Morphosyntactic Variation in Bantu

Morphosyntactic Variation in Bantu PDF Author: Eva-Marie Bloom Ström
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019255445X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 465

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Book Description
This volume explores the rich and complex pattern of morphosyntactic variation in the Bantu languages, providing a comprehensive overview of the wealth of empirical and conceptual work in the field. The chapters discuss data from some 80 Bantu languages as well as drawing on a wider comparative set of more than 200 languages from across Central, Eastern and Southern Africa: some studies focus on one specific language in a comparative context; some investigate fine-grained variation among a close-knit group of languages; and others present large-scale comparative studies spanning the whole of the Bantu-speaking area. The contributors address a range of topics from a micro-variation perspective, primarily in the areas of nominal and verbal morphology and syntax and information structure. The volume highlights key aspects of contemporary research in Bantu morphosyntax and outlines distinct and novel approaches to prominent questions; it combines the most recent thinking on morphosyntactic variation in Bantu with different theoretical and methodological approaches and novel empirical data from a wide range of languages.

Morphosyntactic Variation in Bantu

Morphosyntactic Variation in Bantu PDF Author: Eva-Marie Bloom Ström
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019255445X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 465

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume explores the rich and complex pattern of morphosyntactic variation in the Bantu languages, providing a comprehensive overview of the wealth of empirical and conceptual work in the field. The chapters discuss data from some 80 Bantu languages as well as drawing on a wider comparative set of more than 200 languages from across Central, Eastern and Southern Africa: some studies focus on one specific language in a comparative context; some investigate fine-grained variation among a close-knit group of languages; and others present large-scale comparative studies spanning the whole of the Bantu-speaking area. The contributors address a range of topics from a micro-variation perspective, primarily in the areas of nominal and verbal morphology and syntax and information structure. The volume highlights key aspects of contemporary research in Bantu morphosyntax and outlines distinct and novel approaches to prominent questions; it combines the most recent thinking on morphosyntactic variation in Bantu with different theoretical and methodological approaches and novel empirical data from a wide range of languages.

Morphosyntactic variation in East African Bantu languages

Morphosyntactic variation in East African Bantu languages PDF Author: Hannah Gibson
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 3985540918
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 446

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Book Description
The approximately 500 Bantu languages spoken across vast areas of Central, Eastern and Southern Africa are united by the presence of a number of broad typological similarities, including, for example, complex noun class system and agglutinative verbal morphology. However, the languages also exhibit a high degree of micro-variation. Recent work has demonstrated fine-grained morphosyntactic variation across many Bantu languages focusing on grammatical topics such as double object constructions, inversion constructions, or object marking, adopting formal, comparative and typological perspectives. Continuing in this vein, this volume builds on the momentum of the dynamic field of morphosyntactic variation in Bantu and contributes to the growing body of work which examines morphosyntactic variation, with a regional focus on the Bantu languages of East Africa. The East African region is characterized by high linguistic complexity in terms of the number of languages spoken, in terms of the four different linguistic phyla present, and in terms of the inherent sociolinguistic dynamics. The current volume explores this complexity further by bringing together studies which investigate features of morphosyntax of an individual language as well as those which develop an in-depth examination of a single morphosyntactic phenomena in a small sample of languages. The book seeks also to add to the descriptive status of the languages under examination, as well as raising questions relating to language, language contact, language change, and micro-variation in related languages spoken in close geographic proximity.

Associated Motion

Associated Motion PDF Author: Antoine Guillaume
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110692090
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 930

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Book Description
This volume is the first book-length presentation of the grammatical category of Associated Motion. It provides a framework for understanding a grammatical phenomenon which, though present in many languages, has gone unrecognized until recently. Previously known primarily from languages of Australia and South America, grammatical AM marking has now been identified in languages from most parts of the world (except Europe) and is becoming an important topic in linguistic typology. The chapters provide a thorough introduction to the subject, discussion of the relation between AM and related grammatical concepts, detailed descriptions of AM in a wide range of the world’s languages, and surveys of AM in particular language families and areas.

Dynamism in African Languages and Literature

Dynamism in African Languages and Literature PDF Author: Keiko Takemura
Publisher: African Books Collective
ISBN: 9956553514
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
The book provides novel perspectives towards conceptualisation of African Potentials. It explores diverse and dynamic aspects of linguistic communications in Africa, ranging from convivial multilingual practices to literal and musical arts. The book reflects the diversity and ever-changing dynamism in the African sociolinguistic sphere, that is, metalinguistic discourse in East Africa, sociolinguistic dynamism in Angola, conflict reconciliation speech performed in Ethiopia, and syncretic urban linguistic code called Sheng in Kenya. The volume also explores multi-dimensional relationships between literary arts and the society by investigating such topics as traditional Swahili poetry, publication of children books in Benin, and transformation and reconstruction of Yoruba popular music. The book elucidates dynamic process of creation through mixing of traditional and foreign elements of culture.

The Bantu Languages

The Bantu Languages PDF Author: Derek Nurse
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135796831
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 727

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Book Description
Gerard Philippson is Professor of Bantu Languages at the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales and is a member of the Dyamique de Langage research team of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Lyon II University. He has mainly worked on comparative Bantu tonology. Other areas of interest include Afro-Asiatic, general phonology, linguistic classification and its correlation with population genetics.

Parameters of Morphosyntactic Change

Parameters of Morphosyntactic Change PDF Author: Ans van Kemenade
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521586436
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 560

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Book Description
Even today, many passengers, including the most frequent flyers, associate air travel with a feeling of fear and concern. Basing itself on the premise that people are often afraid of the unknown, author Jorge Ontiveros, a professional of Aena and the author of several publications on this sector, explains all the elements involved in air travel in his new work. It explains airports, their staff, security processes, ground workers and airline employees - a combination of professionals and technology that has made this means of transport by far the safest of all. Safety that is the main objective of all those who take part in this activity, and which Jorge Ontiveros, with descriptive and didactic language, tries to transmit, so that your next trip is much more pleasurable and pleasant. Publication index: I. Discover air travel From the age of pioneers till today Commercial aviation in Spain If this is your first time II. Flying, trick or magic? Why does an aeroplane fly? How does an aeroplane fly? III. The aeroplane: design, manufacture and maintenance Manufacturing reliable planes From manufacture to line flying We take care of your plane; we take care of you IV. Air routes and air traffic control Where do aeroplanes fly? Air traffic control V. At the airport The airport The best protection is invisible Come on, hurry up! A bird in the hand is worth... VI. On the plane Ladies and gentlemen, welcome on board! Ladies and gentleman, this is your captain speaking Entering the runway for take-off In case of an emergency landing VII. Meteorology It ́s raining, it ́s pouring. The old man is snoring... ... He bumped his head and went to bed... ... And couldn ́t get up in the morning! Thunder and lightning! Fasten your seatbelt; we are encountering ana rea of turbulence... VIII. Travelling by plane or by car, which is safer? Risk and safety; travelling by plane or by car? Car safety ldquo;I am scared of planes, I am scared of boats too..." IX. Flying healthily Breathing at 10.000 metres I can ́t feel my legs! Jet lag, what is and how to alleviate it I am expecting, can I fly? When I fly I get earache X. Clarifying doubts I have a Young child; will travelling by plane be complicated? Would it be complicated to fly with reduced mobility? Everything you always wanted to know And just before we finish...some advice relating to

The Syntax of Object Marking in Sambaa

The Syntax of Object Marking in Sambaa PDF Author: Kristina Riedel
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789078328964
Category : Bantu languages
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description


A Descriptive Analysis of Adamorobe Sign Language (Ghana)

A Descriptive Analysis of Adamorobe Sign Language (Ghana) PDF Author: Victoria Anna Sophie Nyst
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Akan (African people)
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
Adamorobe, a small Akan village in Ghana, has an unusually high incidence of hereditary deafness. As a result, a sign language came into being, Adamorobe Sign Language (AdaSL), which is unrelated to any other sign language described so far and is assumed to be about 200 years old. The present study describes selected aspects of AdaSL, notably phonology, lexicon, the expression of size and shape and the encoding of motion events. A comparison of these aspects with descriptions of other sign languages reveals interesting cross-linguistic differences in the use of iconicity as well as in the use of space and classifier constructions. Data were collected during three periods of fieldwork of nine months in total. Moreover, this study considers to what extent the social setting may influence the development of structural features in sign languages. This investigation nuances the impact the visual-spatial modality has on sign language structure. The book is of interest to scholars of sign linguistics, African linguistics, as well as contact linguistics and Deaf studies.

Romance Object Clitics

Romance Object Clitics PDF Author: Diego Pescarini
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198864388
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
This book offers an empirical and theoretical exploration of the development of object clitic pronouns in the Romance languages, drawing on data from Latin, medieval vernaculars, modern Romance languages, and lesser-known dialects. Diego Pescarini examines phonological, morphological, and especially syntactic aspects of Romance object clitics, using the findings to reconstruct their evolution from Latin to Romance and to model clitic placement in modern Romance languages. On the theoretical side, the volume engages with previous accounts of clitics, particularly in generative theory. It challenges the received idea that cliticization resulted from a form of syntactic deficiency; instead, it proposes that clitics resulted from the feature endowment of discourse features, which initially caused freezing of certain pronominal forms and then - through reanalysis - their successive incorporation to verbal hosts. This approach leads to a revision of earlier analyses of well-known phenomena such as interpolation, climbing, and enclisis/proclisis alternations, and to new approaches to issues including V2 syntax, scrambling, and stylistic fronting, among many others.

The Expression of Information Structure

The Expression of Information Structure PDF Author: Manfred Krifka
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 311026160X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 476

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Book Description
Information structure deals with the linguistic forms and techniques that support the integration of what is said into the current informational and attentional state of the addressee. This shows in categories like topic-comment structuring, focus to highlight expressions, marking of givenness and of presupposed information, and ways to indicate that the information provided is restricted. The book relates infor-mation structure to theoretical models of grammar, to computation and modelling and brings together what is known about the expression of information structure in human language with regard to its empirical investigation, its psycholinguistic aspects and the acquisition of information structure. Since the need to integrate what is said into the informational and attentional state of the addressee is central to all human communication, it is not surprising that all natural languages have developed devices to express information structural cate-gories. To illustrate this, the book also provides concrete and theory independent descriptions of the information structural encoding strategies of individual languages of different types . The book can be used as a textbook appropriate for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses; it also provides information for linguists that are not specialists in the field.