On the development of tense-aspect markers in Lingala youth language : a microvariationist look at language change in the verb phrase

Abstract

This paper examines language change in two Lingala youth languages from the DR Congo, Lingala ya Bayankee (sometimes referred to as Yanké) and Langila, focusing on processes of grammaticalization and replication. Speakers of Lingala ya Bayankee use a grammaticalized prefix ké- for the near/immediate future tense, derived from the verb kokende ‘to go’ and from a manipulated form of the same verb, namely the prefix dyé- from kodyé (with the same meaning). The emergence and development of this tense marker is traced and compared with the strategies used by Langila speakers. Moreover, the microvariationist lens through which changes in the tense-aspect system of Lingala’s youth registers are examined in this paper looks at different formation patterns of progressive aspect, with two dominant construction types in Lingala ya Bayankee; these are also compared to the strategies used by Langila speakers. While linguistic manipulations have long been the focus of sociolinguistic approaches to the study of adolescent l