KINDLY as a polite request mitigator and more in Kenyan English usage

2025-09-12T09:49:50+00:00

The adverb kindly is little used as a polite request mitigator (Kindly close the door) in World Standard English (WSE). But it is a frequent occurrence in Kenyan English (KenE), where, unlike in WSE, it is not limited to a pre-verbal position: it can occur even without an accompanying verb whose illocutionary force it is supposed to mitigate, as in Kindly, I’m appealing to you and I’m appealing to you, kindly. Still unlike in WSE, kindly freely co-occurs with please (the other request mitigator), as in Kindly please listen to me or Please kindly listen to me. Also, kindly frequently premodifies the verb request, as in I’m kindly requesting you to listen to me. These various positions and pragmatic configurations in which kindly occurs in KenE are evidence of its syntactic and pragmatic versatility, as illustrated by the 105 SMS, WhatsApp and email messages used as data in this article.

The Ex-situ focus construction in Gĩkũyũ

2025-09-15T06:51:12+00:00

Gĩkũyũ has in-situ and ex-situ focus marking strategies. In the in-situ strategy, focus is marked on a constituent in its default syntactic position. In the ex-situ focus strategy, a constituent occurs at the front of a clause and gets attached to the morphemes nĩ- (‘is’) or ti- (‘is not’). This makes the morpheme nĩ- obligatory in an ex-situ focus construction; however, there is no consensus on its role. Whereas Clements (1984) and Schwarz (2007) see it as a focus marker, Bergvall (1987) sees it as an assertion marker. Consequently, the structure of the ex-situ clause has also been a subject of debate. In the literature, two main theoretical approaches compete in trying to explain it. The Focus Phrase Approach (Clements 1984) treats it as a mono-clausal construction, whereas the Cleft Analysis (Bergvall 1987) treats it as a bi-clausal one. The literature also fails to explain the motivation behind the ex-situ focus construction, particularly in cases where in-situ focus marking is also possible. For these reasons, the structure and the motivations behind ex-situ focus in Gĩkũyũ remain an open topic; hence, the interest of this paper. Using the Prominence Theory of Focus Realization (Büring 2010) to analyze data from sermons presented in the Gĩkũyũ language, this study concludes that the ex-situ focus construction in Gĩkũyũ is biclausal. Further, it demonstrates that the morphemes nĩ- and ti-, as used in the ex-situ focus constructions, are copula verbs which facilitate focus marking by allowing a focus-sensitive position after them. The study further establishes that the search for maximal prominence motivates the preference for the ex-situ focus construction in Gĩkũyũ. It also demonstrates that the “Prominence Constraint,” in the Prominence Theory of Focus Realization, requires parameterisation for it to more adequately account for the ex-situ focus construction in Gĩkũyũ.

The University of Nairobi Journal of Language and Linguistics

KINDLY as a polite request mitigator and more in Kenyan English usage

The Ex-situ focus construction in Gĩkũyũ