Future tense and persistive aspect - disentangling the fusion of periphrastic constructions in Datooga verbal inflection

This talk treats the verbal morphology of Datooga, a group of Southern Nilotic varieties, from a synchronic, as well as from a diachronic perspective. It is shown that the preverbal clitic complex’s likely origins are in a historical periphrastic construction. This serves at once as a valuable exercise in the description of Datooga, as well as an exploration of grammaticalization pathways for the languages of the Tanzanian Rift.