Michael Meeuwis

Present and perfect in Bantu: the case of Lingála

Abstract In the study of tense-aspect systems in the Bantu languages, there appears to be a lack of agreement over basic issues in analyzing different inflectional classes. In this paper, we address forms of temporal predication in Lingálas present-time verbal paradigm. Presenting an analysis along the lines of Cognitive Grammar, we challenge the received interpretation of a verb form with -í in Lingála, as well as of its cognates in other Bantu languages, traditionally taken to mark past tense, notably with dynamic verbs. We claim that the perfect/anterior meaning of this -í form with dynamic verbs should be treated in terms of the cognitive strategies speakers have available for dealing with the “epistemic problem” inherent in observing and reporting nonstative events simultaneously. Accordingly, dynamic verbs taking the -í form should be analyzed together with its use with statives, instead of seeing both types as semantically unrelated. We therefore argue for, and develop, an integrated analysis, which can single-handedly account for both dynamic verbs and stative ones. In schematic terms, we propose that the temporal reference of the -í form, whose aspect is perfect, is present rather than past, even if notions of pastness may be involved in the background conceptualization.

The origins of Belgian colonial language policies in the Congo

Abstract The literature on colonial policies in general acknowledges that, for its colonisation of the Congo, Belgium sided with England and Germany in opting for a policy of adaptationism (indirect rule), rather than for assimilationism, which was espoused by France and Portugal in their African possessions. However, the juncture in history at which, the reasons why and the ideological backgrounds against which the Belgian authorities decided on this are not well understood. This contribution traces how, in the decades prior to 1918, Belgians in the Congo combined principles of indirect rule at the level of the political, administrative and judicial organisation of the colony with assimilationist tenets in the domains of language and culture. After World War I this changed dramatically, as the Minister of Colonies, Louis Franck, brought Belgiums indigenous policy fully and irreversibly in line with an encompassing application of adaptationism. This article also shows that adaptationism in the Belgian Congo was never applied to its fullest consequences and implications, but always involved a management of, and active interventions into, the pre-colonial linguistic and cultural diversity it was ostensibly supposed to cherish and defend.

Nationalist ideology in news reporting on the Yugoslav crisis: a pragmatic analysis

Abstract A corpus of articles, culled from four major Western European and American newspapers, and reporting on the early stages of the Yugoslav crisis, is analyzed following Verschuerens pragmatic method (1991). This pilot study attempts, via the analysis of news reporting on this particular nationalist and intercultural issue, to inquire into a general interpretive framework, called world of interpretation (WoI), representing deeply-rooted and commonly unchallenged beliefs about ethnic identity and interculturality. In addition to suggestions about the nature of the WoI, some theoretical and methodological implications are discussed.

Recruiting a nonlocal language for performing local identity: Indexical appropriations of Lingala in the Congolese border town Goma

This article describes discursive processes by which inhabitants of the Congolese border town Goma attribute new indexical values to Lingala, a language exogenous to the area of which most Goma inhabitants only possess limited knowledge. This creative reconfiguration of indexicalities results in the emergence of three “indexicalities of the second order”: the indexing of (i) being a true Congolese, (ii) toughness (based on Lingalas association with the military), and (iii) urban sophistication (based on its association with the capital Kinshasa). While the last two second-order reinterpretations are also widespread in other parts of the Congolese territory, the first one, resulting in the emergence of a Lingala as an “indexical icon” of a corresponding “language community,” deeply reflects local circumstances and concerns, in particular the sociopolitical volatility of the Rwandan-Congolese borderland that renders publicly affirming ones status as an “autochthonous” Congolese pivotal for assuring a livelihood and at times even personal security. (Lingala, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Goma, orders of indexicality, language community, autochthony, Kiswahili) *

From the Cape to the Congo and back: Afrikaners and Flemings in the struggle for Dutch in Africa (1874–1960)

ABSTRACT The Belgian population living in the Congo during colonisation experienced a higher degree of linguistic inequality than in Belgium: although Dutch and French were declared co-official languages for the Congo in 1908, French was always privileged in practice. In their protests, some Flemish politicians regularly referred to the Afrikaners in South Africa and to the potential their presence had for Dutch in Africa. South African thinkers too, frequently referred to the Flemings, imagining an eventual contiguous anchoring of Dutch from the Cape to the equator. Thus, two groups, located in two distinct historical, political, and cultural settings, fought a parallel struggle for Dutch in Africa and in the process discursively construed one and the same ethnolinguistic ‘brotherhood’ between them. At first, the producers of the discourses on each side only addressed their own audiences, but as of the 1920s some of them entered into direct dialogue with one another.