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A comparative analysis of Runyankore-Rukiga and Luganda pronominal agreement

by Medadi Erisa Ssentanda and Allen Asiimwe

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A Comparative study of Runyankore-Rukiga and Luganda noun class system


Runyankore-Rukiga (RR) and Luganda: an overview

Runyankore-Rukiga (ISO 639-3 nyn for Runyankore and ISO 639-3 cgg for Rukiga) is a central Bantu language spoken in the South-Western part of Uganda in the Kigezi (Rukiga) and the Ankore (Runyankore) regions by four million speakers (Uganda Population and Housing Census: 2002). Earlier scholars (e.g. Ladefoged et al 1971) named these languages according to ethnic groups; but the high lexical similarity that these languages share motivated a merger into one language called Runyankore-Rukiga.

Luganda (ISO 639-3: lug) is a Bantu language which belongs to the subgroup of the Benue-Congo of the Niger-Congo language family. It is spoken in central, and some other parts of Uganda by four million native speakers and four million non-native speakers (Uganda Population and Housing Census: 2002).

Like other Bantu languages characterized by agglutination, RR and Luganda have an a noun class system that involves singular and plural patterns as well as agreement marking triggered by these noun classes. The agreement markers (or, concords) manifest on syntactic constituents like adjectives, numerals, verbs and others.

This article is centred on agreement; Luganda and RR differ in some instances of their pronominal concordial agreement marking. First we would like to give an overview of the noun class systems of both languages: