This study set out to explore the contemporary usage and the historical background of the set of auxiliary(-like) verbs in Swahili – a Bantu language spoken across the East African region – that express the modal concept of participant-external (PE) necessity.
We conceptualize modality as the expression of non-factual status (Narrog 2012), and as a semantic space divided between expressions of possibility and necessity, further carved up into intersecting subcategories (see, e.g., van der Auwera & Plungian 1998). Within such a conceptualization, PE (including deontic) necessity refers to modal expressions where external circumstances are imposed on the 1st participant of a proposition.
To express such a function, Swahili employs a plethora of verbs with different source semantics, including takia (< ‘want’.appl), pas(h)a (< ‘get’.caus), faa (‘be of use, befit’), bidi (‘oblige’), lazimu (‘must, have to’), juzu (< ‘be obligatory, suit’). However, when used to express participant-external necessity, all these verbs are confined to the same set of morphosyntactic constructions. What these various strategies have in common is that they “demote” the subject status and agent role of the 1st participant.