Aspiration in Swahili adjectives and verbs

1. IntroductionLittle research has been done hitherto on the occurrence and frequency ofaspiration in Swahili. It is neither marked in Swahili orthography nor given anyimportance in Swahili courses both in and outside Eastern Africa. Whenmentioned, it is described as a curiosity, or a rare dialect feature or an increasinglydisappearing phenomenon belonging to the northern dialects of Swahili. Thisshort paper is an attempt to partly redress the issue and also raise the question ofthe occurence of aspration in Swahili adjectives and verbs.2. Previous researchThe few earlier studies of aspiration in Swahili, conducted at long intervals(Panconcelli-Calzia 1911, Tucker & Ashton 1942, Polome 1967, Engstrand &Lodhi 1984, 1985ab) deal mainly with aspiration in nouns of classes 9/10 (the N-N classes), which have lost the initial n- preceding unvoiced /p, t, k, c/, andmeasurements of voice onset time (VOT).The following contrasting pairs illustrate well the semantic value of aspirationin Swahili nouns, in which un-aspirated consonants are unmarked, whereasaspiration is marked with a superscript “*”. (The general word-accent pattern inSwahili is penultimate.)(1) paa/mapaa (roof) 5/6