Lexical Evidence for Kordofanian
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A Grammar of Tiefo Gur Language Family
A Grammar of Tiefo Gur Language Family Gnanfongo Dialect Abbie E. Hantgan Dogon and Bangime Linguistics email: [email protected] draft dated January 17, 2014 ii A Grammar of Tiefo I am grateful to Dongui Ouattara and her two sons, Lamine and Jina, for their patience and fortitude. The people of Gnanfongo are former warriors and blacksmiths, and it is because of their courage that their language will not be lost without a fight. iii iv A Grammar of Tiefo Contents Author's Note ................................. ix 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Tiefo, Gur Language Family ......................... 1 1.2 Tiefo Language ................................ 4 1.2.1 Multilingualism ............................ 5 1.2.2 Endangerment ............................ 6 1.2.3 Dialectology ............................. 6 1.3 Environment ................................. 6 1.4 Previous and Contemporary Work ...................... 7 1.4.1 Previous Studies ........................... 7 1.4.2 Fieldwork and Methodology ..................... 7 1.4.3 Acknowledgements .......................... 7 2 Phonology 9 2.1 Phonological Structure ............................ 9 2.1.1 Syllables ............................... 9 2.1.2 Metrical Structure .......................... 10 2.2 Consonant Inventory ............................. 10 2.2.1 Representations of Glides w and y .................. 10 2.2.2 Sibilants ............................... 10 2.2.3 Nasalized Sonorants ......................... 10 2.2.4 Nasals ................................. 10 2.2.5 Voiceless Labials .......................... -
MANDE LANGUAGES INTRODUCTION Mande Languages
Article details Article author(s): Dmitry Idiatov Table of contents: Introduction General Overviews Textbooks Bibliographies Journals and Book Series Conferences Text Collections and Corpora Classifications Historical and Comparative Linguistics Western Mande Central Mande Southwestern Mande and Susu- Yalunka Soninke-Bozo, Samogo, and Bobo Southeastern Mande Eastern Mande Southern Mande Phonetics Phonology Morphosyntax Morphology Syntax Language Contact and Areal Linguistics Writing Systems MANDE LANGUAGES INTRODUCTION Mande languages are spoken across much of inland West Africa up to the northwest of Nigeria as their eastern limit. The center of gravity of the Mande-speaking world is situated in the southwest of Mali and the neighboring regions. There are approximately seventy Mande languages. Mande languages have long been recognized as a coherent group. Thanks to both a sufficient number of clear lexical correspondences and the remarkable uniformity in basic morphosyntax, the attribution of a given language to Mande is usually straightforward. The major subdivision within Mande is between Western Mande, which comprises the majority of both languages and speakers, and Southeastern Mande (aka Southern Mande or Eastern Mande, which are also the names for the two subbranches of Southeastern Mande), a comparatively small but linguistically diverse and geographically dispersed group. Traditionally, Mande languages have been classified as one of the earliest offshoots of Niger-Congo. However, their external affiliation still remains a working hypothesis rather than an established fact. One of the most well-known Mande languages is probably Bamana (aka Bambara), as well as some of its close relatives, which in nonlinguistic publications are sometimes indiscriminately referred to as Mandingo. Mande languages are written in a variety of scripts ranging from Latin-based or Arabic-based alphabets to indigenously developed scripts, both syllabic and alphabetic. -
"Evolution of Human Languages": Current State of Affairs
«Evolution of Human Languages»: current state of affairs (03.2014) Contents: I. Currently active members of the project . 2 II. Linguistic experts associated with the project . 4 III. General description of EHL's goals and major lines of research . 6 IV. Up-to-date results / achievements of EHL research . 9 V. A concise list of actual problems and tasks for future resolution. 18 VI. EHL resources and links . 20 2 I. Currently active members of the project. Primary affiliation: Senior researcher, Center for Comparative Studies, Russian State University for the Humanities (Moscow). Web info: http://ivka.rsuh.ru/article.html?id=80197 George Publications: http://rggu.academia.edu/GeorgeStarostin Starostin Research interests: Methodology of historical linguistics; long- vs. short-range linguistic comparison; history and classification of African languages; history of the Chinese language; comparative and historical linguistics of various language families (Indo-European, Altaic, Yeniseian, Dravidian, etc.). Primary affiliation: Visiting researcher, Santa Fe Institute. Formerly, professor of linguistics at the University of Melbourne. Ilia Publications: http://orlabs.oclc.org/identities/lccn-n97-4759 Research interests: Genetic and areal language relationships in Southeast Asia; Peiros history and classification of Sino-Tibetan, Austronesian, Austroasiatic languages; macro- and micro-families of the Americas; methodology of historical linguistics. Primary affiliation: Senior researcher, Institute of Slavic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow / Novosibirsk). Web info / publications list (in Russian): Sergei http://www.inslav.ru/index.php?option- Nikolayev =com_content&view=article&id=358:2010-06-09-18-14-01 Research interests: Comparative Indo-European and Slavic studies; internal and external genetic relations of North Caucasian languages; internal and external genetic relations of North American languages (Na-Dene; Algic; Mosan). -
Exploring Paratexts in Old Mande Manuscripts
Darya Ogorodnikova Exploring Paratexts in Old Mande Manuscripts 1 Introduction Manuscripts produced by scholars from the Mande-speaking area constitute anx important part of West Africa’s Islamic manuscript traditions.1 These manuscripts are written in either Arabic or vernacular languages that are rendered in Arabic- based scripts known as Ajami. Recent decades have witnessed the emergence of several works on a variety of manuscripts written in different Mande languages with texts ranging from chronicles, poetry and personal correspondence to med- ical and talismanic manuals.2 This scholarship focuses overwhelmingly on texts, however, and examines them mainly from the perspective of linguistics, history and anthropology; few attempts have been made to concentrate on the manu- scripts themselves or to analyse their codicological and palaeographical charac- teristics in any great detail. Another group of manuscripts presenting attestations of Mande languages remained unnoticed until 2012 when Nikolay Dobronravin discovered a major || I would like to express my gratitude to Dmitry Bondarev for his valuable comments on the previ- ous drafts of this paper and to Tal Tamari for her constant advice at various stages of this study and her most valuable information on the history, anthropology and Islamic education of the Manding people. My thanks also go to Valentin Vydrin for his important suggestions and re- marks on linguistic aspects of the Mande languages. The research for this article was carried out within the scope of the work conducted by the SFB 950 ‘Manuskriptkulturen in Asien, Afrika und Europa’ / Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC), Hamburg, funded by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG). -
The Evolution of Linguistic Diversity
The Evolution of Linguistic Diversity Daniel Nettle Thesis submitted for the degree of PhD University College London 1996 ProQuest Number: 10044366 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest. ProQuest 10044366 Published by ProQuest LLC(2016). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 ABSTRACT This thesis examines the causes and consequences of diversity in human language. It is divided into three sections, each of which addresses a different aspect of the topic. The first section uses computer simulations to examine various mechanisms which may produce diversity in language: imperfect learning, geographical isolation, selection on the basis of social affiliation, and functional selection amongst linguistic variants. It is concluded that social and functional selection by speakers provide the main motive forces for the divergence of languages. The second section examines the factors influencing the geographical distribution of languages in the world. By far the most important is the ecological regime in which people live. Seasonal climates produce large ethnolinguistic groups because people form large networks of exchange to mitigate the subsistence risk to which they are exposed. -
Establishment of Literacy Standards for an Oral Language: the Case of Nafara Discourse Patterns, Côte D'ivoire, West Africa Sidiky Diarassouba
Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2007 Establishment of Literacy Standards for an Oral Language: The Case of Nafara Discourse Patterns, Côte d'Ivoire, West Africa Sidiky Diarassouba Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF EDUCATION ESTABLISHMENT OF LITERACY STANDARDS FOR AN ORAL LANGUAGE: THE CASE OF NAFARA DISCOURSE PATTERNS, CôTE D’IVOIRE, WEST AFRICA by SIDIKY DIARASSOUBA A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Middle and Secondary Education In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2007 Copyright © 2007 Sidiky Diarassouba The members of the committee approved the Dissertation of Sidiky Diarassouba defended on March 2, 2007 __________________________(Signed) Pamela S. Carroll Professor Directing Dissertation ___________________________(Signed) Joseph Hellweg Outside Committee Member ___________________________(Signed) Deborah Hasson Committee Member ____________________________(Signed) Jeffrey Milligan Committee Member Approved:________________________(Signed) Pamela S. Carroll, Chair, Middle and Secondary Education The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee members. ii In Memory of Judy Kathryn Josserand Suddenly and violently snatched away from our earthly affection. May the Almighty have mercy on her and grant her peace and happiness in the hereafter. For Nnou Mêtanh Raissa Adja Gnima Issouf Who have borne the burden of loneliness, in addition to all the various and sundry emotions that have been caused by my prolonged absence from home. In remembrance of Madjuma Pitchiinh Sita Kapiéne Adama Tiohna Tiohdana Tiagnipilé Gnamangolo My beloved siblings and close relatives who passed away while I was away working on this project. -
Tungusic Languages
641 TUNGUSIC LANGUAGES he last Imperial family that reigned in Beij- Nanai or Goldi has about 7,000 speakers on the T ing, the Qing or Manchu dynasty, seized banks ofthe lower Amur. power in 1644 and were driven out in 1912. Orochen has about 2,000 speakers in northern Manchu was the ancestral language ofthe Qing Manchuria. court and was once a major language ofthe Several other Tungusic languages survive, north-eastern province ofManchuria, bridge- with only a few hundred speakers apiece. head ofthe Japanese invasion ofChina in the 1930s. It belongs to the little-known Tungusic group Numerals in Manchu, Evenki and Nanai oflanguages, usually believed to formpart ofthe Manchu Evenki Nanai ALTAIC family. All Tungusic languages are spo- 1 emu umuÅn emun ken by very small population groups in northern 2 juwe dyuÅr dyuer China and eastern Siberia. 3 ilan ilan ilan Manchu is the only Tungusic language with a 4 duin digin duin written history. In the 17th century the Manchu 5 sunja tungga toinga rulers ofChina, who had at firstruled through 6 ninggun nyungun nyungun the medium of MONGOLIAN, adapted Mongolian 7 nadan nadan nadan script to their own language, drawing some ideas 8 jakon dyapkun dyakpun from the Korean syllabary. However, in the 18th 9 uyun eÅgin khuyun and 19th centuries Chinese ± language ofan 10 juwan dyaÅn dyoan overwhelming majority ± gradually replaced Manchu in all official and literary contexts. From George L. Campbell, Compendium of the world's languages (London: Routledge, 1991) The Tungusic languages Even or Lamut has 7,000 speakers in Sakha, the Kamchatka peninsula and the eastern Siberian The mountain forest coast ofRussia. -
Language Endangerment in Southwestern Burkina: a Tale of Two Tiefos Abbie Hantgan-Sonko
Chapter 8 Language endangerment in Southwestern Burkina: A tale of two Tiefos Abbie Hantgan-Sonko Most of the thirty or so small-population languages of southwestern Burkina Faso are still reasonably viable in spite of the spread of Jula as the dominant regional vernacular. An unusual case is Tiefo, which is really two distinct but closely related and geographically contiguous Gur languages. One, here dubbed Tiefo-N, was spoken in the villages of Nou- moudara and Gnanfongo (Nyafogo). The other, Tiefo-D, was spoken in the nearby village cluster of Dramandougou. Several other ethnically Tiefo villages in the zone had already been completely Jula-ised by the mid-20th Century. Tiefo-N is moribund (a handful of age- ing semi-speakers in Gnanfogo, none in Noumoudara), the villagers having gone over to Jula. By contrast, Tiefo-D is in a relatively comfortable bilingual relationship to Jula and is still spoken to some extent even by children, though everyone also speaks Jula. This paper clarifies the relationship between Tiefo-N and Tiefo-D and addresses the question whythe two languages have had such different fates. 1 Tiefo Tiefo (pronounced [čɛfɔ]) is an important ethnic group in southwestern Burkina Faso. There are some 20 villages that still consider themselves ethnically Tiefo. Thecoreis constituted by the villages of Noumoudara, Gnanfogo, and Dramandougou,1 the latter two being really clusters of several distinct physical settlements. This core is located di- rectly on (in the case of Noumoudara) or to the east of the highway from Bobo Dioulasso to Banfora. There are other Tiefo villages scattered around, including one to thewestof Bobo Dioulasso (on the road to Orodara) and others east and southeast of the core.2 Tiefo belongs to the large Gur language family, which dominates much of Burkina Faso (including the large-population Mooré language of the Mossi ethnicity) and spreads westward into parts of Ghana, Niger, Togo, Benin, and Nigeria. -
Person Marking in South-West Mande Languages: a Tentative Reconstruction1
Mandenkan No. 46, 2010, pp. 3-48 Person Marking in South-West Mande Languages: 1 a Tentative Reconstruction Kirill Babaev Institute of Linguistics for the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow The article presents a brief comparative analysis of systems of person marking in the six languages of the South-Western group of the Mande family and a tentative reconstruction of the proto- language person markers. The paper includes data from the newly- discovered Zialo language recorded in 2010 by the Russian linguistic expedition to West Africa. Keywords: personal pronouns, person marking, comparative analysis, reconstruction, Mande languages, Niger-Congo languages 0. Introduction The general idea of the present paper is to conduct an analysis of the systems of person marking in the South-Western Mande (further referred to as SWM) languages and to deliver a tentative reconstruction of the original Proto-SWM system. So far, no attempt of such a reconstruction has been published. The area populated by speakers of SWM languages lies in the savanna and rainforest zones of West Africa. The group encompasses the following languages: 1. Bandi (French bandi) is spoken by about 100 thousand people (2001) in Lofa county in the northern part of Liberia. Bandi is rather homogeneous: the only variety with significant phonological peculiarities is the dialect of Yawiazu. 2. Kpelle (or Kpese, French guerzé) is in use by nearly 800 thousand speakers equally distributed between Guinea (N’Zérékoré province) and northern Liberia. There are about a dozen of dialects of Kpelle that vary greatly: the common distinction is drawn between the Guinean and Liberian dialect clusters. -
Areal Patterns in the Vowel Systems of the Macro-Sudan Belt
DRAFT 2018.09.09 Title: Areal patterns in the vowel systems of the Macro-Sudan Belt Abstract: This paper investigates the areal distribution of vowel systems in the Macro-Sudan Belt, an area of Western and Central Africa proposed in recent areal work (Güldemann 2008, Clements & Rialland 2008). We report on a survey of 681 language varieties with entries coded for two phonological features: advanced tongue root (ATR) harmony and the presence of interior vowels (i.e. non-peripheral vowels [ɨ ɯ ɜ ə ʌ …]). Our results show that the presence of ATR harmony in the Macro-Sudan Belt is limited to three geographically unconnected zones: an Atlantic ATR zone, a West African ATR zone, and an East African ATR zone. Between the West and East African ATR Zones is a genetically heterogeneous region where ATR harmony is systematically absent which we term the Central African ATR-deficient zone. Our results show that in this same Central African zone, phonemic and allophonic interior vowels are disproportionately prevalent. Based on this distribution, we highlight two issues. First, ATR and interiority have an antagonistic relationship and do not commonly co-occur within vowel systems, supported through statistical tests. Second, our survey supports the existence of the Macro-Sudan Belt, but due to ATR being systematically absent in Central Africa, this weakens the proposal that this area represents the ‘hotbed’ of the Macro-Sudan Belt (Güldemann 2008:167). Keywords: phonology, vowel systems, vowel harmony, ATR, macro-areas, areal typology, Africa 1 Introduction There has been a recent resurgence in Africanist linguistics towards areal explanations of shared linguistic features, rather than genetic explanations assuming common descent from a mother language (i.e. -
Language Contact, Areality, and History: the Songhay Question Revisited 1
Language Contact, Areality, and History: the 1 Songhay Question Revisited Robert Nicolaï Institut Universitaire de France - Université de Nice 1. Historical background The proposal that Songhay be included in Nilo-Saharan (Greenberg 1963, see appendix 1 below) was questioned by Lacroix (1969) and debated by Nicolaï (1990). Large-scale studies of the internal subclassification of Nilo-Saharan (NS) conducted by Bender (1995) and Ehret (2001) nevertheless supported it. Both the latter scholars base their work on the genealogical tree model and share (in particular Ehret) the same assumption of the existence of a NS language family. Like Greenberg before them, they include the Songhay group of languages in the NS family, although each places it differently on his own genealogical tree. Their working methods are also different: Bender uses mass comparison and isoglosses while Ehret uses correspondence-based reconstruction. One might therefore assume that the question has been definitively settled, since major work by two independent scholars confirms the inclusion of Songhay in the NS family/phylum, even though subclassification varies. This is not however the case. The latest study (Nicolaï 2003) provides a detailed evaluation of the empirical proof adduced in support of the classification of Songhay as NS, and finds both Ehret's and Bender's results wanting. The analysis proceeds in three stages. • Impugning the NS hypothesis : it can be shown that the data and reasoning on which the classification of Songhay as NS is based do not withstand critical examination and must be rejected in view of their unconvincing empirical validity and their theoretical insufficiency. • Unexpected developments in lexical research involving the Afroasiatic languages : a Berber-Semitic origin can be postulated for a large number of terms invoked by both Bender and Ehret as proof of NS filiation and for many others as well. -
Tonal Inflection in Mande Languages: the Cases of Bamana and Dan-Gwtaa Valentin Vydrin
Tonal inflection in Mande languages: The cases of Bamana and Dan-Gwtaa Valentin Vydrin To cite this version: Valentin Vydrin. Tonal inflection in Mande languages: The cases of Bamana and Dan-Gwtaa. Palancar, Enrique L., Léonard, Jean Léo. Tone and Inflection: New facts and new perspectives, De Gruyter, pp.83-105, 2016, 978-3-11-045275-4. halshs-01287458 HAL Id: halshs-01287458 https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-01287458 Submitted on 14 Mar 2016 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Tonal inflection in Mande languages: The cases of Bamana and Dan-Gwɛɛtaa Valentin Vydrin 1. Introduction Mande is a mid-range language family (its time depth ranges between 5000 and 6000 years) presumably belonging to the Niger-Congo macrofamily. It comprises more than 70 languages. Practically all Mande languages are tonal, therefore the Proto-Mande language most probably was tonal too. Tonal systems of the modern Mande languages are very diverse in the number of tones, in the complexity of rules conditioning the passage of tones from the underlying level to the surface, in the role grammatical tone and a number of tonal morphemes; for a survey (although outdated in some points) see (Vydrine 2004).