🚀 go-pugleaf

(Where /barG<frc>u:Tu/ is the plural of /murG<frc>u:Tu/ `flea',
/bantu/ is the plural of /muntu/ `man', and /ba/-/ba/-/luma/ is
glossed as `they (Class 1) them (Class 1) bite'.)

In article <1992Oct26.181026.3499@spss.com> markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
>>In article <markrose.719777629@spssig> markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
>>>Foreign words [in Swahili] are 
>>>sometimes fitted into a class with the same suffix;
<...>
>>>The same seems to have happened with kiroboto 'flea'.
<...>
>Ah well, when I wrote "seems" I of course meant "seems not."

You're certainly entitled to it, as will be explained in my future
book _Zen and the Art of Negation_.  Seriously, omitting "not" is
probably the most frequent meaning-affecting error in net articles, so
any longtime netter should have developed a recovery mechanism for it.

By the way, your use of "suffix" above is a little puzzling too.

>Actually I don't know what came over me.  Swahili doesn't seem to modify
>Arabic words much in borrowing them (e.g. kitabu, safari, Mwislamu, lugha),
>so it's unlikely "kiroboto" comes from /barG<frc>u:Tu/.

This wasn't been suggested, as a matter of fact; what turned Mozeson
and his sci.classics disciple on was the "intriguing" similarity
between "kiroboto" and Finnish "kirppu".

>Naturally the first place to look would be in other Bantu languages. 

I did, and was disappointed.  Quite a variety of fleas, apparently
unrelated to one another, although I can't begin to doubt that Mozeson
would derive every one of them from /parH<voi>o:S/.  Here they go:

<producing a wee round box and opening it>

Bemba            lu-pantila
Nganyawa Kamba   magiani
Ulu Kamba        engalla
Kikuyu           thuwa, thuya
                 ndutu
Nyanja           u-titili, u-tiriri
                 u-kuku
Secwana          le-sai
Swahili          ki-roboto, ki-riboto
Xhosa            in-takumba
Zulu             ili-zeze
                 ili-khululu
                 ili-tekenya

-- 
 `If ye hiv ears oan yer heid - then use them tae lissen.' (The Glasgow Gospel)
Ivan A Derzhanski   (iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk;  iad@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu)
* Centre for Cognitive Science,  2 Buccleuch Place,  Edinburgh EH8 9LW,  UK
* Cowan House, Pollock Halls, 18 Holyrood Park Road, Edinburgh EH16 5BD, UK