The Contextual Use of Central Determiners in Kinyarwanda: The Case of Possessives

This scrutiny deals with the contextual interpretation of central determiners in Kinyarwanda, a Bantu language spoken in the Great Lakes region, specifically in the Republic of Rwanda. It particularly tackles the case of possessives. It demonstrates that the pragmatic analysis of possessives in Kinyarwanda can be conceived under the notions of reference, definiteness, deixis, implicature, presupposition, and speech act. It starts by showing how Kinyarwanda possessives are used to point out referred entities, including anaphoric and cataphoric relationships. It also attests to how possessives in this language, used in a given context, refer to definite entities known to both participants. The study also proves that Kinyarwanda possessives are used to express person, social and discourse deixis. Afterwards, the analysis illustrates the way entities, in a given context of communication, impose an extra meaning to Kinyarwanda possessives that goes beyond the literal one, with the violation of different maxims to express implicature. Furthermore, the notion of possessives in Kinyarwanda also denotes that participants in the interaction assume to share common background information about the possessor and the possessee. The research then indicates that Kinyarwanda possessives analysed under the speech act theory emphasise the concepts of locutionary act, illocutionary force and perlocutionary effect, taking into account felicity conditions. Finally, the work demonstrates that, through a cross-linguistic perspective, Kinyarwanda possessives attest similarities and dissimilarities with Embosi, another Bantu language spoken in the north of the Republic of Congo.