| dc.description.abstract | This study offers an analysis of tense and aspect in Ateso. It seeks to investigate tense and aspect marking, the distribution of tense and aspect and its correlation with tone. The study also looks at the order of occurrence of tense and aspect in basic sentence structures and assess whether tense and aspect morphological forms can be adequately described by the Checking theory of the Minimalist Program.
Chapter one provides the background of the study. It presents a brief description of the language under study, the statement of the problem, the objectives, scope and limitation, the theoretical framework, literature review, significance of the study and the methodology used for the data collection and analysis. The Minimalist Program which is used in the analysis of data has been discussed in detail in this chapter. It accounts for the morpho-syntactic nature of Ateso. The
Minimalist Program also provides an adequate relation between morphology, syntactic categories and the discourse functions.
Chapter two which is one of the core parts of the study discusses aspect in Ateso. It provides a general description of the Ateso verb which forms the base for the discussion of both tense and aspect. The imperfective, perfective and iterative aspects have been discussed in detail. The various morphemes and tone marking have been established as markers of aspect in Ateso. The correlation of the iterative with the imperfective and the perfective has also been elaborated in this chapter.
Chapter three discusses tense marking. It provides a general view of tense and aspect marking. The past, non past and the narrative tense are examined. Tone marking which distinguishes the past and the Don past forms is analysed. Chapter four provides a review of the basic word form in Ateso. Basically, the feature checking theory of the Minimalist Program is put to use. The features of tense and aspect are checked.
Finally, chapter five gives a brief summary of the study. It outlines the findings of the study. It confirms that the Minimalist Program is adequate in analysing tense and aspdt in Ateso. It also points out that there is a correlation between tense and aspect marking in Ateso. This chapter gives a summary of how tone and morphological forms mark tense and aspect in Ateso. The recommendation for further research also forms part of this chapter. | en_US |
