A complex system of complex predicates: tense, taxis, aspect and mood in Basse Mandinka from a grammaticalisation and cognitive perspective
The present work analyses the Basse Mandinka tense taxis aspect mood verbal system within the framework of cognitive and grammaticalisation linguistics and from the perspective of complexity theory. The author builds his study by pursuing the following more specific gradually more macroscopic and systematic objectives: (a) a description of the entire semantic potential of all the Basse Mandinka verbal grams; (b) a representation of the synchronic inventories of senses of each Basse Mandinka verbal construction as a coherent phenomenon, i.e. as a kinetic qualitative map ordered by means of grammaticalisation templates or paths; (c) an introduction of the information concerning the prototypicality of the map and the development of a bi dimensional representation of the meaning as a wave; (d) a construction of streams that contain gram waves organised along similar evolutionary templates; and (e) a modelling of the entire Basse Mandinka verbal organisation into a system of currents. This system visualised as an ocean is demonstrated to have characteristics typical to complex bodies: it is open, situated, fuzzy, full of unstable individuals, highly cardinal, uncontrollable, dynamic, metastable, past dependant, nonlinear, sensitive to initial conditions, deterministically chaotic in some regions, non additive, non resultant, but containing emergent properties, structurally intricate, self organising and characterised by top down causation and bottom up causation. Additionally, as far as its methodological properties are concerned, the representation is incomplete, provisional and pluralistic in agreement with models of real world complexity. Stellenbosch University https:/scholar.sun.ac.za Stellenbosch University https:/scholar.sun.ac.za