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Petr Zima (ed.) in cooperation with Norbert Cyff er, M. Holubová, Herrmann Jungraithmayr, Rudolf Leger, Henning Schreiber, Anne Storch, and Ulrike Zoch. Th e verb and related areal features in West Africa . Continuity and Discontinuity within and across Sprachbund Frontiers . 2009, 381 pages. Munich: Lincom Europa.

Th e volume consists of twelve papers (including the introduction) authored by the editor and collaborators listed on the title page and by Th omas Bearth and Georg Ziegelmeyer. Th e volume is a thematic follow-up of previous volume, edited by Caron and Zima 2006 , whose aim was to search for areal features in West Africa. Some papers adhere to this theme and others depart from it, without necessarily diminishing the value of the volume. Th e exact scope of the areal features to be studied is not stated explicitly at the beginning of the volume, and the reader learns about them quite late in the volume in separate papers by Schreiber and Ziegelmeyer. Most authors have chosen to talk about what they perceived to be interesting in the languages they study. Nevertheless, there are common themes treated in several papers, viz. polarity, modality, aspect. Since in most cases each paper is a separate study, this review will present them in the order they have been arranged in the volume. Petr Zima’s paper, serving in lieu of introduction, is entitled ‘Areal Features and their Limits: TO BE or NOT TO BE? An exotic question!’ . It focuses on the issue of polarity marking in West African languages. In some languages there are diff erent affi rmative and negative forms of aspect; in others there are diff erent affi rmative and negative forms of existential verbs; and in still others, viz. Songhay and Mande languages, there are diff erent forms of preverbal particles. Th omas Bearth’s study ‘Operator Second and its Variations in Mande Languages’ deals with the forms that in the ‘French tradition of Mande studies are called predicative markers’ and that Bearth calls ‘operator second’. Th ese are the markers that occur after the subject and precede the verb or object-verb sequence. Th ese markers have diff erent affi rmative and negative forms. Bearth does not explicitly state what is the function of these forms, although from the few examples he gives it appears that, at least in some Mande languages, they are aspect and polarity markers. Bearth states that the only other language that he knows to have such markers is Songhay. In Frajzyngier and Shay 2003 it is proposed that the Songhay marker nV actually marks the object role of the NP that precedes the verb. It would have been interesting to see whether the two markers have any functional commonalities. Bearth’s study contains consider- able discussion of typological and theoretical implications of the presence of the ‘operator second markers’. Th e small number of examples accompanying this study (10 altogether) does not permit one to discern the function of the relevant markers in Mande and therefore leaves the reader wanting to see more precise defi nitions of various categories and more substantial argumentation in favor of the postulated hypotheses. In the absence of a proposed function of the ‘operator second’, the hypothesis that this category may ‘materialize under diff erent guises’ (p. 17) is diffi cult to evaluate. Norbert Cyff er has two papers in the volume: ‘Th e Structure of the Kanuri Verb Phrase’ and ‘Non-Verbal Predication in Kanuri: Th e Crux of Negation and Focus’ . Th e two papers take up more than one hundred pages, more than a quarter of the volume. Th ese are descriptive studies, with numerous paradigms and examples, only some of which are provided with interlinear glosses. Th e two studies are an excellent source for information on Kanuri. Th e two studies cover the description of verbal classes, verbal extensions, coding of tense, aspect, and modality, grammati- cal relations and other issues of the syntax of the simple clause. Th e second paper, in addition to its title themes, provides important and interesting sociolinguistic information about Kanuri.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011 DOI 10.1163/187740911X594536

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Th e two studies describe a number of features that are also found in Chadic and Niger-Congo languages spoken in the area. Th is reader was particularly interested by the presence in Kanuri of the verb-internal plural marker a, which since Greenberg 1951 is accepted to be a Proto- Afroasiatic characteristic. Verbal extensions are another feature Kanuri shares with Chadic, Nilo-Saharan, and Niger-Congo languages. Th e presence of affi rmative and negative counterparts of the verb of existence and the equational predicate is another areal characteristic. Th ese are straightforward evidence of language contact in the area. For those who do not have Hutchison 1981 or Cyff er 1998 , the two papers are an excellent source of information on many elements of Kanuri grammar. Th e aim of Herrmann Jungraithmayr’s ‘Th e Verbal System of Ron, Mushere, and Tangale-Th ree Southwestern Chadic Fringe Languages’ is to identify, in the verbal system of the three languages, features that result from contact with Benue-Congo languages. Th is is an ambitious project, mainly due to the fact that there is no commonly accepted reconstruction of the verbal system of Proto-Chadic, a useful, and some would say necessary, prerequisite to assessing whether the presence of a feature is a retention or an innovation. Jungraithmayr fi rst presents sketches of the verbal systems of the three languages. Th e relevant information is presented in the form of para- digms rather than in the form of rules that derive various parts of the paradigm. While for some West Chadic languages the derivation of various forms in the paradigm has not been established, for other languages it has existed for quite some time, e.g. the explanation of two classes of verbs in Bole-Tangale languages in Frajzyngier 1976 . Th e historical discussion in Jungraithmayr’s paper consists of comparison of the aspectual systems of the three languages, reduced to a perfec- tive - imperfective distinction, against a hypothetical system of diff erent stages of the develop- ment of a Chadic perfective-imperfective distinction. Th e presentation of the data suggests that the imperfective is derived from the perfective through the application of Ablaut (also called ‘apophony’) and ‘Abton’, the term not defi ned, but given the examples refers simply to tonal changes. Regarding the direction of derivation and the phenomenon of ‘apophony’, Frajzyngier 1981 has demonstrated that in East Chadic languages, what is taken to be apophony is in fact a product of suffi xation of vocalic morphemes and associated predictable changes, and moreover that both perfective and imperfective are derived forms. Th us, one of the bases of the hypotheti- cal system would need to be changed if a hypothetical system of any shape were to be retained. Jungraithmayr considers the presence of ‘intransitive copy pronouns’ (called ‘possessive subject pronouns’ in Frajzyngier (in press)), logophoric pronouns, and a large number of vowels in some Chadic languages, e.g. Tangale, to be the eff ects of language contact—an entirely possible propo- sition, but one that was not discussed in the body of the paper. Jungraithmayr and Holubová study ‘Ngas (Angas): Th e Verbal System’ presents data from a language that was the subject of Don Burquest’s 1973 dissertation and several other papers by the same author. Th e study consists of two parts: Th e presentation of the data from Ngas and a discussion of those features of the verbal system that are suspected to be products of language contact. Th e data are presented without analysis, so it is not always clear how the actual deriva- tion of various forms proceeded from the implied source to the fi nal product. Th e discussion of aspect contains glossed and translated examples of the use of various tense and aspectual forms. Th ere is no explicit statement as to whether the data and analyses presented diff er from those in Burquest 1973 . With respect to features potentially resulting from contact with non-Chadic languages of the area, Jungraithmayr and Holubová consider the following features from Caron and Zima (2006 ),

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Presence of subject pronouns even if there is a nominal subject (yes in some moods) Use of ‘split predication’ (marking of TAM categories preverbally) (yes) R e fl ection of polarity in TAM markers (no) Existence of special marker for negative non-indicative modality (yes) Is focus marking expressed by syntactic alternation of TAM verbal forms? (no) Are there non-verbal predicators (existentials, stabilizers) (yes)

Jungraithmayr and Holubová’s paper is a useful source of well presented data on Angas. Rudolf Leger’s short paper (192-203) ‘Verbal Classes in Southern Bole-Tangale Languages’ has a purely descriptive aim. It establishes two verbal classes on the basis of the tonal behavior in per- fective singular. Th e two classes are associated with semantic/syntactic properties of verbs includ- ing ‘middle’, ‘transitive’ and ‘intransitive’. Th e criteria for semantic categories are not stated. Henning Schreiber’s study ‘Areal Features and Language Contact: the Volta Basin as a Linguistic Convergence Area?’ deals with the potential contact between Mande and Gur (Voltaic) languages. Th e focus is on the verbal system and verbal phrases, using the list of features as presented in Caron and Zima 2006 , including the questions of whether transitivity is marked on the verbal stem or on TAM morphemes. Th is is a carefully written, and well-documented study, whose interest and conclusion hinges on the validity and importance of the selected features. Anne Storch’s paper ‘How to Keep Languages Apart: Chadic and Jukunoid in Contact’ is based on comparison of one Jukunoid language, Hone, and one Chadic language Goemai, but with considerable space devoted as well to Mbembe, a Jukunoid language. Th e data on Hone are from author’s own fi eldwork, the data on Goemai come from B. Hellwig (in press), and the data on Mbembe were provided by Doris Richter gen. Kemmermann. In addition to the examining the distribution of the features from Caron et al., Storch provides comments on historical and cul- tural facts involving the contact between Jukunoid and Chadic languages. Th e contacts between the two selected languages were extensive. Georg Ziegelmeyer’s study ‘Areal Features in Northern Nigeria - Towards a Linguistic Area’ takes the features from Caron and Zima 2006 . and examines their presence in 30 languages and variet- ies (two varieties of Fula, two varieties of Bade) representing Nilo-Saharan, Chadic, and West Atlantic families. A number of these features are indeed found in many languages. Th is, com- bined with a considerable number of lexical borrowings across languages, permits the author to postulate the existence of the Northern Nigerian linguistic area. Petr Zima’s ‘Th e Mutual Interplay of the Hausa Verbal Categories Expressed in the SP + VC Complexes’ intends to situate Hausa with respect to the features listed in Zima et al. SP refers to subject pronoun and VC refers to verbal complex. Th e study provides an overview of how the selected features are refl ected in Hausa. Th e interest of this paper lies in the inclusion of non- Kano Hausa forms and the consideration of the implication of these forms for historical explana- tion. Zima divides the aspectual system on the criteria of which modalities are employed in which aspect. He postulates three types: aspects used in indicative modality; aspects used in deontic modalities; and aspects that are transitional between the two. Reading of Zima’s paper was a bit more diffi cult than others as the glosses are not aligned with the original line of examples.

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Th e last paper in the volume is Ulrike Zoch’s ‘Hausa in Kumasi – an Overview’ . Th e fi rst part of the paper gives a brief history of Hausa in Ghana, rightly pointing to the very diff erent origins of Hausa in the south (in this respect she follows Kropp-Dakubu) and Hausa in the north. Hausa in Kumasi diff ers from Standard Hausa (Zoch’s term) in a number of features. In phonol- ogy, these are the loss of glottalized consonants, labiodental instead of bilabial fricative, and reduction of the phonemic contrast between the rolled and fl apped r to a single phoneme, the tap r . In morphology, Kumasi Hausa has retained gender distinction only for animate nouns; all other singular nouns are masculine. Zoch concludes her paper by a comparison of Hausa as spoken in Kumasi with that of Maiduguri (based on Broß 2002 , 2008 ) and Jos (based on Pawlak 2002 ). Th is volume, although not containing new data (with the exception of Zoch’s study), is a useful reminder of how widespread are certain morphological and syntactic characteristics across West, and to a lesser degree Central, Africa.

Zygmunt Frajzyngier University of Colorado, Boulder

References

Broß , Michael . 2002 . Gud ivininku- Hausa in Maiduguri . In Schumann , Th eda , Mechthild Reh , Roland Kießling , and Ludwig Gerhard (eds). Aktuelle Forschungen zu Afrikanischen Sprachen : Köln : Köppe . Broß , Michael . 2008 . L2 speakers, koineization and the spread of language norms: Hausa in Maiduguri, Nigeria . In Miehe , Gudrun , Jonathan Owens , and Manfred von Roncador (eds). Language in African urban contexts: A contribution to the study of indirect globalisation . Berlin : Deutsche Nationalbibliothek . Burquest , Donald . 1973 . A grammar of Angas . Ph.D. Dissertation, UCLA . Caron , Bernard and Petr Zima (eds). 2006 . Sprachbund in the West African Sahel . Paris/Louvain : Peeters . C y ff er , Norbert . 1998 . A sketch of Kanuri . Köln : Rüdiger Köppe . Frajzyngier , Zygmunt . 1976 . Rule inversion in Chadic: An explanation . Studies in African Linguistics 7.2 : 195 - 210 . Frajzyngier , Zygmunt . 1981 . Some rules concerning vowels in Chadic . Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 44.2 : 334 - 348 . Frajzyngier, Zygmunt. (in press). Possessive subject pronouns in Wandala: Point of view of the subject. In Storch, Anne, Gratien G. Atindogbé, and Roger M. Blench (eds.). Copy pronouns. Selected case studies on an African typological feature . Cologne: Koeppe. Frajzyngier , Zygmunt , and Erin Shay . 2003 . Explaining language structure through systems interaction . Amsterdam/Philadelphia : Benjamins . Greenberg , Joseph . 1951 . Internal a-plurals in Afroasiatic (HamitoSemitic) . In Afrikanistische Studien , ed. by Johannes Lukas , 198 - 204 . Berlin : Akademie Verlag . Hellwig, B. (in p re ss). R eference grammar of Goemai . Berlin: Mouton de Gru yter. Hutchison , John . 1981 . Th e Kanuri language. A reference grammar . Madison : University of Wisconsin . Pawlak , Nina . 2002 . Hausa outside of mother area: Plateau variety . Warsaw : Academic Publishing House .

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