Tutrugbu (Nyangbo) Language and Culture

Tutrugbu (Nyangbo) Language and Culture PDF Author: James Essegbey
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004396993
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
This is the first comprehensive description of Tutrugbu(Nyangbo-nyb), a Ghana Togo Mountain(gtm) language of the Kwa family. It is based on a documentary corpus of different genre of linguistic and cultural practices gathered during periods of immersion fieldwork. Tutrugbu speakers are almost all bilingual in Ewe, another Kwa language. The book presents innovative analyses of phenomena like Advanced Tongue Root and labial vowel harmony, noun classes, topological relational verbs, the two classes of adpositions, obligatory complement verbs, multi-verbs in a single clause, and information structure. This grammar is unparalleled in including a characterization of culturally defined activity types and their associated speech formulae and routine strategies. It should appeal to linguists interested in African languages, language documentation and typology.

Tutrugbu (Nyangbo) Language and Culture

Tutrugbu (Nyangbo) Language and Culture PDF Author: James Essegbey
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004396993
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
This is the first comprehensive description of Tutrugbu(Nyangbo-nyb), a Ghana Togo Mountain(gtm) language of the Kwa family. It is based on a documentary corpus of different genre of linguistic and cultural practices gathered during periods of immersion fieldwork. Tutrugbu speakers are almost all bilingual in Ewe, another Kwa language. The book presents innovative analyses of phenomena like Advanced Tongue Root and labial vowel harmony, noun classes, topological relational verbs, the two classes of adpositions, obligatory complement verbs, multi-verbs in a single clause, and information structure. This grammar is unparalleled in including a characterization of culturally defined activity types and their associated speech formulae and routine strategies. It should appeal to linguists interested in African languages, language documentation and typology.

The polyfunctionality of 'still' expressions

The polyfunctionality of 'still' expressions PDF Author: Bastian Persohn
Publisher: Language Science Press
ISBN: 3961104751
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 783

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Book Description
Expressions from the semasiological domain of phasal polarity (ʻstillʼ, ʻalreadyʼ, etc.) tend to be highly polyfunctional, with their various uses often extending into a wide range of other linguistic domains, both time-related and non-temporal. Yet these patterns have hitherto been investigated mostly for individual languages or smaller groups. This volume presents the first ever larger-scale survey of the numerous functions of expressions whose meanings include the notion of ʻstill’, making use of a global sample of 76 varieties from 45 distinct phyla. It is aimed at semanticists, typologists and descriptive grammarians alike.

Predication in African Languages

Predication in African Languages PDF Author: James Essegbey
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027247013
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
This book discusses patterns of predication and their grammatical and semantic implications in a variety of African languages. It covers several prominent topics about predication in the languages, including locative predication, expressions of tense, aspect, and mood in relation to verbal complexes and verb serialisation, verb semantics, and nominalization of predicates. The chapters take inspiration from Felix Ameka’s approach to the study of language according to which the main task of a linguist is to collaborate with language users to understand communicative practices in different contexts and to uncover how these practices impact grammatical and semantic aspects of the language. Accordingly, the descriptions and analyses in this book serve to understand language variation in different ecologies, rather than to impose pre-established descriptive frames on less described languages. Together, the chapters in the book represent a bird’s eye view of predication strategies in various African languages and can therefore serve as readings for both introductory and advanced level courses on predication from a typological or comparative perspective.

The Oxford Handbook of Vowel Harmony

The Oxford Handbook of Vowel Harmony PDF Author: Nancy A. Ritter
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192561472
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 1153

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Book Description
This handbook provides a detailed account of the phenomenon of vowel harmony, a pattern according to which all vowels within a word must agree for some phonological property or properties. Vowel harmony has been central in the development of phonological theories thanks to its cluster of remarkable properties, notably its typically 'unbounded' character and its non-locality, and because it forms part of the phonology of most world languages. The five parts of this volume cover all aspects of vowel harmony from a range of theoretical and methodological perspectives. Part I outlines the types of vowel harmony and some unusual cases, before Part II explores structural issues such as vowel inventories, the interaction of vowel harmony and morphological structure, and locality. The chapters in Part III provide an overview of the various theoretical accounts of the phenomenon, as well as bringing in insights from language acquisition and psycholinguistics, while Part IV focuses on the historical life cycle of vowel harmony, looking at topics such as phonetic factors and the effect of language contact. The final part contains 31 chapters that present data and analysis of vowel harmony across all major language families as well as several isolates, constituting the broadest coverage of the phenomenon to date.

A Bibliography of South African Languages, 2008-2017

A Bibliography of South African Languages, 2008-2017 PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004376623
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 174

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Book Description
This concise bibliography on South-African Languages and Linguistics was compiled on the occasion of the 20th International Congress of Linguists in Cape Town, South Africa, July 2018. The selection of titles is drawn from the Linguistic Bibliography and gives an overview of scholarship on South African language studies over the past 10 years. The introduction written by Menán du Plessis (Stellenbosch University) discusses the most recent developments in the field. The Linguistic Bibliography is compiled under the editorial management of Eline van der Veken, René Genis and Anne Aarssen in Leiden, The Netherlands. Linguistic Bibliography Online is the most comprehensive bibliography for scholarship on languages and theoretical linguistics available. Updated monthly with a total of more than 20,000 records annually, it enables users to trace recent publications and provides overviews of older material. For more information on Linguistic Bibliography and Linguistic Bibliography Online, please visit brill.com/lbo and linguisticbibliography.com. The e-book version of this bibliography is available in Open Access.

Language in Contemporary African Cultures and Societies

Language in Contemporary African Cultures and Societies PDF Author: Leonard Muaka
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498572286
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
Language in Contemporary African Cultures and Societies examines language in contemporary Africa by positioning language at the center of interrelationships between individuals, society, and culture. Because of how language permeates every aspect of human existence within each society, this book has assembled contributions by researchers and scholars who focus on different topics within African languages and cultures. By presenting African languages as resources and subject and subject of the study, this book discusses Africa’s multilingualism, language policy, preservation, and their uses in development, security, liberation, and identity formation in the diaspora. Based on empirical research and analysis of texts, this book takes a closer look at the continent and the diaspora by situating African languages, cultures, and literatures at the center, and shows how African languages are used in the liberation, transfer of knowledge, and promotion of literacy among Africans globally. It is a book that seeks to bridge the gap between the continent and the diaspora. All contributors are experienced scholars of language, literature, education and linguistics. The chapters provide a major means for examining the interplay of language, literature, and education.

Language Documentation and Endangerment in Africa

Language Documentation and Endangerment in Africa PDF Author: James Essegbey
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027268150
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
This volume brings together a number of important perspectives on language documentation and endangerment in Africa from an international cohort of scholars with vast experience in the field. Offering insights from rural and urban settings throughout the continent, these essays consider topics that range from the development of a writing system to ideologies of language endangerment, from working with displaced communities to the role of colonial languages in reshaping African repertoires, and from the insights of archeology to the challenges of language documentation as a doctoral project. The authors are concerned with both theoretical and practical aspects of language documentation as they address the ways in which the African context both differs from and resembles contexts of endangerment elsewhere in the world. This volume will be useful to fieldworkers and documentalists who work in Africa and beyond.

The Handbook of Austroasiatic Languages (2 vols)

The Handbook of Austroasiatic Languages (2 vols) PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004283579
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 1358

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Book Description
The Handbook of the Austroasiatic Languages is the first comprehensive reference work on this important language family of South and Southeast Asia. Austroasiatic languages are spoken by more than 100 million people, from central India to Vietnam, from Malaysia to Southern China, including national language Cambodian and Vietnamese, and more than 130 minority communities, large and small. The handbook comprises two parts, Overviews and Grammar Sketches: Part 1) The overview chapters cover typology, classification, historical reconstruction, plus a special overview of the Munda languages. Part 2) Some 27 scholars present grammar sketches of 21 languages, representing 12 of the 13 branches. The sketches are carefully prepared according to the editors’ unifying typological approach, ensuring analytical and notational comparability throughout.

Corpus Linguistics and African Englishes

Corpus Linguistics and African Englishes PDF Author: Alexandra U. Esimaje
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027262934
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 415

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Book Description
Corpus linguistics has become one of the most widely used methodologies across the different linguistic subdisciplines; especially the study of world-wide varieties of English uses corpus-based investigations as one of the chief methodologies. This volume comprises descriptions of the many new corpus initiatives both within and outside Africa that aim to compile various corpora of African Englishes. Moreover, it contains cutting-edge corpus-based research on African Englishes and the use of corpora in pedagogic contexts within African institutions. This volume thus serves both as a practical introduction to corpus compilation (Part I of the book), corpus-based research (Part II) and the application of corpora in language teaching (Part III), and is intended both for those researchers not yet familiar with corpus linguistics and as a reference work for all international researchers investigating the linguistic properties of African Englishes.

A Grammar of Pévé

A Grammar of Pévé PDF Author: Erin Shay
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789004409156
Category : Cameroon
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A Grammar of Pévé describes and examines a wide range of linguistic forms and functions found in Pévé, a Chadic language spoken in parts of the Republic of Chad and the Republic of Cameroon.