A TYPOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF TEMPORAL ADVERBIAL CLAUSES IN KĨMŨTHAMBĨ

Abstract

This study explores the structure of Kĩmũthambĩ temporal adverbial clauses, a semantically diverse class of adverbial clauses that express temporal relationships in complex sentences. Existing studies on temporal adverbial clauses across different languages reveals varied realizations, a topic that has yet to be explored in Kĩmũthambĩ. Therefore, this study employs a typological analysis of the structure of temporal clauses in Kĩmũthambĩ, which focus on the nature of their left periphery guided by the Cartography of Syntax ap-proach. Kĩmũthambĩ is a central Kenya Bantu language in central Kenya, classified within the larger Kikuyu-Kamba group (E50) as E531 Mwimbi- Muthambi. The data for this study were collected through elicitation from native Kĩmũthambĩ speakers and the author’s intuition as a fluent speaker of the language. The findings establishes that Kĩmũthambĩ temporal adverbial clauses are introduced by free-standing subordinators that semantically encode the type of temporal relationship expressed. Some temporal clauses exhibited the ab-sence of a subordinator, while others feature a morpheme that functions as a temporal marker. The position-ing of temporal adverbial clauses is flexible, allowing them to appear either before or after the main clause with the exception of until-clauses, which displays specific restrictions. This study contributes to the descrip-tive understanding of Kĩmũthambĩ and enriches typological and comparative studies of focus constructions across various languages.