The expression of modality in Logoori

Abstract

Abstract This study presents a theoretically informed description of the expression of modality in Logoori (Luyia; Bantu). We document verbal and non-verbal modal expressions in Logoori, and show how these expressions fit into proposed typologies of modal systems (Kratzer, Angelika. 1981. The notional category of modality. In Hans-Jurgen Eikmeyer & Hannes Rieser (eds.), Words, worlds, and contexts: New approaches in word semantics, 38–74. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, Kratzer, Angelika. 1991. Modality. In Armin von Stechow & Dieter Wunderlich (eds.), Semantics: An international handbook of contemporary research, 639–650. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter; van der Auwera, Johan & Vladimir Plungian. 1998. Modality’s semantic map. Linguistic Typology 2. 79–124. https://doi.org/10.1515/lity.1998.2.1.79; Nauze, Fabrice. 2008. Modality in typological perspective. Amsterdam: Institute for Logic, Language, and Computation PhD thesis). We show that Logoori’s modal system raises some interesting questions regarding the typology and theoretical analysis of modality and its relationship to other kinds of meaning. Our study contributes to the nascent but growing research on modal systems cross linguistically by adding data from an understudied Bantu language.