Browsing by Author "Mugisa, John Mwesigwa."

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Building human security in Ituri Province, Democratic Republic of Congo.
(2010) Mugisa, John Mwesigwa.; Harris, Geoffrey Thomas.
Armed conflict in Ituri since 1996 to the present day has resulted in the widespread and severe violation of human rights that include massive killings, rape, torture, mutilation and property destruction that has infringed peace and security in the province. Many studies on Ituri armed conflict point out land, minerals and identity as underlying causes of this social breakdown that lead to continued insecurity in Ituri. While acknowledging that there are many things that threaten the lives of individuals in times of war, this study focuses exclusively on the perceptions of the people from Ituri about the meaning and threats to peace and security as well as building human security in the province. To investigate these perceptions, I use the concept of human security which is a new way of thinking about peace and security. Although, this concept has a broad meaning, I mostly focus on its components that promote the protection of civilians against severe and widespread threats and as a people-centred approach, it advocates for the responsibility to protect civilians by their governments and the international community while the latter is given the full mandate by the UN, through its Security Council to intervene in countries whereby, governments are the perpetrators of violence on its own civilians or whereby governments are unable to contain violence perpetrated by warring fractions on innocent civilians and causing the displacement of millions from their home. I used a qualitative approach that sought to obtain as many as possible the views of participants which in turn were described thoroughfully so as to obtain patterns and themes that explain exactly what participants think is the meaning of peace and security and what could be the possible threats that make them feel insecure. To reach my goal, I used participant observation, focus group and semi-structured interview methods. 105 participants were selected randomly to participate in the research, that is, 94 in focus groups and 11 in semi-structured interviews. An additional 31 participants were also interviewed in Johannesburg to validate the data collected previously. Content analysis was used to analyse data. The study finds that there are various meanings to security and that threats to peace and security depend on the kind of meanings that people from Ituri perceive to be the meaning of security. The meaning of security depends on the context in which people live. Both victims and perpetrators ‘should’ work towards the achievement of peace and security. From the findings, it was concluded that the international community should not play both arsonist and fireman roles, rather engaging honestly and sincerely in building peace and security in the province of Ituri. This may lead to sustainable peace and security in the province.
The verb phrase in Kihema.
(2005) Mugisa, John Mwesigwa.; Zeller, Jochen Klaus.
"The Verb Phrase in Kihema" investigates a wide range of three different constructions, which have all been termed 'Grammatical Function Changing Processes' (GFCP), by Linguists, using data from Kihema (a Bantu language spoken in the northeastern district of Ituru). It focuses on those GFCPs, namely the causative, the applicative and the passive. On the one hand, Kihema causative constructions are the result of extending the verb by means of a derivational affix. This process has an impact on the argument structure of the verb. On the other hand, Kihema applicative constructions are the outcome of moving the preposition out of a prepositional phrase and incorporating it in the verb that governs it. Lastly, Kihema passive constructions result from the base verb losing its ability to assign accusative case and its failure to assign an external thematic role. Consequently, in passives, the former direct object moves to the syntactic subject position, where it receives nominative case. The thematic subject can only be realized inside a prepositional phrase. In these constructions, the verb bears morphemes such as -is- (for causatives), -ir- (for applicatives), and -w- (for passives). Causative and applicative morphemes have the ability to turn an intransitive verb into a transitive verb and a transitive verb into a ditransitive verb. The study provides data of different objects that appear with the verb in the Kihema verb phrase. It examines the syntactic properties exhibited by those objects. As a result, Kihema is classified as a 'symmetrical' language, since all postverbal objects in causative and applicative constructions exhibit direct object properties. However, the basic object in locative applicatives has some restrictions. In this research, I analyze causatives, applicatives and passives in Kihema within the framework of the Principles-and-Parameters theory (Chomsky, 1981; 1986a, 1986b) in particular, the following two theories have proven useful in my study: (i) Baker's (1988) analysis of causatives in terms of verb incorporation and his treatment of applicatives as preposition incorporation and (ii) Jaeggli's (1986) and Baker, Johnson and Roberts' (1989) theories of the passive. My study shows how these theories account for the three Kihema Grammatical Function Changing Processes.