The Acquisition of Swahili

The Acquisition of Swahili PDF Author: Kamil Ud Deen
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027253002
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
This monograph is the first study of the acquisition of Swahili as a first language. It focuses on the acquisition of inflectional affixes, with a particular emphasis on subject agreement and tense. Other inflectional affixes are also investigated, including object agreement and mood. The study surveys the adult dialect in question, Nairobi Swahili, discussing social, phonological, morphological and syntactic properties. Data, analyses and copious examples are presented of the naturalistic speech of four Swahili speaking children. The data are tested against six influential theories of child language, and the results show that processing and metrical theories of telegraphic speech fail to account for the observed patterns, while grammatical theories of child language fair significantly better. The data and analyses presented in this book are indispensable for linguists and psychologists interested in the acquisition of inflectional material and other cross-linguistic properties of child language.

The Acquisition of Swahili

The Acquisition of Swahili PDF Author: Kamil Ud Deen
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9789027253002
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Get Book Here

Book Description
This monograph is the first study of the acquisition of Swahili as a first language. It focuses on the acquisition of inflectional affixes, with a particular emphasis on subject agreement and tense. Other inflectional affixes are also investigated, including object agreement and mood. The study surveys the adult dialect in question, Nairobi Swahili, discussing social, phonological, morphological and syntactic properties. Data, analyses and copious examples are presented of the naturalistic speech of four Swahili speaking children. The data are tested against six influential theories of child language, and the results show that processing and metrical theories of telegraphic speech fail to account for the observed patterns, while grammatical theories of child language fair significantly better. The data and analyses presented in this book are indispensable for linguists and psychologists interested in the acquisition of inflectional material and other cross-linguistic properties of child language.

African linguistics on the prairie

African linguistics on the prairie PDF Author: Jason Kandybowicz
Publisher: Language Science Press
ISBN: 3961100365
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 460

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Book Description
African Linguistics on the Prairie features select revised peer-reviewed papers from the 45th Annual Conference on African Linguistics, held at the University of Kansas. The articles in this volume reflect the enormous diversity of African languages, as they focus on languages from all of the major African language phyla. The articles here also reflect the many different research perspectives that frame the work of linguists in the Association for Contemporary African Linguistics. The diversity of views presented in this volume are thus indicative of the vitality of current African linguistics research. The work presented in this volume represents both descriptive and theoretical methodologies and covers fields ranging from phonetics, phonology, morphology, typology, syntax, and semantics to sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, language acquisition, computational linguistics and beyond. This broad scope and the quality of the articles contained within holds out the promise of continued advancement in linguistic research on African languages.

The Oxford Handbook of Developmental Linguistics

The Oxford Handbook of Developmental Linguistics PDF Author: Jeffrey Lidz
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191644935
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 1041

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Book Description
In this handbook, renowned scholars from a range of backgrounds provide a state of the art review of key developmental findings in language acquisition. The book places language acquisition phenomena in a richly linguistic and comparative context, highlighting the link between linguistic theory, language development, and theories of learning. The book is divided into six parts. Parts I and II examine the acquisition of phonology and morphology respectively, with chapters covering topics such as phonotactics and syllable structure, prosodic phenomena, compound word formation, and processing continuous speech. Part III moves on to the acquisition of syntax, including argument structure, questions, mood alternations, and possessives. In Part IV, chapters consider semantic aspects of language acquisition, including the expression of genericity, quantification, and scalar implicature. Finally, Parts V and VI look at theories of learning and aspects of atypical language development respectively.

Pidgins and Creoles beyond Africa-Europe Encounters

Pidgins and Creoles beyond Africa-Europe Encounters PDF Author: Isabelle Buchstaller
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027270767
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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Book Description
Most of what we know about pidgin and creole languages is the result of research into contact languages that developed as a consequence of European expansion into Africa and the Caribbean. The narrow focus on European lexifier and West African substrate languages has resulted in insufficient investigation of other contact varieties. Even more perniciously, lesser known and often under-described contact languages have not been taken into consideration when formulating supposedly general tendencies about the linguistic properties of contact languages. This volume aims to give a platform to research on the history, genesis, and typology of a number of non-European language-based contact languages. A more encompassing and diverse data-base will contribute to more accurate and comprehensive inventories of the typological features of contact languages.

Clause Chaining in the Languages of the World

Clause Chaining in the Languages of the World PDF Author: Hannah S. Sarvasy
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192643118
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 881

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Book Description
The languages of the world make use of a variety of techniques for describing events and putting sentences together. This volume takes a typological approach to clause chaining, a fascinating feature of the grammar of hundreds of languages outside Europe, especially in the Asia-Pacific region, East Africa, across Central Asia, and the Americas. Clause chains consist of several dependent clauses and one main clause, and are used to organize discourse and to foreground or background events and participants; they often go together with switch-reference marking, an indication of whether upcoming subjects will be co-referential with preceding subjects or not. The introductory chapter features a discussion of the typological properties of clause chaining, with a brief overview of previous approaches to and investigations of clause chains followed by an overview of their recurrent grammatical features; it ends with an appendix featuring notes for fieldworkers. The first part of the book explores general issues in clause chaining, including prosody, acquisition, and language contact and history; later parts then examine clause chaining and related phenomena in a wide range of languages from around the world.

Grammatical Profiles

Grammatical Profiles PDF Author: Martin J. Ball
Publisher: Multilingual Matters
ISBN: 1788924401
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
This book brings together 12 previously unpublished language profiles based on the original Language Assessment, Remediation and Screening Procedure (LARSP). The languages featured are: Bangla, Croatian, Colombian Spanish, Inuktitut, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Swahili, Tamil and Turkish. Some of these languages are included as they are likely to be encountered as home languages of clients by speech-language therapists and pathologists working in the UK, the US, Australia and elsewhere. Others are included because they are languages found where speech-language pathology services are provided, but where no grammatical profile already exists. The collection will be an invaluable resource book for speech-language pathologists who wish to analyse and assess the grammatical abilities of their clients who speak one of these languages. This new collection complements previous books in this series on the same theme and together they cover 34 languages of the world.

Creolization and Pidginization in Contexts of Postcolonial Diversity

Creolization and Pidginization in Contexts of Postcolonial Diversity PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004363394
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
This book deals with creolization and pidginization of language, culture and identity and makes use of interdisciplinary approaches developed in the study of the latter. Creolization and pidginization are conceptualized and investigated as specific social processes in the course of which new common languages, socio-cultural practices and identifications are developed under distinct social and political conditions and in different historical and local contexts of diversity. The contributions show that creolization and pidginization are important strategies to deal with identity and difference in a world in which diversity is closely linked with inequalities that relate to specific group memberships, colonial legacies and social norms and values.

Language, Globalization and the Making of a Tanzanian Beauty Queen

Language, Globalization and the Making of a Tanzanian Beauty Queen PDF Author: Sabrina Billings
Publisher: Multilingual Matters
ISBN: 1783090774
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Book Description
Through micro-analysis of language use, this book chronicles young women's pathways to becoming a Tanzanian beauty queen, offering an original perspective on the intersection of language with globalization, nationalism, and inequality in urban East Africa. This compelling linguistic ethnography considers the real-life effects, both on- and off-stage, of language policy, education, and gender dynamics for the women competing in the pageants. While highlighting many contestants' struggles for escape from poverty and patriarchy, the book also emphasizes their creative strategies – linguistic and otherwise – for bettering their lives and shows how people living in a global economic periphery take part in, and sometimes feel left out of, the wider world.

Making Identity on the Swahili Coast

Making Identity on the Swahili Coast PDF Author: Steven Fabian
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108492045
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 371

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Book Description
A re-examination of the historical development of urban identity and community along the Swahili Coast.

Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century African History

Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century African History PDF Author: Dickson Eyoh
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134565844
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1115

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Book Description
With nearly two hundred and fifty individually signed entries, the Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century African History explores the ways in which the peoples of Africa and their politics, states, societies, economies, environments, cultures and arts were transformed during the course of that Janus-faced century. Overseen by a diverse and distinguished international team of consultant editors, the Encyclopedia provides a thorough examination of the global and local forces that shaped the changes that the continent underwent. Combining essential factual description with evaluation and analysis, the entries tease out patterns from across the continent as a whole, as well as within particular regions and countries: it is the first work of its kind to present such a comprehensive overview of twentieth-century African history. With full indexes and a thematic entry list, together with ample cross-referencing and suggestions for further reading, the Encyclopedia will be welcomed as an essential work of reference by both scholar and student of twentieth-century African history. Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2004