RUAHA CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY

This paper exposes the negligence of some morphemes during the glossing of Kiswahili extended verbs by scholars of Kiswahili and the way it can be addressed. The glossing of Kiswahili verbs involves three levels of representations: word order and/or parsing level, the literal translation, and free translation level. However, it is observed that some morphemes that occur at the second level of glossing are neglected in the third level. For example, the verb pim-i-w-a ‗be measured for‘ in Kiswahili is constituted by two bound morphemes. Moreover, it is the passive morpheme such as -w- in our example that would be represented at the semantic level, as the applicative - i- is dropped at the semantic free level. Following this observation, the present study tracked the glossing of Kiswahili extended verbs in four morphological publications to check how scholars of Kiswahili morphology gloss extended Kiswahili verbs at the interlineal and the free/semantic level of glossing. Using the Leipzig Glossing Rule and morpheme-by-morpheme correspondence as the framework of the analysis, the study eventually established a discrepancy between the second and the third row of glossing of Kiswahili extended verbs.Consequently, a correction of this error by which is currently passed on to students of Kiswahili linguistics all over the world.

Kiswahili, Verbal Extensions, Agglutination, Glossing, Parsing