The Linguistic Typology and Representation of African Languages

2003
 |  African languages
The Linguistic Typology and Representation of African Languages

Author: John M. Mugane

Publisher: Africa World Press

ISBN: 1592211550

Category: African languages

Page: 350

View: 926

Get eBOOK →
For the thirty-third consecutive year, the Annual Conference on African Linguistics (ACAL) has provided the major forum for the discussion of linguistic data geared towards understanding how African languages are constituted, acquired and used. This volume represents a selection of 25 peer-reviewed papers from the 33rd AWAL held in March 2002 at Ohio University in Athens. The papers cover language acquisition, syntax, phonetics, phonology, morphology, historical linguistics, as well as language use and function in Africa.

The Languages and Linguistics of Africa

2018-09-10
 |  Language Arts & Disciplines
The Languages and Linguistics of Africa

Author: Tom Güldemann

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

ISBN: 9783110421750

Category: Language Arts & Disciplines

Page: 1032

View: 249

Get eBOOK →
This innovative handbook takes a fresh look at the currently underestimated linguistic diversity of Africa, the continent with the largest number of languages in the world. It covers the major domains of linguistics, offering both a representative picture of Africa’s linguistic landscape as well as new and at times unconventional perspectives. The focus is not so much on exhaustiveness as on the fruitful relationship between African and general linguistics and the contributions the two domains can make to each other. This volume is thus intended for readers with a specific interest in African languages and also for students and scholars within the greater discipline of linguistics.

The Routledge Handbook of African Linguistics

2018-03-09
 |  Foreign Language Study
The Routledge Handbook of African Linguistics

Author: Augustine Agwuele

Publisher: Routledge

ISBN: 9781315392967

Category: Foreign Language Study

Page: 464

View: 800

Get eBOOK →
The Handbook of African Linguistics provides a holistic coverage of the key themes, subfields, approaches and practical application to the vast areas subsumable under African linguistics that will serve researchers working across the wide continuum in the field. Established and emerging scholars of African languages who are active and current in their fields are brought together, each making use of data from a linguistic group in Africa to explicate a chosen theme within their area of expertise, and illustrate the practice of the discipline in the continent.

Diversity in African languages

2016-12-31
 |  Language Arts & Disciplines
Diversity in African languages

Author: Doris L. Payne

Publisher: Language Science Press

ISBN: 9783946234708

Category: Language Arts & Disciplines

Page: 600

View: 571

Get eBOOK →
Diversity in African Languages contains a selection of revised papers from the 46th Annual Conference on African Linguistics, held at the University of Oregon. Most chapters focus on single languages, addressing diverse aspects of their phonology, morphology, semantics, syntax, information structure, or historical development. These chapters represent nine different genera: Mande, Gur, Kwa, Edoid, Bantu, Nilotic, Gumuzic, Cushitic, and Omotic. Other chapters investigate a mix of languages and families, moving from typological issues to sociolinguistic and inter-ethnic factors that affect language and accent switching. Some chapters are primarily descriptive, while others push forward the theoretical understanding of tone, semantic problems, discourse related structures, and other linguistic systems. The papers on Bantu languages reflect something of the internal richness and continued fascination of the family for linguists, as well as maturation of research on the family. The distribution of other papers highlights the need for intensified research into all the language families of Africa, including basic documentation, in order to comprehend linguistic diversities and convergences across the continent. In this regard, the chapter on Daats’íin (Gumuzic) stands out as the first-ever published article on this hitherto unknown and endangered language found in the Ethiopian-Sudanese border lands.

A grammar of Gyeli

2021
 |  Language Arts & Disciplines
A grammar of Gyeli

Author: Nadine Grimm

Publisher: Language Science Press

ISBN: 9783961103119

Category: Language Arts & Disciplines

Page: 725

View: 508

Get eBOOK →
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.

Current Research in African Linguistics

2015-09-04
 |  Language Arts & Disciplines
Current Research in African Linguistics

Author: Oluseye Adesola

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

ISBN: 9781443881425

Category: Language Arts & Disciplines

Page: 525

View: 753

Get eBOOK →
Current Research in African Linguistics recognizes and honors Ọladele Awobuluyi’s contributions to African linguistics. The contributors, an international group of scholars, represent four generations of African linguists who have been influenced by Awobuluyi’s work as a scholar and teacher. The papers are organized into three thematic sections, namely applied linguistics and sociolinguistics; phonology and morphology; and syntax and semantics and their interfaces. The wide range of topics investigated in this volume will enhance the reader’s understanding of current issues in the field of African linguistics today. Indeed, the book marks an important contribution to the expanding work on language documentation and comparative linguistics by presenting data and linguistic analysis from a number of different African languages.

The Linguistic Cycle

2011
 |  Language Arts & Disciplines
The Linguistic Cycle

Author: Elly van Gelderen

Publisher: Oxford University Press

ISBN: 9780199756049

Category: Language Arts & Disciplines

Page: 460

View: 640

Get eBOOK →
In this volume, Elly van Gelderen examines the linguistic cycle and describes how it offers a unique perspective on the language faculty. Each chapter provides data on a separate cycle from a myriad of languages.

The Dynamics of Language

2018-06-26
 |  Language Arts & Disciplines
The Dynamics of Language

Author: Rajend Mesthrie

Publisher: Juta and Company (Pty) Ltd

ISBN: 9781775822271

Category: Language Arts & Disciplines

Page: 312

View: 526

Get eBOOK →
Linguistics – the close study of language and languages – is an indispensable foundation for all forms of knowledge. The African continent is blessed with hundreds of languages which act as local repositories of culture and interaction. South Africa alone has eleven official languages, plus Sign Language, many heritage languages, and new languages of global movements and migration. Part of the linguist’s business is to document, record and affirm languages and diversity. Applied linguists use their training to understand and enhance the role of language in education and upliftment, and the opportunities and challenges of new technologies of communication. The International Congress of Linguists meets every five years to reflect the development of the field and 2018 is the first time that the congress is being held in Africa. This book is a collection of the plenary and focus papers presented at the conference and thus represents current thinking in the major branches of language study as represented by leading local and international scholars. The papers discuss the history of languages, their structure, acquisition, diversity and use. At the same time due regard is paid to the African continent in connection with its linguistic diversity, multilingualism and educational and societal concerns. The Congress is meant to affirm the value of the languages of Africa, of languages and Linguistics in general, as well as to inspire and equip younger scholars to undertake advanced research into language in its many facets.

Phonological Tone

2019-02-28
 |  Language Arts & Disciplines
Phonological Tone

Author: Lian-Hee Wee

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

ISBN: 9781107125728

Category: Language Arts & Disciplines

Page: 345

View: 412

Get eBOOK →
Explores the concept of tone, its physical properties and intricate patterning in phonology, to unravel key 'mysteries' that have been subject to great debate in the field.

Understanding Syntax

2019-12-19
 |  Language Arts & Disciplines
Understanding Syntax

Author: Maggie Tallerman

Publisher: Routledge

ISBN: 9780429516740

Category: Language Arts & Disciplines

Page: 350

View: 241

Get eBOOK →
Assuming no prior grammatical knowledge, Understanding Syntax explains and illustrates the major concepts, categories and terminology involved in the study of cross-linguistic syntax. Taking a theory-neutral and descriptive viewpoint throughout, this book: introduces syntactic typology, syntactic description and the major typological categories found in the languages of the world; clarifies with examples grammatical constructions and relationships between words in a clause, including word classes and their syntactic properties; grammatical relations such as subject and object; case and agreement processes; passives; questions and relative clauses; features in-text and chapter-end exercises to extend the reader’s knowledge of syntactic concepts and argumentation, drawing on data from over 100 languages; highlights the principles involved in writing a brief syntactic sketch of language. This fifth edition has been revised and updated to include extended exercises in all chapters, updated further readings, and more extensive checklists for students. Accompanying e-resources have also been updated to include hints for instructors and additional links to further reading. Understanding Syntax is an essential textbook for students studying the description of language, cross-linguistic syntax, language typology and linguistic fieldwork.

The Blackwell Companion to Phonology, 5 Volume Set

2011-04-04
 |  Language Arts & Disciplines
The Blackwell Companion to Phonology, 5 Volume Set

Author: Marc van Oostendorp

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

ISBN: 9781405184236

Category: Language Arts & Disciplines

Page: 3183

View: 490

Get eBOOK →
Available online or as a five-volume print set, The Blackwell Companion to Phonology is a major reference work drawing together 124 new contributions from leading international scholars in the field. It will be indispensable to students and researchers in the field for years to come. Key Features: Full explorations of all the most important ideas and key developments in the field Documents major insights into human language gathered by phonologists in past decades; highlights interdisciplinary connections, such as the social and computational sciences; and examines statistical and experimental techniques Offers an overview of theoretical positions and ongoing debates within phonology at the beginning of the twenty-first century An extensive reference work based on the best and most recent scholarly research – ideal for advanced undergraduates through to faculty and researchers Publishing simultaneously in print and online; visit www.companiontophonology.com for full details Additional features of the online edition (ISBN: 978-1-4443-3526-2): Powerful searching, browsing, and cross-referencing capabilities, including Open URL linking, with all entries classified by key topic, subject, place, people, and period For those institutions already subscribing to Blackwell Reference Online, it offers fully integrated and searchable content with the comprehensive Handbooks in Linguistics series

Non-Prototypical Reduplication

2018-05-07
 |  Language Arts & Disciplines
Non-Prototypical Reduplication

Author: Aina Urdze

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

ISBN: 9783110597134

Category: Language Arts & Disciplines

Page: 300

View: 887

Get eBOOK →
As “reduplication” is a continuously discussed topic in the field of linguistic typology and morphology there is still the need to reach a deeper understanding of reduplicative processes. This volume aims to explore the boundaries of reduplication proper from an outside angle, i.e. by looking into non-prototypical cases which challenge the formal and functional criteria for reduplication proper. The articles selected cover various linguistic areals from Southeast Asia, Africa and Europe. Abbi explores echo formations and reduplicative expressives in Southeast Asia. Anderson presents an in-depth study on various reduplication phenomena in the Munda language family. Nintemann addresses a formal problem of reduplication proper in Bantu languages. Finkbeiner discusses a case of triplication in German, contrasting it with the framework of reduplication. Kallergi & Konstantinidou provide an detailed insight into several kinds of echo formations in Modern Greek, including diachronic aspects. Rozhanskiy’s focus is on unexpected reduplicative patterns found in the formation of Komi ideophones. Stolz delivers a thorough crosslinguistic investigation on reduplicative phenomena, favouring the canonical approach over the prototype method.