Author: G. Tucker Childs
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027295883
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 287
Book Description
This book introduces beginning students and non-specialists to the diversity and richness of African languages. In addition to providing a solid background to the study of African languages, the book presents linguistic phenomena not found in European languages. A goal of this book is to stimulate interest in African languages and address the question: What makes African languages so fascinating? The orientation adopted throughout the book is a descriptive one, which seeks to characterize African languages in a relatively succinct and neutral manner, and to make the facts accessible to a wide variety of readers. The author’s lengthy acquaintance with the continent and field experiences in western, eastern, and southern Africa allow for both a broad perspective and considerable depth in selected areas. The original examples are often the author’s own but also come from other sources and languages not often referenced in the literature. This text also includes a set of sound files illustrating the phenomena under discussion, be they the clicks of Khoisan, talking drums, or the ideophones (words like English lickety-split) found almost everywhere, which will make this book a valuable resource for teacher and student alike.
An Introduction to African Languages
Proceedings of the Twenty-third Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, February 14-17, 1997: Special Session on Syntax and Semantics in Africa
Author: Ashlee C. Bailey
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 139
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 139
Book Description
Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society
Author: Berkeley Linguistics Society
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Language and languages
Languages : en
Pages : 158
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Language and languages
Languages : en
Pages : 158
Book Description
The Syntax of Specifiers and Heads
Author: Hilda J Koopman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134718233
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 330
Book Description
Specifiers and Heads covers such topics as: * interpretation and distribution of pronouns * ECP effects * specifiers and phrase structure * the role and functioning of head movement * the architecture of grammar Each chapter draws syntactic arguments from phenomena in a broad range of languages and brings these to bear on the structure of syntactic theory and the understanding of crosslinguistic variation. Among the languages studied are the African languages, Welsh and Irish, Norwegian, French, English and Dutch.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134718233
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 330
Book Description
Specifiers and Heads covers such topics as: * interpretation and distribution of pronouns * ECP effects * specifiers and phrase structure * the role and functioning of head movement * the architecture of grammar Each chapter draws syntactic arguments from phenomena in a broad range of languages and brings these to bear on the structure of syntactic theory and the understanding of crosslinguistic variation. Among the languages studied are the African languages, Welsh and Irish, Norwegian, French, English and Dutch.
A Grammar of Mani
Author: G. Tucker Childs
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 311026501X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 293
Book Description
This book provides a complete grammar of the Mani language spoken in the Samu (alternate French spelling “Samou”) region of Sierra Leone and Guinea. The data come from a short pilot study conducted in 2000, and a larger study taking place over two years 2004-2006. That the Mani language will soon disappear is certain; just as certain is that this grammar will be the only one ever written.
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 311026501X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 293
Book Description
This book provides a complete grammar of the Mani language spoken in the Samu (alternate French spelling “Samou”) region of Sierra Leone and Guinea. The data come from a short pilot study conducted in 2000, and a larger study taking place over two years 2004-2006. That the Mani language will soon disappear is certain; just as certain is that this grammar will be the only one ever written.
The Oxford Handbook of Ethiopian Languages
Author: Ronny Meyer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191044253
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 1564
Book Description
This handbook provides a comprehensive account of the languages spoken in Ethiopia, exploring both their structures and features and their function and use in society. The first part of the volume provides background and general information relating to Ethiopian languages, including their demographic distribution and classification, language policy, scripts and writing, and language endangerment. Subsequent parts are dedicated to the four major language families in Ethiopia - Cushitic, Ethiosemitic, Nilo-Saharan, and Omotic - and contain studies of individual languages, with an initial introductory overview chapter in each part. Both major and less-documented languages are included, ranging from Amharic and Oromo to Zay, Gawwada, and Yemsa. The final part explores languages that are outside of those four families, namely Ethiopian Sign Language, Ethiopian English, and Arabic. With its international team of senior researchers and junior scholars, The Oxford Handbook of Ethiopian Languages will appeal to anyone interested in the languages of the region and in African linguistics more broadly.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191044253
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 1564
Book Description
This handbook provides a comprehensive account of the languages spoken in Ethiopia, exploring both their structures and features and their function and use in society. The first part of the volume provides background and general information relating to Ethiopian languages, including their demographic distribution and classification, language policy, scripts and writing, and language endangerment. Subsequent parts are dedicated to the four major language families in Ethiopia - Cushitic, Ethiosemitic, Nilo-Saharan, and Omotic - and contain studies of individual languages, with an initial introductory overview chapter in each part. Both major and less-documented languages are included, ranging from Amharic and Oromo to Zay, Gawwada, and Yemsa. The final part explores languages that are outside of those four families, namely Ethiopian Sign Language, Ethiopian English, and Arabic. With its international team of senior researchers and junior scholars, The Oxford Handbook of Ethiopian Languages will appeal to anyone interested in the languages of the region and in African linguistics more broadly.
Focus and Topic in African Languages
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Africa
Languages : en
Pages : 174
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Africa
Languages : en
Pages : 174
Book Description
Guinea Languages of the Atlantic Group
Author: William A. A. Wilson
Publisher: Peter Lang Gmbh, Internationaler Verlag Der Wissenschaften
ISBN:
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 276
Book Description
Atlantic is one of the most diversified and most problematic Niger-Congo families as far as evidence for a monogenetic origin is concerned. Moreover, the group remains poorly known. Besides well-studied languages such as Fula, Wolof and Serer some sixty lesser known languages of Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia are currently believed to belong to Atlantic. Many of these languages are not yet documented, and some never will - they disappeared some decades ago or are just on the verge of extinction. This book provides an overview of Atlantic south of the Wolof, Serer and Fula-speaking regions. The sections on the various Atlantic languages present information on phonology, morphology and basic syntacticpatterns by using General Linguistic Theory. Lexical material is presented in comparative wordlists. All data stem from the author's own fieldwork in the 1950s and 1960s in Guinea Bissau and Guinea.
Publisher: Peter Lang Gmbh, Internationaler Verlag Der Wissenschaften
ISBN:
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 276
Book Description
Atlantic is one of the most diversified and most problematic Niger-Congo families as far as evidence for a monogenetic origin is concerned. Moreover, the group remains poorly known. Besides well-studied languages such as Fula, Wolof and Serer some sixty lesser known languages of Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia are currently believed to belong to Atlantic. Many of these languages are not yet documented, and some never will - they disappeared some decades ago or are just on the verge of extinction. This book provides an overview of Atlantic south of the Wolof, Serer and Fula-speaking regions. The sections on the various Atlantic languages present information on phonology, morphology and basic syntacticpatterns by using General Linguistic Theory. Lexical material is presented in comparative wordlists. All data stem from the author's own fieldwork in the 1950s and 1960s in Guinea Bissau and Guinea.
Semantic Mechanisms of Humor
Author: V. Raskin
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9789027718211
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 316
Book Description
GOAL This is the funniest book I have ever written - and the ambiguity here is deliberate. Much of this book is about deliberate ambiguity, described as unambiguously as possible, so the previous sentence is probably the fIrst, last, and only deliberately ambiguous sentence in the book. Deliberate ambiguity will be shown to underlie much, if not all, of verbal humor. Some of its forms are simple enough to be perceived as deliberately ambiguous on the surface; in others, the ambiguity results from a deep semantic analysis. Deep semantic analysis is the core of this approach to humor. The book is the fIrst ever application of modem linguistic theory to the study of humor and it puts forward a formal semantic theory of verbal humor. The goal of the theory is to formulate the necessary and sufficient conditions, in purely semantic terms, for a text to be funny. In other words, if a formal semantic analysis of a text yields a certain set of semantic proptrties which the text possesses, then the text is recognized as a joke. As any modem linguistic theory, this semantic theory of humor attempts to match a natural intuitive ability which the native speaker has, in this particular case, the ability to perceive a text as funny, i. e. , to distinguish a joke from a non-joke.
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9789027718211
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 316
Book Description
GOAL This is the funniest book I have ever written - and the ambiguity here is deliberate. Much of this book is about deliberate ambiguity, described as unambiguously as possible, so the previous sentence is probably the fIrst, last, and only deliberately ambiguous sentence in the book. Deliberate ambiguity will be shown to underlie much, if not all, of verbal humor. Some of its forms are simple enough to be perceived as deliberately ambiguous on the surface; in others, the ambiguity results from a deep semantic analysis. Deep semantic analysis is the core of this approach to humor. The book is the fIrst ever application of modem linguistic theory to the study of humor and it puts forward a formal semantic theory of verbal humor. The goal of the theory is to formulate the necessary and sufficient conditions, in purely semantic terms, for a text to be funny. In other words, if a formal semantic analysis of a text yields a certain set of semantic proptrties which the text possesses, then the text is recognized as a joke. As any modem linguistic theory, this semantic theory of humor attempts to match a natural intuitive ability which the native speaker has, in this particular case, the ability to perceive a text as funny, i. e. , to distinguish a joke from a non-joke.
Proceedings of the Twenty-third Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, February 14-17, 1997
Author: Matthew L. Juge
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 503
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 503
Book Description