A Thesaurus of African Languages

A Thesaurus of African Languages
Author: Michael Mann
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 560
Release: 2017-09-18
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1351611593

Originally published in 1987, this thesaurus is concerned with the spoken languages of Africa. Languages are grouped into a relatively large number of sets and subsets within which the relationship of languages to one another is locally apparent and uncontroversial. The volume presents the languages in classified order with notes on each language, their variant names and immediate classification, and reference to the sources consulted. One section offers an exhaustive list of the languages spoken as home languages by local communities in each state, together with details of languages widely used for inter-group communication, given official recognition, or used in education or the media. There are brief phonological analyses of a broad sample of some 20 African languages and a comprehensive bibliography and language index to the whole work

The Languages and Linguistics of Africa

The Languages and Linguistics of Africa
Author: Tom Güldemann
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 1085
Release: 2018-09-10
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3110421755

This innovative handbook takes a fresh look at the currently underestimated linguistic diversity of Africa, the continent with the largest number of languages in the world. It covers the major domains of linguistics, offering both a representative picture of Africa’s linguistic landscape as well as new and at times unconventional perspectives. The focus is not so much on exhaustiveness as on the fruitful relationship between African and general linguistics and the contributions the two domains can make to each other. This volume is thus intended for readers with a specific interest in African languages and also for students and scholars within the greater discipline of linguistics.

Diversity in African languages

Diversity in African languages
Author: Doris L. Payne
Publisher: Language Science Press
Total Pages: 604
Release: 2016-12-31
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3946234704

Diversity in African Languages contains a selection of revised papers from the 46th Annual Conference on African Linguistics, held at the University of Oregon. Most chapters focus on single languages, addressing diverse aspects of their phonology, morphology, semantics, syntax, information structure, or historical development. These chapters represent nine different genera: Mande, Gur, Kwa, Edoid, Bantu, Nilotic, Gumuzic, Cushitic, and Omotic. Other chapters investigate a mix of languages and families, moving from typological issues to sociolinguistic and inter-ethnic factors that affect language and accent switching. Some chapters are primarily descriptive, while others push forward the theoretical understanding of tone, semantic problems, discourse related structures, and other linguistic systems. The papers on Bantu languages reflect something of the internal richness and continued fascination of the family for linguists, as well as maturation of research on the family. The distribution of other papers highlights the need for intensified research into all the language families of Africa, including basic documentation, in order to comprehend linguistic diversities and convergences across the continent. In this regard, the chapter on Daats’íin (Gumuzic) stands out as the first-ever published article on this hitherto unknown and endangered language found in the Ethiopian-Sudanese border lands.

Substrate and Adstrate

Substrate and Adstrate
Author: Micah Corum
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2015-04-24
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1614514623

This volume provides a large-scale, in-depth analysis of locative structures in Nigerian Pidgin and Ghanaian Pidgin English and compares those structures to locatives in their lexifier, substrate, and adstrate languages. The work draws on new research methods for investigating substrate and adstrate influence in semantics and creole genesis.

The Survey of Pidgin and Creole Languages

The Survey of Pidgin and Creole Languages
Author: Susanne Maria Michaelis
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 325
Release: 2013
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 0199691401

The most authoritative guide ever published to the world's pidgin and creole languages. The 3-volume Survey describes their histories and linguistic characteristics. The Atlas of Pidgins and Creoles, published at the same time, shows how 130 linguistic features are distributed among the world's languages.

Beyond Babel

Beyond Babel
Author: Tom Clark
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2022-10-20
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9027256993

The contribution that scholarly organizations make to the study of languages and literatures is a service to the value of systematically learning and using meaning—understanding that meaning operates in systems. Constructively speaking, these organizations support the teaching and research of our world’s experts in grammar, genre, medium, production, reception, exchange, critique, appreciation, and so on. More defensively, they are bulwarks against systems of misinformation, against the empowerment of misrepresentation and distrust between people. The chapters in this volume range from the Old Testament to Facebook and from East Asia to West Africa via Australia, the Americas, and Europe. The scholarly strength forged across that range speaks to similar strengths that so many scholarly organizations devoted to studies in languages and literatures have cultivated and maintained—often in the face of government indifference or hostility towards the Humanities. Beyond Babel makes a powerful case for their potential.

The Oxford Guide to the Atlantic Languages of West Africa

The Oxford Guide to the Atlantic Languages of West Africa
Author: Friederike Lüpke
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 785
Release: 2024-11-07
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0191056154

This volume presents the first book-length overview of the Atlantic languages, a small family of languages spoken mainly on the Atlantic coast of West Africa. Languages in this area have been used in diverse multilingual societies with intense language contact for the whole of their known history, and their genealogical relatedness and the impact of language contact on their lexicon and grammar have been widely debated. The book is divided into four parts. The first provides an introduction to language ecologies in the area and includes two accounts of the genealogical classification of Atlantic languages. Chapters in the second part offer grammatical overviews of individual languages, including the most important non-Atlantic contact languages (Casamance Creole and Mandinka), while the third part explores Atlantic languages from a typological perspective, with chapters that explore formal and semantic aspects of their nominal classification systems, nominalization strategies, their rich system of verbal extensions, and the stem-initial consonant mutation that is attested in a subset of languages. The final part of the book investigates Atlantic languages in their social environments, including the creation of creole identities, secret languages, Ajami writing practices, language acquisition, the spread and use of Fula as a lingua franca, digital language practices, and language ideologies. The volume is an essential tool for linguists interested in the languages of West Africa, language history and classification, patterns of language use in Atlantic societies, and typology and language contact more broadly.

An Introduction to African Languages

An Introduction to African Languages
Author: G. Tucker Childs
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2003-12-19
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027295883

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.