Phylogenetic Classification of North Western Bantu Languages
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Here Referred to As Class 18A (See Hyman 1980:187)
WS1 Remarks on the nasal classes in Mungbam and Naki Mungbam and Naki are two non-Grassfields Bantoid languages spoken along the northwest frontier of the Grassfields area to the north of the Ring languages. Until recently, they were poorly described, but new data reveals them to show significant nasal noun class patterns, some of which do not appear to have been previously noted for Bantoid. The key patterns are: 1. Like many other languages of their region (see Good et al. 2011), they make productive use of a mysterious diminutive plural prefix with a form like mu-, with associated concords in m, here referred to as Class 18a (see Hyman 1980:187). 2. The five dialects of Mungbam show a level of variation in their nasal classes that one might normally expect of distinct languages. a. Two dialects show no evidence for nasals in Class 6. Two other dialects, Munken and Ngun, show a Class 6 prefix on nouns of form a- but nasal concords. In Munken Class 6, this nasal is n, clearly distinct from an m associated with 6a; in Ngun, both 6 and 6a are associated with m concords. The Abar dialect shows a different pattern, with Class 6 nasal concords in m and nasal prefixes on some Class 6 nouns. b. The Abar, Biya, and Ngun dialects show a Class 18a prefix with form mN-, rather than the more regionally common mu-. This reduction is presumably connected to perseveratory nasalization attested throughout the languages of the region with a diachronic pathway along the lines of mu- > mũ- > mN- perhaps providing a partial example for the development of Bantu Class 9/10. -
Verbal Extensions in Bantoid Languages and Their Relation to Bantu
VERBAL EXTENSIONS IN BANTOID LANGUAGES AND THEIR RELATION TO BANTU Roger Blench Paper prepared for circulation at the Conference on: Reconstructing Proto-Bantu Grammar University of Ghent, 19-23rd November, 2018 DRAFT ONLY: NOT TO BE QUOTED WITHOUT PERMISSION Roger Blench McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research University of Cambridge Correspondence to: 8, Guest Road Cambridge CB1 2AL United Kingdom Voice/ Ans (00-44)-(0)1223-560687 Mobile worldwide (00-44)-(0)7847-495590 E-mail [email protected] http://www.rogerblench.info/RBOP.htm Cambridge, 08 November 2018 Verbal extensions in Bantoid languages Roger Blench Draft TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Introduction................................................................................................................................................. 1 2. The genetic classification of Bantoid ......................................................................................................... 2 2.1 Bantoid vs. Bantu.................................................................................................................................... 2 2.2 Bantoid within [East] Benue-Congo ....................................................................................................... 3 2.3 The membership of Bantoid.................................................................................................................... 4 3. Bantoid verbal extensions.......................................................................................................................... -
Western Beboid and African Language Classification
Western Beboid and African language classification Linguistic Society of America Annual Meeting, Chicago, 6 January 2008 Western Beboid and African language classification 2 Western Beboid background Scott Farrar Jeff Good [8] The Niger-Congo language family (Williamson and Blench 2000:12) University of Washington University at Buffalo [email protected] [email protected] 1 Introduction1 [1] Greenberg’s (1966) proposals classifying African languages into four major fam- ilies have become relatively widely accepted. [2] However, the extent to which they should be understood as a genetic classification as opposed to a reference classification remains unclear. [3] . it is sometimes suggested that Niger-Congo is merely a typological and not a genetic unity. This view is not held by any specialists in the phylum. (Williamson and Blench 2000:11) [4] This would definitely seem to overstate the case, most strikingly with respect to the classification of Mande languages (see, e.g., Mukarovsky (1977:4–6)). [5] As more and more descriptive data become available on more and more African languages, there is increasing need for some objective inter-linguistic framework within which these data may be classified and compared. Unfortunately, no such ideal classification has been available for the languages of Africa as a whole, and in recent years descriptive linguists have tended to use Greenberg’s “genetic” classification as a frame of reference within which to locate the languages they are describing. Although most of these linguists have not con- cerned themselves with testing the validity or otherwise of Greenberg’s classification, their unqualified acceptance of it in print has lent a certain “respectability” to his classificational units. -
Linking Bantu to Benue-Congo: a View from the Northern Fringe
Linking Bantu to Benue-Congo: A view from the northern fringe of the Grassfields Berlin, 21–22 February 2010 Figure 1: Lower Fungom (based on Hombert (1980:84), with updates) Linking Bantu to Benue-Congo: LEDE&M ∗ ',281#=>*0216* A view from the northern fringe of the Grassfields 933@C,@8 Jeff Good B1>*0 University at Buffalo '3@30,/7*#03,6 [email protected] B1)-#B3,6 1 Introduction &*,0/G#>177,-* [1] As more and more descriptive data become available on more and more African languages, <(/61>1213)#A,C1@,7 there is increasing need for some objective inter-linguistic framework within which these ',281 data may be classified and compared. Unfortunately, no such ideal classification has been $'()'*+#,'-"./ '(5( '()6,/71 available for the languages of Africa as a whole, and in recent years descriptive linguists 9*)#A7(2@*0#H%1IJ#* '1223)- '()$*) have tended to use Greenberg’s “genetic” classification as a frame of reference within which K1#A7(2@*0#H/3*J +,! to locate the languages they are describing. Although most of these linguists have not con- 43281)#H$16J &-() <%,77#'*$,5 :( 43281) cerned themselves with testing the validity or otherwise of Greenberg’s classification, their 9,)-#H5,$J ./,0 '/(!"H%(AJ 4()- unqualified acceptance of it in print has lent a certain “respectability” to his classificational '*$,5 9,)- units. This acceptance is potentially misleading to non-linguists, especially historians, and 01()'*+#,'-"./ has helped obscure the fact many of these classificational units have never been scientifi- &,$1#H%55J +83, '/(! cally established. (Dalby 1971:17) 2'+)*13#4.+5 4()-#H$57J# [2] . -
Swahili and the Dilemma of Ugandan Language Policy*
ASIAN AND AFRICAN STUDIES, 5, 1996, 2, 158170 SWAHILI AND THE DILEMMA OF UGANDAN LANGUAGE POLICY* Viera PAWLIKOVÁ-VILHANOVÁ Institute of Oriental and African Studies, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Klemensova 19, 813 64 Bratislava, Slovakia The language situation in East Africa is characterized by the widespread use of Swahili. While both in Tanzania and Kenya Swahili has been systematically promoted in all spheres of everyday life, Uganda has lacked a coherent government policy on language development and the position of Swahili in Uganda has always been very ambiguous. The continued vacil- lation over language policy and the Luganda/Swahili opposition threatening to carve the country into two major camps of language choice which is characteristic of the Ugandan lan- guage situation suggests that the language issue is not likely to be solved in the near future. Africa probably has the most complex and varied language situation in the world. It is a well known fact that the national boundaries of African countries drawn arbitrarily by the colonial powers at conferences in Europe during the time of the imperial partition of the African continent, pay little regard to the historical, cultural and linguistic affinity of the Africans. Few African states are known for their linguistic homogeneity.1 Given a very complex language situa- tion in Africa south of the Sahara with African languages co-existing and com- peting with European languages as well as with various lingua francas, Pidgins and Creoles, multilinguism and hence multilingualism is a feature of most Afri- can countries and it seems that it will remain the norm for a long time to come. -
Ekoid: Bantoid Languages of the Nigeria-Cameroun Borderland
EKOID: BANTOID LANGUAGES OF THE NIGERIA-CAMEROUN BORDERLAND Roger Blench DRAFT ONLY NOT TO BE QUOTED WITHOUT PERMISSION Roger Blench Kay Williamson Educational Foundation 8, Guest Road Cambridge CB1 2AL United Kingdom Voice/ Fax. 0044-(0)1223-560687 Mobile worldwide (00-44)-(0)7967-696804 E-mail [email protected] http://www.rogerblench.info/RBOP.htm TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. The Ekoid-Mbe languages: Overview ....................................................................................................... 1 2. Classification................................................................................................................................................ 3 2.1 External.................................................................................................................................................. 3 2.2 Internal................................................................................................................................................... 3 3. Phonology..................................................................................................................................................... 5 4. Morphology.................................................................................................................................................. 6 5. Conclusions .................................................................................................................................................. 7 References....................................................................................................................................................... -
1 Towards the Reconstruction of the Tense-Aspect-Mood
Towards the reconstruction of the tense-aspect-mood (TAM) system in early Bantoid, with particular attention to the category “tense” John R. Watters, SIL International September 2012 Proto-Niger-Congo Congress, Paris 1.0 Definition of the question The general purpose of this study is to contribute to our understanding of the tense-aspect- mood (TAM) categories and systems in proto or early Bantoid. Within that broad purpose, this study will give particular attention to the status of tense in Proto-Bantoid or early Bantoid. All Bantoid languages today systematically mark aspectual categories (e.g. imperfective) and modal categories (e.g. subjunctive). However, only some Bantoid languages mark tense as a grammatical category such as the Grassfields Bantu and Narrow Bantu languages. In other Bantoid languages, tense is absent such as in the Ekoid Bantu languages. This variation in the distribution of tense raises the question whether proto or early Bantoid was a tense-aspect language in which tense was lost in some subgroups over time, or was an aspect-prominent language in which certain subgroups innovated tense. If the latter case holds, I would want to ask additional questions: Where and when did the marking of tense as a verbal category emerge? What would it mean for our understanding of the early years of Bantoid, its subgroupings, and its internal migrations? Did the development of tense originate within one sub-set of languages from which it spread to others, or did various subgroups innovate tense independently of the others? I would also want to compare the distribution of tense in Bantoid languages with the results of lexicostatistical studies. -
Non-Situational Functions of Demonstrative Noun Phrases in Lingala (Bantu)
Pragmatics 22:1.147-166 (2012) International Pragmatics Association NON-SITUATIONAL FUNCTIONS OF DEMONSTRATIVE NOUN PHRASES IN LINGALA (BANTU) Michael Meeuwis and Koen Stroeken Abstract This paper examines the non-situational (i.e., non-exophoric) pragmatic functions of the three adnominal demonstratives, óyo, wâná, and yangó in the Bantu language Lingala. An examination of natural language corpora reveals that, although native-speaker intuitions sanction the use of óyo as an anaphor in demonstrative NPs, this demonstrative is hardly ever used in that role. It also reveals that wâná, which has both situational and discourse-referential capacities, is used more frequently than the exclusively anaphoric demonstrative yangó. It is explained that wâná appears in a wide range of non-coreferential expression types, in coreferential expression types involving low-salience referents, and in coreferential expression types that both involve highly salient referents and include the speaker’s desire to signal a shift in the mental representation of the referent towards a pejorative reading. The use of yangó, on the other hand, is only licensed in cases of coreferentiality involving highly salient referents and implying continuation of the same mental representation of the referent. A specific section is devoted to charting the possible grammaticalization paths followed by the demonstratives. Conclusions are drawn for pragmatic theory formation in terms of the relation between form (yangó vs. wâná) and function (coreferentiality vs. non-coreferentiality). Keywords: Demonstratives; Anaphora; Deixis; Bantu languages; Grammaticalization. 1. Introduction1 Lingala, a Bantu language spoken in Central Africa and classified under Bantu zone C, has three demonstratives, óyo, wâná, and yangó (Meeuwis 2010, in press).2 Like other 1 This article is based on talks delivered at “Bantu 3: Third International Conference on Bantu Languages” (March 2009, Tervuren, Belgium) and the “5th Łódź Symposium: New Developments in Linguistic Pragmatics” (May 2010, Łódź, Poland). -
Bantu Expansion Shows That Habitat Alters the Route and Pace of Human Dispersals
Bantu expansion shows that habitat alters the route and pace of human dispersals Rebecca Grollemunda,1, Simon Branforda, Koen Bostoenb, Andrew Meadea, Chris Vendittia, and Mark Pagela,c,1 aEvolutionary Biology Group, School of Biological Sciences, University of Reading, Reading RG6 6BX, England; bKongoKing Research Group, Department of Languages and Cultures, Ghent University, 9000 Ghent, Belgium; and cThe Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, NM 87501 Edited by Peter S. Bellwood, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia, and accepted by the Editorial Board August 10, 2015 (receivedfor review February 25, 2015) Unlike most other biological species, humans can use cultural inno- at ∼2,500 B.P. affected amongst others the western part of the vations to occupy a range of environments, raising the intriguing Congo Basin, creating patches of more or less open forests and question of whether human migrations move relatively indepen- wooded or grassland savannahs (14, 15). These areas eventually dently of habitat or show preferences for familiar ones. The Bantu merged into a corridor known as the “Sangha River Interval” that expansion that swept out of West Central Africa beginning ∼5,000 y repeatedly facilitated the north–southspreadofcertaintypical ago is one of the most influential cultural events of its kind, even- savannah plant and animal species (17, 20–22). tually spreading over a vast geographical area a new way of life in The Sangha River Interval may also have been a crucial pas- which farming played an increasingly important role. We use a new sageway for the initial north–south migration of Bantu speech dated phylogeny of ∼400 Bantu languages to show that migrating communities across the Equator. -
Metrical Prominence Assymetries in Medumba
METRICAL PROMINENCE ASYMMETRIES IN MEDɄMBA, A GRASSFIELDS BANTU LANGUAGE KATHRYN FRANICH University of Delaware There has been considerable debate as to whether word-level metrical prominence asymmetries are a universal feature of languages. African tone languages have been at the heart of this debate, as many of these languages do not show clear phonetic evidence of lexical stress. This article ex- plores metrical prominence asymmetries in Medʉmba, a Grassfields Bantu language, by examin- ing such asymmetries through the lens of speech timing. Forged within a dynamical model of metrical structure, a metronome-based phrase-repetition task known as speech cycling is used to investigate the relative timing of syllables hypothesized to be metrically prominent and metrically weak. Previous research using the task has shown that metrically prominent syllables are attracted to certain relative positions within a repetition cycle. Results of two experiments show that foot heads in Medʉmba also show this behavior, supporting their status as metrically prominent. These results suggest that true metrical prominence asymmetries exist in a broader range of languages than previously thought, and that relative timing serves as an important unifying property of met- rical structure crosslinguistically.* Keywords: metrical structure, prominence, accent, speech timing, Grassfields Bantu, Medʉmba 1. Introduction. An ongoing debate in phonology concerns whether word-level metrical prominence asymmetries—also sometimes referred to as metrical ‘accent’— are a universal feature of human language. One position, expressed by Goedemans and van der Hulst (2009), holds that all languages likely contain such asymmetries, and sim- ply vary in how they are phonetically marked: while some languages utilize stress or pitch accent to convey metrical prominence, other languages use different sets of cues, or perhaps none at all. -
Classification of the Languages of Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea on the Basis of Lexicostatistics and Mutual Intelligibility
African Study Monographs, 28(4): 181-204, December 2007 181 CLASSIFICATION OF THE LANGUAGES OF CAMEROON AND EQUATORIAL GUINEA ON THE BASIS OF LEXICOSTATISTICS AND MUTUAL INTELLIGIBILITY S. Beban Chumbow University of Yaounde I Gratien G. Atindogbe University of Buea Engelbert Domche University of Dschang Dieudonne Martin Luther Bot University of Douala ABSTRACT This work clusters genetically related speech forms in Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea, and determines to which speech forms within these clusters are sufficiently and mutually intelligible to be grouped together in order to ease harmonization and standardization. The analysis of the linguistic situation in the two countries revealed that while clustering the speech forms on the basis of genetic relations via lexicostatistics has been quite fruitful, clustering on the basis of mutual intelligibility of at least 85% does not seem to significantly reduce the number of speech forms. Intelligibility surveys and testing have not been carried out in many of the clusters. However, it is important to continue the exercise in order to ascertain the exact situation. Key Words: Cameroon; Equatorial Guinea; Classification; Lexicostatistics; Genetic relation; mutual intelligibility. INTRODUCTION This work is carried out within the context of the project on “Harmonization and Standardization of African Languages” initiated by the Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society (CASAS), Cape Town, South Africa. The overall objective of the CASAS research project is “to cluster African speech forms into sets which display an 85% level of intercomprehension” as a first step to the development, based on the economics of scale, of large literate communi- ties. More specifically, CASAS is of the view that given evidence of a high level of mutual intelligibility between several speech forms, it should be possi- ble to harmonize the standardization of those languages, i.e. -
The Membership and Internal Structure of Bantoid and the Border with Bantu
TheThe membershipmembership andand internalinternal structurestructure ofof BantoidBantoid andand thethe borderborder withwith BantuBantu 7-9th April, 2011 Roger Blench Kay Williamson Educational Foundation This PowerPoint can be found on my website http://www.rogerblench.info/Language%20data/Niger- Congo/Bantoid/Bantoid%20page.htm Individual papers covering branches of Bantoid are also posted as well as considerable amounts of raw data Among the prodigious mass of narratives, from which has been formed the general history of Voyages and Travels, and an infinity of others published every day, no mention is made of the languages which are spoken in the different countries, the manners and usages of which are described to us; and if the authors did not from time to time put into the mouths of the inhabitants of those distant regions, some words of which they know the meaning, we should be tempted to believe that only dumb people had travelled among those nations. All will agree at least that whatever relates to the language, its genius, its relation to other known languages, even its mechanism and flow, are not traits which would look misplaced in the historical picture of a nation. L’Abbé Proyart History of Loango.. (1776)I The Bantoid languages are some 150 languages positioned geographically between Nigeria and Cameroun and ‘between’ Benue-Congo and Bantu in terms of their position within Niger- Congo. Often referred to as Bantu, for example in the term ‘Ekoid Bantu’, their classificatory position remains uncertain. Their noun morphology is not that of classic Bantu, although their prefixes are often ascribed its class numbers in a misleading way.