The Languages of West Africa

The Languages of West Africa
Author: Diedrich Westermann
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 309
Release: 2017-09-22
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1351600508

This volume, originally published in 1970, presents a survey of the languages spoken in an area extending from the Atlantic coast at the Sengal River eastward to the Lake Chad region. The area covered by this volume is mainly a goegraphical one, so it follows that not all the languages included are related to one another, though a certain degree of homogeneity appears.

Historical Change in Serial Verb Constructions

Historical Change in Serial Verb Constructions
Author: Carol Lord
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 283
Release: 1993-08-06
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027276854

This work examines both historical and comparative evidence in documenting the sweep of diachronic change in the context of serial verb constructions. Using a wide range of data from languages of West Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, it demonstrates how shifts in meaning and usage result in syntactic, morphological and lexical change. The process by which verbs lose lexical semantic content and develop case-marking functions is described; it is argued that the change is directional, from verb to preposition (or postposition) to affix, along a grammaticalization continuum. This same grammaticalization process is shown to result in the development of complementizers, adverbial subordinators, conjunctions, adverbs and auxiliaries from verbs. Strong parallels across languages are found in the meanings of the verbs that become “defective” and in the functions they come to mark. The changes are documented in detail, with examples from a number of languages illustrating the effect of the changes on typology and word order, implications for the encoding of definiteness and aspect, and the relevance of notions such as discourse topic, foreground and transitivity. With respect to theoretical assumptions and terminology, the author has taken a relatively nonpartisan approach, and the discussion is accessible to students of language as well as of interest to theoreticians.

On Language

On Language
Author: Joseph Harold Greenberg
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 782
Release: 1990
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780804716130

This is a collection of 37 of the most important, enduring, and influential essays by one of the great linguists of this century, gathered from a wide range of journals and books spanning four decades.

Leçons d'Afrique

Leçons d'Afrique
Author: Robert Nicolaï
Publisher: Peeters Leuven
Total Pages: 592
Release: 2001
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN:

Que ce soit par son œuvre de comparatiste sur la généalogie du groupe des langues voltaïques ou par son approche du français d'Afrique et des créoles, Gabriel Manessy aura marqué la réflexion de son temps. Une certaine `posture' scientifique exigeante, l'analyse de concepts tels ceux de véhicularisation, de vernacularisation, d'appropriation ainsi que l'élaboration de notions comme celle de `sémantaxe' tracent ce cheminement. Ces Leçons d'Afrique qui lui sont dédiées, soulignent certaines des perspectives dans lesquelles son questionnement s'insère.

A Comparative Phonology of Gbe

A Comparative Phonology of Gbe
Author: Hounkpati B.C. Capo
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2010-10-13
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3110870533

A Comparative Phonology of Gbe (Publications in African Languages and Linguistics, No 14).

Arabic in the City

Arabic in the City
Author: Catherine Miller
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2007-12-14
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 113597876X

This book is an edited collection that examines how urbanization is causing language change in major Arab cities.

The Origins of Language Revisited

The Origins of Language Revisited
Author: Nobuo Masataka
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 348
Release: 2020-06-11
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9811542503

This book summarizes the latest research on the origins of language, with a focus on the process of evolution and differentiation of language. It provides an update on the earlier successful book, “The Origins of Language” edited by Nobuo Masataka and published in 2008, with new content on emerging topics. Drawing on the empirical evidence in each respective chapter, the editor presents a coherent account of how language evolved, how music differentiated from language, and how humans finally became neurodivergent as a species. Chapters on nonhuman primate communication reveal that the evolution of language required the neural rewiring of circuits that controlled vocalization. Language contributed not only to the differentiation of our conceptual ability but also to the differentiation of psychic functions of concepts, emotion, and behavior. It is noteworthy that a rudimentary form of syntax (regularity of call sequences) has emerged in nonhuman primates. The following chapters explain how music differentiated from language, whereas the pre-linguistic system, or the “prosodic protolanguage,” in nonhuman primates provided a precursor for both language and music. Readers will gain a new understanding of music as a rudimentary form of language that has been discarded in the course of evolution and its role in restoring the primordial synthesis in the human psyche. The discussion leads to an inspiring insight into autism and neurodiversity in humans. This thought-provoking and carefully presented book will appeal to a wide range of readers in linguistics, psychology, phonology, biology, anthropology and music.

A Grammar of Diola-Fogny

A Grammar of Diola-Fogny
Author: J. David Sapir
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 150
Release: 2011-08-11
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 9780521175043

Dr Sapir's 1969 monograph presents a descriptive study of the most important dialect of the West African Diola people.

L'Expansion bantoue

L'Expansion bantoue
Author: Larry M. Hyman
Publisher: Peeters Publishers
Total Pages: 906
Release: 1980
Genre: Bantu languages
ISBN: 9782852970694