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A Dictionary And Grammatical Outline Of Chakali
(2017-03-01) Brindle, Jonathan
This book is the first comprehensive monograph dedicated to Chakali, a Southwestern Grusi language spoken by less than 3500 people in northwest Ghana. The dictionary offers a consistent description of word meaning and provides the basis for future research in the linguistic area. It is also designed to provide an inventory of correspondence with English usage in a reversal index. The concepts used in the dictionary are explained in a grammar outline, which is of interest to specialists in Gur and Grusi linguistics, as well as any language researchers working in this part of the world.
A Dictionary And Grammatical Sketch Of Dagaare
(2021-02-04) Ali, Mark; Grimm, Scott; Bodomo, Adams
This book presents an extensive dictionary of the Dagaare language (Niger-Congo; Gur (Mabia)), focussing on the dialect of Central Dagaare, spoken in the Upper West region of Ghana. The dictionary provides comprehensive definitions, example sentences and the English translations, phonetic forms, inflected forms, etymological notes as well as information dialectal variation. This work is intended as a resource for linguists, but also as a resource for Dagaare speakers. Also included is a grammatical sketch of Dagaare contributed by Prof. Adams Bodomo. This version includes the letter "ky", which was previously missing.
A Dictionary And Grammatical Sketch Of Ruruuli-Lunyala
(2021-10-05) Saudah, Namyalo; Witzlack-Makarevich, Alena; Kiriggwajjo, Anatole; Atuhairwe, Amos; Molochieva, Zarina; Mukama, Ruth; Zellers, Margaret
This book is a dictionary and grammatical sketch of Ruruuli-Lunyala, a Great Lakes Bantu language spoken by over 200,000 people in central Uganda. The dictionary part includes about 10,000 entries. Each entry provides translations into English, example sentences, and essential grammatical information. The dictionary part is supplemented with a grammatical sketch of Ruruuli-Lunyala. It treats a wide range of central phonological and morpho-syntactic topics. This book is a result of a joined effort of a large team of linguists and many speakers of Ruruuli-Lunyala and is intended as a resource for linguists and Ruruuli-Lunyala speakers, learners, and educators.
A Grammar Of Gyeli
(2021-05-04) Grimm, Nadine
This grammar offers a grammatical description of the Ngòló variety of Gyeli, an endangered Bantu (A80) language spoken by 4,000-5,000 "Pygmy" hunter-gatherers in southern Cameroon. It represents one of the most comprehensive descriptions of a northwestern Bantu language. The grammatical description, which is couched in a form-to-function approach, covers all levels of language, ranging from Gyeli phonology to its information structure and complex clauses. It draws on nineteen months of fieldwork carried out as part of the "Bagyeli/Bakola" DoBeS (Documentation of Endangered Languages) project between 2010 and 2014. The resulting multimodal corpus from that project, which includes texts of diverse genres such as traditional stories, narratives, multi-party conversations and dialogues, procedural texts, and songs, provides the empirical basis for the grammatical description. The documentary text collection, supplemented by data from elicitation work, questionnaires, and experiments, are accessible in the Bagyeli/Bakola collection of The Language Archive. With additional ethnographic, sociolinguistic, diachronic, and comparative remarks, the grammar may appeal to a wider audience in general linguistics, typology, Bantu studies, and anthropology. In 2019, the grammar received the Pāṇini Award by the Association for Linguistic Typology.
A Grammar of Moloko
(2017-07-09) Friesen, Dianne
This grammar provides the first comprehensive grammatical description of Moloko, a Chadic language spoken by about 10,000 speakers in northern Cameroon. The grammar was developed from hours and years that the authors spent at friends’ houses hearing and recording stories, hours spent listening to the tapes and transcribing the stories, then translating them and studying the language through them. Time was spent together and with others speaking the language and talking about it, translating resources and talking to Moloko people about them. Grammar and phonology discoveries were made in the office, in the fields while working, and at gatherings. In the process, the four authors have become more and more passionate about the Moloko language and are eager to share their knowledge about it with others. Intriguing phonological aspects of Moloko include the fact that words have a consonantal skeleton and only one underlying vowel (but with ten phonetic variants). The simplicity of the vowel system contrasts with the complexity of the verb word, which can include information (in addition to the verbal idea) about subject, direct object (semantic Theme), indirect object (recipient or beneficiary), direction, location, aspect (Imperfective and Perfective), mood (indicative, irrealis, iterative), and Perfect aspect. Some of the fascinating aspects about the grammar of Moloko include transitivity issues, question formation, presupposition, and the absence of simple adjectives as a grammatical class. Most verbs are not inherently transitive or intransitive, but rather the semantics is tied to the number and type of core grammatical relations in a clause. Morphologically, two types of verb pronominals indicate two kinds of direct object; both are found in ditransitive clauses. Noun incorporation of special ‘body-part’ nouns in some verbs adds another grammatical argument and changes the lexical characteristics of the verb. Clauses of zero transitivity can occur in main clauses due to the use of dependent verb forms and ideophones. Question formation is interesting in that the interrogative pronoun is clause-final for most constructions. The clause will sometimes be reconfigured so that the interrogative pronoun can be clause-final. Expectation is a foundational pillar for Moloko grammar. Three types of irrealis mood relate to speaker’s expectation concerning the accomplishment of an event. Clauses are organised around the concept of presupposition, through the use of the na-construction. Known or expected elements are marked with the na particle. There are no simple adjectives in Moloko; all adjectives are derived from nouns. The authors invite others to further explore the intricacies of the phonology and grammar of this intriguing language.
A Grammar of Pichi
(2019-01-22) Yakpo, Kofi
Pichi is an Afro-Caribbean English-lexifier Creole spoken on the island of Bioko, Equatorial Guinea. It is an offshoot of 19th century Krio (Sierra Leone) and shares many characteristics with West African relatives like Nigerian Pidgin, Cameroon Pidgin, and Ghanaian Pidgin English, as well as with the English-lexifier creoles of the insular and continental Caribbean. This comprehensive description presents a detailed analysis of the grammar and phonology of Pichi. It also includes a collection of texts and wordlists. Pichi features a nominative-accusative alignment, SVO word order, adjective-noun order, prenominal determiners, and prepositions. The language has a seven-vowel system and twenty-two consonant phonemes. Pichi has a two-tone system with tonal minimal pairs, morphological tone, and tonal processes. The morphological structure is largely isolating. Pichi has a rich system of tense-aspect-mood marking, an indicative-subjunctive opposition, and a complex copular system with several suppletive forms. Many features align Pichi with the Atlantic-Congo languages spoken in the West African littoral zone. At the same time, characteristics like the prenominal position of adjectives and determiners show a typological overlap with its lexifier English, while extensive contact with Spanish has left an imprint on the lexicon and grammar as well.
African Linguistics Across The Disciplines: Selected Papers From The 48th Annual Conference On African Linguistics
(2019-10-28) Lotven, Samson; Bongiovanni, Silvina; Weirich, Phillip; Botne, Robert; Obeng, Samuel Gyasi
Since the hiring of its first Africanist linguist Carleton Hodge in 1964, Indiana University’s Department of Linguistics has had a strong and continuing presence in the study of African languages and linguistics through the work of its faculty and of its graduates on the faculties of many other universities. In 1972, the Indiana University Department of Linguistics hosted the third Annual Conference of African Linguistics. Proceedings of that conference were published by Indiana University Publications (African Series, vol. 7). In 1986, IU hosted the seventeenth Annual Conference of African Linguistics with Paul Newman and Robert Botne editing the proceedings in a volume entitled Current approaches to African linguistics, vol. 5. In 2016, Indiana University hosted the 48th Annual Conference on African Linguistics with the theme African linguistics across the disciplines. Proceedings of that meeting are published in this volume. The papers presented in this volume reflect the diversity of opportunities for language study in Africa. This collection of descriptive and theoretical work is the fruit of data gathering both in-country and abroad by researchers of languages spoken across the continent, from Sereer-Siin in the west to Somali in the northeast to Ikalanga in the south. The range of topics in this volume is also broad, representative of the varied field work in country and abroad that inspires research in African linguistics. This collection of papers spans the disciplines of phonology (both segmental and suprasegmental), morphology (both morphophonological and morphosyntactic), syntax, semantics, and language policy. The data and analyses presented in this volume offer a cross-disciplinary view of linguistic topics from the many under-resourced languages of Africa.
African Linguistics On The Prairie: Selected Papers From The 45th Annual Conference On African Linguistics
(2018-04-17) Kandybowicz, Jason; Major, Travis; Torrence, Harold
African linguistics on the prairie features select revised peer-reviewed papers from the 45th Annual Conference on African Linguistics, held at the University of Kansas. The articles in this volume reflect the enormous diversity of African languages, as they focus on languages from all of the major African language phyla. The articles here also reflect the many different research perspectives that frame the work of linguists in the Association for Contemporary African Linguistics. The diversity of views presented in this volume are thus indicative of the vitality of current African linguistics research. The work presented in this volume represents both descriptive and theoretical methodologies and covers fields ranging from phonetics, phonology, morphology, typology, syntax, and semantics to sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, language acquisition, computational linguistics and beyond. This broad scope and the quality of the articles contained within holds out the promise of continued advancement in linguistic research on African languages.
An Odyssey into the World of Enzymes
(2023-03-14) Adewale, Isaac Olusanjo
An Inaugural Lecture Delivered at Oduduwa Hall, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria on Tuesday, 14th March, 2023 by Isaac Olusanjo Adewale, Professor of Biochemistry Inaugural Lecture Series 369
Arabic And Contact-Induced Change
(2020-04-08) Lucas, Christopher; Manfredi, Stefano
This volume offers a synthesis of current expertise on contact-induced change in Arabic and its neighbours, with thirty chapters written by many of the leading experts on this topic. Its purpose is to showcase the current state of knowledge regarding the diverse outcomes of contacts between Arabic and other languages, in a format that is both accessible and useful to Arabists, historical linguists, and students of language contact.
Descriptive And Theoretical Approaches To African Linguistics
(2022-03-15) Sibanda, Galen; Ngonyani, Deo; Choti, Jonathan; Biersteker, Ann
Descriptive and theoretical approaches to African Linguistics contains a selection of revised and peer-reviewed papers from the 49th Annual Conference on African Linguistics, held at Michigan State University in 2018. The contributions from both students and more senior scholars, based in North America, Africa and other parts of the world, provide a glimpse of the breadth and quality of current research in African linguistics from both descriptive and theoretical perspectives. Fields of interest range from phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics to sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, discourse analysis, language documentation, computational linguistics and beyond. The articles reflect both the typological and genetic diversity of languages in Africa and the wide range of research areas covered by presenters at ACAL conferences.
East Benue-Congo: Nouns, Pronouns, And Verbs
(2018-07-18) Watters, John
This volume is the first in what hopefully will be a growing set of edited volumes and monographs concerning Niger-Congo comparative studies. This first volume addresses matters that are relevant to the entire East Benue-Congo family as well as the particular branches Kainji, Plateau, and Bantoid. In the case of Bantoid, the particular focus is on Grassfields and the Grassfields-Bantu borderland, though other Bantoid subgroups are referenced. The potential topics for comparative studies among these languages are numerous, but this volume is dedicated to presentations on nominal affixes, third person pronouns, and verbal extensions. A forthcoming volume will provide some results of reconstructions and lexicostatistics in Cross River, exploratory reconstructions in Southern Jukunoid, and reconstructions in Ekoid-Mbe and Mambiloid.
Entwicklung Oder Profit? Die Staatliche Und Private Presse In Ghana
(2012-02-01) Kuehnhenrich, Daniel
Ghana gilt als ein demokratisches Musterland des afrikanischen Kontinents. Betrachtet man die Pressefreiheit liegt das westafrikanische Entwicklungsland noch vor Ländern wie Spanien und Frankreich. Das ghanaische Pressewesen ist durch ein Nebeneinander von staatlicher und privater Presse gekennzeichnet. Im subsaharischen Afrika orientieren sich die Medien am Entwicklungsjournalismus und am westlichen Journalismusverständnis. Daniel Kuehnhenrich untersucht mit verschiedenen Methoden die Ausprägung dieser Konzepte in den ghanaischen Zeitungen. Seine umfassende Analyse beruht auf der ersten Journalistenbefragung in Westafrika, teilnehmenden Beobachtungen in zwei großen Zeitungsredaktionen, qualitativen Interviews mit deren Chefredakteuren und einer quantitativen Inhaltsanalyse von über 1100 Zeitungsartikeln. Die detaillierte und umfangreiche Literaturanalyse ordnet die empirischen Ergebnisse in die subsaharische Presselandschaft ein. Die Studie leistet damit einen wichtigen Beitrag zum Verständnis der Presse in Ghana und stellt eine erste Anlaufstelle für jeden dar, der sich mit den ghanaischen oder afrikanischen Medien beschäftigt.
LES PERES BLANCS 1868 – 1892 DEPUIS L’ORIGINE DE LA SOCIETE JUSQU’A LA MORT DU FONDATEUR
(Fides Caritas Spes, 1901) Duchêne, Le Père Lucien; Rutazibwa, Privat; Minnaert, Le Père, Stefaan
Le Père Lucien Duchêne (1857-1934) est le premier Père Blanc (Missionnaire d’Afrique) qui a écrit une histoire de sa Société missionnaire. Son œuvre fut publiée en trois tomes au début du 20e siècle, entre 1901 et 1903. Elle couvre la période de 1868 jusqu’à la mort de Mgr Lavigerie, fondateur des Pères Blancs, en 1892. Dans son œuvre, le P. Duchêne fait souvent référence aux documents qu’il avait consulté dans les archives. Il était habité par le souci de raconter la vérité. Il évite aussi les interprétations qui pourraient influencer le lecteur. Plus tard des historiens parmi les Pères Blancs écriront leurs « histoires » plutôt au service de l’image de leur société. Ils embelliront la réalité pour encourager des jeunes à devenir missionnaires et aussi pour susciter la générosité de leurs bienfaiteurs. Certains penseront même à une éventuelle canonisation de leur fondateur, le cardinal Lavigerie.
On Reconstructing Proto-Bantu Grammar
(2022-12-30) Bostoen, Koen de Schryver, Gilles-Maurice Guérois, Rozenn Pacchiarotti, Sara; Pacchiarotti, Sara; Guérois, Rozenn; de Schryver, Gilles-Maurice
This book is about reconstructing the grammar of Proto-Bantu, the ancestral language at the origin of current-day Bantu languages. While Bantu is a low-level branch of Niger-Congo, the world’s biggest phylum, it is still Africa’s biggest language family. This edited volume attempts to retrieve the phonology, morphology and syntax used by the earliest Bantu speakers to communicate with each other, discusses methods to do so, and looks at issues raised by these academic endeavours. It is a collective effort involving a fine mix of junior and senior scholars representing several generations of expert historical-comparative Bantu research. It is the first systematic approach to Proto-Bantu grammar since Meeussen’s Bantu Grammatical Reconstructions (1967). Based on new bodies of evidence from the last five decades, most notably from northwestern Bantu languages, this book considerably transforms our understanding of Proto-Bantu grammar and offers new methodological approaches to Bantu grammatical reconstruction.
The Ik language: Dictionary and Grammar Sketch
(2017-03-01) Schrock, Terrill
This book is a dictionary and grammar sketch of Icétôd (Ik), one of the three Kuliak languages spoken in northeastern Uganda, in the Karamoja region. It is the lexical sequel to A grammar of Ik (Icé-tód): Northeast Uganda’s last thriving Kuliak language (Schrock 2014). This volume includes an Icétôd-English dictionary with roughly 8,700 entries, followed by a reversed English-Icétôd index. This is then supplemented with a sketch of Icétôd grammar that is nearly comprehensive in its coverage of topics and is written in a simple style, using standard linguistic terminology, but in a way that is accessible to non-linguists. As a whole, this book may be useful for language and curriculum development for the Ik people, as a reference for non-Ik language-learners, and as a source of data not only for the comparative study of Kuliak but also the Afroasiatic and Nilo-Saharan language families.
The Numeral System of Proto-Niger-Congo
(2018-07-13) Pozdniakov, Konstantin
This book proposes the reconstruction of the Proto-Niger-Congo numeral system. The emphasis is placed on providing an exhaustive account of the distribution of forms by families, groups, and branches. The big data bases used for this purpose open prospects for both working with the distribution of words that do exist and with the distribution of gaps in postulated cognates. The distribution of filled cells and gaps is a useful tool for reconstruction. The first chapter of this book is devoted to the study of various uses of noun class markers in numeral terms. The second chapter deals with the alignment by analogy in numeral systems. Chapter 3 offers a step-by-step reconstruction of number systems of the proto-languages underlying each of the twelve major NC families, on the basis of the step-by-step-reconstruction of numerals within each family. Chapter 4 deals with the reconstruction of the Proto-Niger-Congo numeral system on the basis of the step-by-step-reconstructions offered in Chapter 3. Chapter 5 traces the history of the numerals of Proto-Niger-Congo, reconstructed in Chapter 4, in each individual family of languages.
The Verb In Nyakyusa: A Focus On Tense, Aspect And Modality
(2020-12-20) Persohn, Bastian
Nyakyusa is an under described Bantu language spoken by around 800.000 speakers in the Mbeya Region of Tanzania. This book provides a detailed description of the verb in this language. The topics covered include the complex morphophonological and morphological processes as well as verb-to-verb derivation, copula verbs and grammaticalized verbs of motion. The main body of the book consists of a detailed description of tense, aspect and modality constructions, which includes not only an in-depth discussion of their sentence level semantics, but also of their patterns of employment in discourse. This is the second, slightly revised edition.
Theory and Description in African Linguistics
(2019-08-12) Clem, Emily; Jenks, Peter; Sande, Hannah
The papers in this volume were presented at the 47th Annual Conference on African Linguistics at UC Berkeley in 2016. The papers offer new descriptions of African languages and propose novel theoretical analyses of them. The contributions span topics in phonetics, phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics and reflect the typological and genetic diversity of languages in Africa. Four papers in the volume examine Areal Features and Linguistic Reconstruction in Africa, and were presented at a special workshop on this topic held alongside the general session of ACAL.
Tonal Placement In Tashlhiyt: How An Intonation System Accommodates To Adverse Phonological Environments
(2017-06-20) Roettger, Timo
In most languages, words contain vowels, elements of high intensity with rich harmonic structure, enabling the perceptual retrieval of pitch. By contrast, in Tashlhiyt, a Berber language, words can be composed entirely of voiceless segments. When an utterance consists of such words, the phonetic opportunity for the execution of intonational pitch movements is exceptionally limited. This book explores in a series of production and perception experiments how these typologically rare phonotactic patterns interact with intonational aspects of linguistic structure. It turns out that Tashlhiyt allows for a tremendously flexible placement of tonal events. Observed intonational structures can be conceived of as different solutions to a functional dilemma: The requirement to realise meaningful pitch movements in certain positions and the extent to which segments lend themselves to a clear manifestation of these pitch movements.

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