Cilungu Phonology

Cilungu Phonology PDF Author: Lee Bickmore
Publisher: Center for the Study of Language and Information Publica Tion
ISBN:
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 558

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Book Description
Cilungu is an underrepresented language spoken in northern Zambia and Tanzania whose future is far from certain, given ongoing urbanization and the ascendancy of other regional languages. The product of over fifteen years of fieldwork, Cilungu Phonology presents a comprehensive description and analysis of this endangered language. Featuring a reference grammar and formal analysis of Cilungu, this volume will be a major contribution to our understanding of tonology, since several of the forty-four processes analyzed appear to be unique to the language. It also includes a discussion of morphology, both nominal and verbal.

Cilungu Phonology

Cilungu Phonology PDF Author: Lee Bickmore
Publisher: Center for the Study of Language and Information Publica Tion
ISBN:
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 558

Get Book Here

Book Description
Cilungu is an underrepresented language spoken in northern Zambia and Tanzania whose future is far from certain, given ongoing urbanization and the ascendancy of other regional languages. The product of over fifteen years of fieldwork, Cilungu Phonology presents a comprehensive description and analysis of this endangered language. Featuring a reference grammar and formal analysis of Cilungu, this volume will be a major contribution to our understanding of tonology, since several of the forty-four processes analyzed appear to be unique to the language. It also includes a discussion of morphology, both nominal and verbal.

The Phonology of Chichewa

The Phonology of Chichewa PDF Author: Laura J. Downing
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191037737
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
This book provides thorough descriptive and theory-neutral coverage of the full range of phonological phenomena of Chichewa, a Malawian Bantu language. Bantu languages have played and continue to play an important role as a source of data illustrating core phonological processes such as vowel harmony, nasal place assimilation, postnasal laryngeal alternations, tonal phenomena such as High tone spread and the OCP, prosodic morphology, and the phonology-syntax interface. Chichewa, in particular, has been a key language in the development of theoretical approaches to these phenomena. In this volume, Laura Downing and Al Mtenje examine not only these well-known features of Chichewa but also less well-studied phonological topics such as positional asymmetries in the distribution of segments, the phonetics of tone, and intonation. They survey important recent theoretical approaches to phonological problems such as focus prosody, reduplication, and vowel harmony, where Chichewa data is routinely referred to in the literature. The book will serve as a resource for all phonologists interested in these processes, regardless of their theoretical background, as well as Bantu scholars and linguists working on interface issues.

Understanding Phonology

Understanding Phonology PDF Author: Carlos Gussenhoven
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1351974718
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
Understanding Phonology, Fourth Edition provides a clear, accessible and broad introduction to Phonology. Introducing basic concepts, it provides a comprehensive account of phonological issues such as segmental contrasts; syllables and moras; quantity, tone, intonation and stress; feature geometry; and prosodic constituent structure. This new edition has been reorganized and revised with key features including: A brand new eResource at www.routledge.com/9781138961425, which contains a full answer key for all exercises, and audio recordings of illustrative examples; Illustrations in languages from all six continents and all major language families, including Arabic, Mandarin, Finnish, Zulu and Hawaiian; Over 140 exercises to test understanding, including new exercises involving larger data sets; Revised coverage of tone, stress and opacity in OT. Understanding Phonology is essential reading for students coming to this topic for the first time.

Representing Structure in Phonology and Syntax

Representing Structure in Phonology and Syntax PDF Author: Marc van Oostendorp
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 1501502255
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 365

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Book Description
Formal grammars by definition need two parts: a theory of computation (or derivation), and a theory of representation. While recent attention in mainstream syntactic and phonological theory has been devoted to the former, the papers in this volume aim to show that the importance of representational details is not diminished by the insights of such theories.

Phonological Tone

Phonological Tone PDF Author: Lian-Hee Wee
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108636616
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
From the physiology and acoustics to their patterning across human languages, tone is one of the fundamental constructs in human languages that is also among the hardest to apprehend. Drawing upon a large number of languages around the world, this volume explores the concept of tone starting from its physical properties of articulation and acoustics to its manifestation in phonology. Designed as a comprehensive study accessible to the novice and useful for the expert, each chapter covers a particular aspect of tone in increasing depth and complexity, weaving together key concepts and theories that provide complementing or competing accounts of tone's phonological intricacies. In the process, one uncovers the underlying laws and principles that inform today's understanding of the subject to form a more synthesized view that also allows us to explore the relation of tone to other important areas of humanity such as literature, history, music and cognition.

The Bantu Languages

The Bantu Languages PDF Author: Mark Van de Velde
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317628691
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 807

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Book Description
Written by an international team of experts, this comprehensive volume presents grammatical analyses of individual Bantu languages, comparative studies of their main phonetic, phonological and grammatical characteristics and overview chapters on their history and classification. It is estimated that some 300 to 350 million people, or one in three Africans, are Bantu speakers. Van de Velde and Bostoen bring together their linguistic expertise to produce a volume that builds on Nurse and Philippson’s first edition. The Bantu Languages, 2nd edition is divided into two parts; Part 1 contains 11 comparative chapters, and Part 2 provides grammar sketches of 12 individual Bantu languages, some of which were previously undescribed. The grammar sketches follow a general template that allows for easy comparison. Thoroughly revised and updated to include more language descriptions and the latest comparative insights. New to this edition: • new chapters on syntax, tone, reconstruction and language contact • 12 new sketch grammars • thoroughly updated chapters on phonetics, aspect-tense-mood and classification • exhaustive catalogue of known languages with essential references This unique resource remains the ideal reference for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of Bantu linguistics and languages. It will be of interest to researchers and anyone with an interest in historical linguistics, linguistic typology and grammatical analysis.

On reconstructing Proto-Bantu grammar

On reconstructing Proto-Bantu grammar PDF Author: Koen Bostoen
Publisher: Language Science Press
ISBN: 3961104069
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 862

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Book Description
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.

Morpheme-internal Recursion in Phonology

Morpheme-internal Recursion in Phonology PDF Author: Kuniya Nasukawa
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 1501512587
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 426

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Book Description
Generative phonology aims to formalise two distinct aspects of phonological processes: the functional and the representational. Since functions operate on representations, it is clear that the functional aspect is influenced by the form of representations, i.e. different types of representation require different types of rules, principles or constraints. This volume examines the representational issue in phonology and considers what kind of representation is most appropriate for recent models of generative phonology. In particular, it provides the first platform for debate on the place of morpheme-internal structure and on the formal status of phonology in the language faculty, and attempts to identify phonological recursive structure as a means of capturing frequently observed processes.

Tense and Aspect in Bantu

Tense and Aspect in Bantu PDF Author: Derek Nurse
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191553603
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 423

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Book Description
Derek Nurse looks at variations in the form and function of tense and aspect in Bantu, a branch of Niger-Congo, the world's largest language phylum. Bantu languages are spoken in central, eastern, and southern sub-Saharan Africa south of a line between Nigeria and Somalia. By current estimates there are between 250 and 600 of them, as yet neither adequately classified nor fully described. Professor Nurse's account is based on data from more than 200 Bantu languages and varieties, a representative sample of which is freely available on the publisher's website. He devotes substantial chapters to the analysis and comparison of the different tense and aspect systems found in Bantu. He also examines the verbal categories with which they interact, including negation and focus. Synchronic and diachronic perspectives are interwoven throughout the book. Following a brief history of Bantu over the last five thousand years, the final two chapters look systematically at the history of tense and aspect in Bantu. The first deals with the reconstruction of the earlier forms from which contemporary structures, morphemes, and categories are derived, and the second with the processes of change, including grammaticalization, by means of which older analytical structures and independent lexical items moved as they became incorporated as grammatical inflections and categories.

Theory and description in African Linguistics

Theory and description in African Linguistics PDF Author: Emily Clem
Publisher: Language Science Press
ISBN: 3961102058
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 788

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Book Description
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.