Nelli V. Gromova

The article deals with the key problem of Bantu studies, namely the noun class system in Ndonde. Ndonde is a language that is at risk of falling out of use as its speakers shift to speaking another language. Therefore, language documentation of Ndonde grammar is considered to be important. Based on field research data Ndonde nouns are classified into 18 noun classes. The article is devoted to the analysis of grammar and lexical semantic characteristics of each of these noun classes.

The purpose of this article is to give a short survey of Orthodoxy history in East Africa. Using certain information from private interviews with the orthodox priests in Tanzania and Kenya the article is focused on the activity of Orthodox Churches. Besides the church services all the orthodox priests fulfill their principal missionary functions through the providing more and better education among the native peoples, translations of religious materials in local African languages, first-aid treatment, and the building of schools, hospitals and Orthodox cathedrals.

The article examines the morphemic structure of the infinitive in Eastern and Southeastern Bantu languages and the semantics of derivative suffixes.

The article is devoted to revelation of peculiarities of personal names in some of the Bantu languages of East Africa. Morphemic structure of the family name can be an indication of ethnicity, gender and confessional affiliation of the owner’s own name. The article also reviews semantics of the personal name, nicknames and pseudonyms.

The article discusses language contact between Swahili and other Bantu languages in Tanzania. Swahili, itself influenced by Arabic, transfers borrowed lexical elements to local languages of lower social status. Its grammatical impact is less pronounced. The study uses material collected by the authors during fieldwork in Tanzania.

The article examines the erosion of noun class agreement in Bantu languages, including reduction of class inventories, unification of plural markers and a shift toward semantic agreement based on animacy.

Non-verbal predication is one of the current trends in modern linguistics. The topic of non-verbal predication has recently received widespread development in functional linguistics, as has the typology of copulative constructions. Non-verbal predication means a non-standard method of formatting a predicate expressed by nominal parts of speech. With the clear predominance of finite verbal predicates in the Bantu languages, a special method of non-verbal predication is recorded. The essence of such predication in the Bantu languages is to mark the name with a certain indicator — copula. Sentences with a copula or with some grammatical element similar in function to the copula usually express the same range of meanings. Basically, these are sentences of two types: existential and equative or identifying. The article focuses on the ways of marking non-verbal predicates in the southeastern Bantu languages (Zulu, Shona, Sotho) and eastern Bantu languages (Swahili, Dabida, Kikuyu).

This article analyzes the structure of original folklore texts (folktales) from several small, unwritten ethnic groups in the southeastern regions of Tanzania in terms of their lexical and stylistic features. These texts are introduced into scholarly circulation for the first time. Particular attention is given to folktales in the Vidunda, Luguru, Ngindo, and Ndonde languages, which were transcribed using native-speaking informants. Various lexical and stylistic devices that give a certain emotional and expressive coloring and markedness to narratives are examined, such as reduplication, the use of ideophonic vocabulary, and interjections.