The temporal role of eastern Bantu -ba and -li

Abstract

In the eastern Bantu languages forms of the verb 'be', -ba and/or -I i , are commonly employed in complex constructions in which they take sentential{-like) complements. Though often considered to be semantically empty in these constructions, they are analyzed here as shifters, having both referential and indexical properties. As such they function to establish additional parameters to the temporal framework in which the narrated event is to be interpreted.