Rainer Vossen - Böcker

This book provides a comprehensive overview of current research in African languages, drawing on insights from anthropological linguistics, typology, historical and comparative linguistics, and sociolinguistics. Africa is believed to host at least one third of the world's languages, usually classified into four phyla - Niger-Congo, Afro-Asiatic, Nilo-Saharan, and Khoisan - which are then subdivided into further families and subgroupings. This volume explores all aspects of research in the field, beginning with chapters that cover the major domains of grammar and comparative approaches. Later parts provide overviews of the phyla and subfamilies, alongside grammatical sketches of eighteen representative African languages of diverse genetic affiliation. The volume additionally explores multiple other topics relating to African languages and linguistics, with a particular focus on extralinguistic issues: language, cognition, and culture, including colour terminology and conversation analysis; language and society, including language contact and endangerment; language and history; and language and orature. This wide-ranging handbook will be a valuable reference for scholars and students in all areas of African linguistics and anthropology, and for anyone interested in descriptive, documentary, typological, and comparative linguistics.

The Routledge Language Family series is aimed at undergraduates and postgraduates of linguistics and language, and those with an interest in historical linguistics, linguistic anthropology and language development. According to a widely accepted hypothesis, the Khoesan languages represent the smallest of the four language phyla in Africa, geographically distributed mainly in Botswana and Namibia. Today, only 30 or so Khoesan languages may still exist, with about 300,000 native speakers. In other words, most Khoesan languages were already extinct before a sound scholarly interest in them could begin to develop. Drawing together a distinguished group of international experts, with much of the material taken from data collected by the authors’ own field work, this volume presents descriptive, typological, historical-comparative and sociolinguistic material on Khoesan. The Khoesan Languages contains eight sections: an introduction, an overview of genetic relationships, a typological survey and profile of Khoesan, four chapters covering core linguistic areas of Khoesan phonetics and phonology, tonology, morphology and syntax, and a final chapter tackling major issues in Khoesan sociolinguistics, as well as discussions of language contact. Comprehensive and scholarly, yet also lucid in its coverage of a broad range of languages, dialects and sub-groups, this unprecedented and original work represents the current state of Khoesan linguistics.

The Routledge Language Family series is aimed at undergraduates and postgraduates of linguistics and language, and those with an interest in historical linguistics, linguistic anthropology and language development. According to a widely accepted hypothesis, the Khoesan languages represent the smallest of the four language phyla in Africa, geographically distributed mainly in Botswana and Namibia. Today, only 30 or so Khoesan languages may still exist, with about 300,000 native speakers. In other words, most Khoesan languages were already extinct before a sound scholarly interest in them could begin to develop. Drawing together a distinguished group of international experts, with much of the material taken from data collected by the authors’ own field work, this volume presents descriptive, typological, historical-comparative and sociolinguistic material on Khoesan. The Khoesan Languages contains eight sections: an introduction, an overview of genetic relationships, a typological survey and profile of Khoesan, four chapters covering core linguistic areas of Khoesan phonetics and phonology, tonology, morphology and syntax, and a final chapter tackling major issues in Khoesan sociolinguistics, as well as discussions of language contact. Comprehensive and scholarly, yet also lucid in its coverage of a broad range of languages, dialects and sub-groups, this unprecedented and original work represents the current state of Khoesan linguistics.

This book is, to some extent, a reference work uniting theory and description. It comprises four structured parts: Phonetics, Phonology, Tonology, and Specific African Sound Patterns. By means of concrete examples, the book describes and compares a wide range of basic and current issues and facts that are of utmost relevance for all persons working on language or linguistics as well as in related fields. The book provides core instruments needed and used in the study of phonology and phonological analyses. It discusses modern phonological theories. Phonological issues and processes, such as vowel harmony, assimilation, dissimilation, lenition, as well as fortition are explained. Prosodic topics, such as tone, stress, pitch, and intonation are considered. Issues in tonology include tonological analysis, tonal behaviour and rules. Special attention is given to specific sounds found in African languages.

Kusaal is a Mabia (traditional Gur) language spoken in north-eastern Ghana. Until recently, there was a paucity of linguistic research on the language, thus, the need for a concise and lucid grammar. The study adopts a holistic linguistic approach to language documentation and description drawing on a corpus of synchronic data collected on fieldtrips. The analysis of the data is guided by a confluence of structural and functional grammar approaches following Payne (1997) and Dixon’s (2010) Basic Linguistic Theory. The phonology, nouns and noun class systems, nominal modifiers and relator nouns, verbs, phrases, aspect and modality, clause structure, verb serialisation and pragmatically marked structures are considered together with a speech form similar to «signifying/playing the dozens».

The book investigates the morphology and phonology of the nominal domain in Tagbana of the Senufo group of Côte d’Ivoire. The nominal domain is the locus of a phenomenon called ‘alliterative concord’, a special kind of concord expressed by consonantal alliteration. All dependent morphemes of a head noun share articulatory features, which are realized on the onset of the first syllable of each morpheme. In this way, the articulatory features signal the class of the dependent morphemes. This volume also discusses the segment inventory and the syllable structure and describes the complex noun operations in the nominal domain. Distributed Morphology and Optimal Theory form the theoretical background of the empirical facts.

This book provides an account of the structure of A-bar constructions, focusing on wh-questions and fragment answers in Dagbani, a Mabia (Gur) language spoken in Northern Ghana. It demonstrates that Dagbani wh-phrases occur in two distinct positions, ex-situ and in-situ, except for subject wh-phrases, which only occur in the former position. It provides a theoretical analysis of the distribution of the wh-phrases couched within minimalism (Chomsky 1995). Finally, the book gives an account of the structural correlation between wh-questions and their answers with the focus on the syntactic derivation of fragment answers. The author contends that the derivation of fragment answer involves two processes: A-bar movement together with PF-deletion

Cua is a Kalahari Khoe language spoken in southeastern Botswana (Kweneng District). It is closely related to languages such as G||ana, Tshila and Tsua. The phonology chapter describes the consonant, tone and vowel inventories, as well as a system of depressed tones following aspirated and voiced consonants. Later chapters provide concise overviews of the morphology and syntax of the language. Cua is characterized by a complex system of person-gender-number markers (PGN markers), which play a role in the formation of the pronouns. The features defining pronouns include: singular, dual, and plural number; first, second, and third person; and masculine, feminine and neutral gender. There is also a distinction between inclusive and exclusive first-person plural pronouns.