occurrence of augments in Kipangwa nouns. Furthermore, the study demonstrates that the specificity and topicality of the noun can influence the function of the augment in Kipangwa. Finally, the study recommends further research into other aspects of augments in Kipangwa.