Chameleons Move (Slowly) Away: the Development of a Pluractional
Nilotic is a constituent family of the Nilo-Saharan phylum. Creissels et al (2007:148) have
written: “Directional morphemes … attached to the verb are not very common in African
languages in general, but they are common in Nilo-Saharan languages (in particular venitive
and andative)”. Maa (sometimes called “Maasai”, from the Eastern Nilotic sub-family) conforms
to the Nilo-Saharan profile in having two so-called “directionals”. Tucker and Mpaayei
(1955:127) referred to these two Maa morphemes and their various allomorphs as the ‘Motion
Away’ (AWAY) and ‘Motion Towards’ (TOWARD) forms, seen in (1):
(1) a. a-sʉ́j
b. a-sʉj-aá
c. a-sʉj-ʉ́
INF.SG-follow
INF.SG-follow-AWAY
INF.SG-follow-TOWARD
‘to follow sth.’
‘to follow sth. away from
‘to follow sth. toward
the point of reference’
the point of reference’
Despite Tucker and Mpaayei’s ‘Motion Away’ gloss, a combined corpus and elicitation
approach to understanding -aá shows that this verb suffix correlates with at least eight uses or
shades of meaning, as follows: (i) Literal and metaphorical motion away from a point of
reference is perhaps its central meaning, seen in (2):
(2) Ɛ-gɨ ́ra ŋóto tankí
a-wal-ar-í.
3-PROG chameleon.NOM INF.SG-exchange-AWAY-MIDDLE
‘The chameleon is changing (colours) moving away.’
Additionally, -aá can indicate (ii) direction away without a clear motion component (a rare
usage), or (iii) continuous aspect. (iv) It can achieve an applicative-like (i.e. semantic-role
changing) effect with one semantically-defined set of verbs, but (v) has a valence decreasing
function with a few other verbs. (vi) It is simply lexicalized as part of some verb stems with no
apparent synchronic meaning contribution. (vii) It indicates plurality of an argument in at least
some dialects with some verbs (an incipient function). (viii) Finally, -aá functions as a type of
“pluractional”, indicating multiplicity of a kinetic action, or that an action is distributed across
multiple individuals (either subject or object), or that a non-kinetic situation is distributed
across “each and every” participant. The pluractional function (viii) certainly vies with (i) for
status as the most-frequent function of -aá.
Since a meaning feature of ‘orientation relative to a point of reference’ is not always present
with -aá, simply calling -aá a “directional” is simplistic if not misleading. To the extent that a
central prototype meaning can be identified for -aá, native speaker intuition might suggest this
prototypical meaning would involve a central [MOTION] feature. Further, it would appear to be
the [MOTION] feature that slowly gave rise, in a historical sense, to many of the modern uses of
-aá. Thus, Tucker and Mpaayei were perspicacious in referring to it as a ‘Motion’ morpheme.
However, when -aá correlates with a stative situation, it cannot very well be said to designate
‘motion’ at all. Modernly it is really impossible to say that all uses of -aá share a single core
meaning feature. The various functions are clearly diverging, giving rise to a productive
pluractional if not aspectual and other morphemes.
Altogether, this detailed study of the functions of a single form shows the chameleon-like
nature of grammatical morphology, slowly changing across time based on particular repeated
contexts that the form occurs in. Is the subject plural? If so -aá takes on one shade of meaning.
Is the verb inherently stative? If so, -aá takes on another shade. And so on. The meaning of a
sentence involving -aá is not always reducible to the sum of the parts (if we could even say
what -aá invariantly means), ultimately arguing for a constructional approach to understanding
not only this morpheme, but also to how morphemes change their functions across time.
1