Person Marking in South-West Mande Languages: a Tentative Reconstruction1
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Load more
Recommended publications
-
A Sketch of Dialectal Variation in Mano Maria Khachaturyan University Of
Mandenkan, No. 59, 2018, pp. 31-56 A sketch of dialectal variation in Mano Maria Khachaturyan University of Helsinki [email protected] This paper1 gives a preliminary account of the dialectal situation of Mano, a South Mande language. My main descriptive focus is Guinean Mano, I have been doing fieldwork on the language since 2009 and I have spent more than 14 months in the field, mainly in the city of Nzerekore and in neighboring villages. A description of the Guinean variety can be found in Khachaturyan (2015). The information on Liberian dialects was obtained in January 2018 during a short trip to three Liberian villages, Gbanquoi, Kpein and Flumpa, as well as from written sources: two language manuals: (deZeeuw & Kruah 1981; Neal et al. 1946), a Bible translation (UBS 1978) and some literacy materials (Zarwolo 2009). The paper is organized as follows. Section 1 gives a sketch of the sociolinguistic situation. Section 2 provides some preliminary observations of the interdialectal differences in phonology. Section 3 gives some details on morphosyntactic variation. Section 4 presents differences in lexicon. The results are discussed in Section 5 where I explain, in particular, why some of the dialectal differences could be in fact an issue of contact with different languages: Kpelle, especially in the North of the Mano zone, and Dan in the South. 1 I would like to express my gratitude to the anonymous reviewers for their helpful criticism. As usual, I am thankful to Pe Mamy for his tireless help and support in (our) language research, and also for his wonderful companionship in our travels (we will have to have more Club beers to share in Liberia!). -
Part of Village Life
Linguistic Difficulties 31 When the child first enters school he is still part of village life. He speaks al- most no English when he comes to his first class, and still has fairly close ties with 6 / Difficulties in his family. His parents are perhaps suspicious, but willing to let him start. He cus- tomarily spends a year or two in "primer" class, learning to speak English, and mem- orizing a few isolated facts. He then is ready for first grade, which he enters be- mathematics class tween six and twelve years of age. The point of decision for him is in the second or third grade, when he must decide whether he is to continue school and cast his lot with the "civilized" world, or return to his tribe. His parents may have been willing for him to remain a few years in school, since in the old days three or four OWTHAT WE HAVE CONSIDERED the general outlines of Kpelle society, it is years in Bush school was not uncommon. But they assume t.hat by seco~d gra.de he appropriate to turn to the problems which served as the immediate impe- has had enough, and that it is time he returned to take up his responsibilities III the tus for this research. village. If he does not choose to return, they let him go his own way, and expect N him to support himself. Only when he has finished school do they reestablish ties, In roughly sixty elementary schools within Kpelle land there are Kpelle boys and girls struggling to learn enough English, mathematics, and science to make their in order that he assist them in their old age, and to aid his younger brothers and way into the modern world. -
Mathematics in African History and Cultures
Paulus Gerdes & Ahmed Djebbar MATHEMATICS IN AFRICAN HISTORY AND CULTURES: AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY African Mathematical Union Commission on the History of Mathematics in Africa (AMUCHMA) Mathematics in African History and Cultures Second edition, 2007 First edition: African Mathematical Union, Cape Town, South Africa, 2004 ISBN: 978-1-4303-1537-7 Published by Lulu. Copyright © 2007 by Paulus Gerdes & Ahmed Djebbar Authors Paulus Gerdes Research Centre for Mathematics, Culture and Education, C.P. 915, Maputo, Mozambique E-mail: [email protected] Ahmed Djebbar Département de mathématiques, Bt. M 2, Université de Lille 1, 59655 Villeneuve D’Asq Cedex, France E-mail: [email protected], [email protected] Cover design inspired by a pattern on a mat woven in the 19th century by a Yombe woman from the Lower Congo area (Cf. GER-04b, p. 96). 2 Table of contents page Preface by the President of the African 7 Mathematical Union (Prof. Jan Persens) Introduction 9 Introduction to the new edition 14 Bibliography A 15 B 43 C 65 D 77 E 105 F 115 G 121 H 162 I 173 J 179 K 182 L 194 M 207 N 223 O 228 P 234 R 241 S 252 T 274 U 281 V 283 3 Mathematics in African History and Cultures page W 290 Y 296 Z 298 Appendices 1 On mathematicians of African descent / 307 Diaspora 2 Publications by Africans on the History of 313 Mathematics outside Africa (including reviews of these publications) 3 On Time-reckoning and Astronomy in 317 African History and Cultures 4 String figures in Africa 338 5 Examples of other Mathematical Books and 343 -
Copulas Originating from 'See / Look' Verbs in Mande Languages
this paper is a revised version of my presentation at the Symposium “Areal patterns of grammaticalization and cross-linguistic variation in grammaticalization scenarios” Mainz, 12-14 March 2015 Copulas originating from ‘see / look’ verbs in Mande languages Denis Creissels University of Lyon [email protected] http://deniscreissels.fr 1. Introduction The grammaticalization path leading from the imperative of verbs ‘see / look’ to ostensive predicators or to copulas is not mentioned in the inventory of grammaticalization processes provided by Heine & Kuteva (2002), and ‘see / look’ verbs are not mentioned as a possible source of copulas in general accounts of non- verbal predication such as Hengeveld (1992) or Pustet (2003) either. However, French voici / voilà constitute a well-known example of the grammaticalization of the imperative of a verb ‘see’ as an ostensive predicator, and additional examples can be found for example among Chadic languages (see Hellwig (2011: 380-382) on Goemai, Jaggar (2001: 468-469) and Newman (2001: 181-182) on Hausa). As regards the possibility that verbs ‘see / look’ grammaticalize as copulas, this possibility has been recognized so far in two language families, and in one of these two cases, the first stage in this evolution is the reanalysis of the imperative of a ‘see / look’ verb as an ostensive predicator: (a) As discussed by Taine-Cheikh (2013), in Arabic languages, the grammaticalization of the imperative form of verbs cognate with Classical Arabic raʔā ‘see’ has developed in different directions, with the creation of a copula as one of its possible outcomes. (b) As observed by Westermann (1930), Monteil (1939), Heydorn (1940-1941) Heydorn (1949-1950), Welmers (1974), Creissels (1981), and Tröbs (2003), Mande languages provide evidence that copulas may result from the evolution of ostensive predicators whose origin is the imperative of a verb ‘see’. -
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. -
Mende Natural History Vocabulary
i MENDE NATURAL HISTORY VOCABULARY BV FREDERICK AVILLIA]\I HUGH IMIGEOU Author of "The Mknkk Laxgcage," 190S "The Languages of West Africa," Vol. I. I9il ; Vol. II. 1013 LONDON KEGAN PAUL. TRENCH, TRUHNER & CO. L^i> BROADW.-\Y HOUSE, CARTER LANE. E.G. 1913 : BY THE SAME AUTHOR. THE LANGUAGES OF WEST AFRICA A Lino;uistic Survey of about Three Hundred Languages or Dialects. Demy 8vo, 2 Vols., 12.S. {\d. net each. THE MENDE LANGUAGE, containing useful Phrases, Elementarj^ Grammar, Short Vocabularies, and Stories for Reading. Crown <Svo. 7s. (jd. net. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Limited. The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved IMIEFACE This vocabulary, wliicli was compiled at Sekoiidi on the Gold Coast, consists of a list of the names of as many animals, plants, itc, as the author has been able to observe personally or to obtain a description of. It does not profess to be a scientific Natural History (luide either to the Mende country or to the locality where it was compiled. It may, however, be found useful to those who, without any zoological or botanical knowledge, wish to know something of the Bush, and it can of course be used in any pait of West Africa if the assistance of an intelligent Mende can be obtained. The vocabulary is divided into sections for convenience of reference, and alphabetical order has been set aside when a grouping seemed likely to be more useful. Most of the objects named have come under the author's personal ob- servation ; but amongst the exceptions, which are from description only, must be included, besides nearly all the fish and the varieties of rice, many if not most of the larger animals. -
Calculus of Possibilities As a Technique in Linguistic Typology
Calculus of possibilities as a technique in linguistic typology Igor Mel’uk 1. The problem stated: A unified conceptual system in linguistics A central problem in the relationship between typology and the writing of individual grammars is that of developing a cross-linguistically viable con- ceptual system and a corresponding terminological framework. I will deal with this problem in three consecutive steps: First, I state the problem and sketch a conceptual system that I have put forward for typological explora- tions in morphology (Sections 1 and 2). Second, I propose a detailed illus- tration of this system: a calculus of grammatical voices in natural languages (Section 3). And third, I apply this calculus (that is, the corresponding con- cepts) in two particular case studies: an inflectional category known as an- tipassive and the grammatical voice in French (Sections 4 and 5). In the latter case, the investigation shows that even for a language as well de- scribed as French a rigorously standardized typological framework can force us to answer questions that previous descriptions have failed to re- solve. I start with the following three assumptions: 1) One of the most pressing tasks of today’s linguistics is description of particular languages, the essential core of this work being the writing of grammars and lexicons. A linguist sets out to describe a language as pre- cisely and exhaustively as possible; this includes its semantics, syntax, morphology and phonology plus (within the limits of time and funds avail- able) its lexicon. 2) Such a description is necessarily carried out in terms of some prede- fined concepts – such as lexical unit, semantic actant, syntactic role, voice, case, phoneme, etc. -
The Sherbro Leopard Murders in Sierra Leone Paul Richards
Africa 91 (2) 2021: 226–48 doi:10.1017/S0001972021000048 Public authority and its demons: the Sherbro leopard murders in Sierra Leone Paul Richards The argument Mary Douglas and other practitioners of Africanist social and cultural anthropol- ogy in its high modernist mid-twentieth-century form (6 and Richards 2017) were clear that beliefs concerning witches and other occult entities formed an important part of political and juridical processes in much of Africa during the late colonial period in which they worked. Equally, Douglas assumed that much would have been swept away by postcolonial social change (Douglas 1963: 269). Thus, she was shocked on a return visit to the Lele in Kasai Province, Democratic Republic of Congo, in the mid-1980s, after an absence of over three decades, to encounter a witch-finding crusade mounted against local public authorities by two Catholic priests. She inferred from this disturbing experience that persistence of beliefs in demonic forces must be connected to the economic immiseration of postcolonial Congo (Douglas 1999a). Meanwhile, a younger generation of anthropologists was reinvigorating the study of African witchcraft and discovering that it had a strong presence in postcolonial urban areas (Comaroff and Comaroff 1993; Geschiere 1995). Like Douglas, they also pointed to the neglected political and economic salience of the demonic. Since then, the study of populism has become a topic of major concern among political scientists (Laclau 2005; Mudde and Kaltwasser 2017), and we are somewhat better prepared to under- stand ways in which political actors engage with occult aspects of the popular imagination. Analytically, however, better accounts are needed concerning how such notions are generated, distributed and manipulated (Grijspaarde et al. -
Xerox University Microfilms 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106
INFORMATION TO USERS This material was produced from a microfilm copy of the original document. While the most advanced technological means to photograph and reproduce this document have been used, the quality is heavily dependent upon the quality of the original submitted. The following explanation of techniques is provided to help you understand markings or patterns which may appear on this reproduction. 1. The sign or "target" for pages apparently lacking from the document photographed is "Missing Page(s)". If it was possible to obtain the missing page(s) or section, they are spliced into the film along with adjacent pages. This may have necessitated cutting thru an image and duplicating adjacent pages to insure you complete continuity. 2. When an image on the film is obliterated with a large round black mark, it is an indication that the photographer suspected that the copy may have moved during exposure and thus cause a blurred image. You will find a good image of the page in the adjacent frame. 3. When a map, drawing or chart, etc., was part of the material being photographed the photographer followed a definite method in "sectioning" the material. It is customary to begin photoing at the upper left hand corner of a large sheet and to continue photoing from left to right in equal sections with a small overlap. If necessary, sectioning is continued again — beginning below the first row and continuing on until complete. 4. The majority of users indicate that the textual content is of greatest value, however, a somewhat higher quality reproduction could be made from "photographs" if essential to the understanding of the dissertation. -
A Grammar of Vai a Grammar of Vai
A GRAMMAR OF VAI A GRAMMAR OF VAI BY WM. E. WELMERS UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS BERKELEY • LOS ANGELES • LONDON 1976 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PUBLICATIONS IN LINGUISTICS Volume 84 Approved for publication February 20, 1976 limed December 1, 1976 University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles California University of California Press. Ltd. London. England ISBN: 0-52009555-3 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 76-7774 Copyright © 1976 by The Regents of the University of California Printed in the United States of America CONTENTS Introduction 1 L. Consonants 4 1*1* Stem-initial inherited consonants 4 1-2. Sfrem-inirial i nnnvated rnnsnnanl-c . ^^ . ^_fi 1.3. Statistical comparison 9 1.4. Intervocalic stops and fricatives 11 1.5. Intervocalic nasal-oral sequences 11 1.6. Intervocalic /y/ and /w/ 13 1.7. Intervocalic nasals 16 1.8. Intervocalic 71/ 16 1.9. Final /n/ 24 2_, Vowels 25 2.1. Inventory 25 2.2. Short and long vowels 25 2.3. Sequences of different vowels 26 2-4. Masaligpd vowels - - - - - - - - - 2fi 2.5. Absence of nasalized /e, o/ 27 3_, Tones 23 3.1. A discrete-level system 29 3.2. Sequences with two vowels 29 3.3. Tones and sequences with single vowels 30 3.4. Contraction of three identical vowels 3J. 3.5. Importance of contrasts 31 3.6. Sequences with three or more vowels 32 3.7. A syllabic nasal 33 3.B. Low-high with single vowel 33 3.9. Tone in orthography 34 4_ Intonations - - - - 36 4-1- Declarative . - - - . - - - - - - - - - 36 I v ] VI A Grammar of Vai 4.2. -
"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). -
Lexical Evidence for Kordofanian
KORDOFANIAN and NIGER-CONGO: NEW AND REVISED LEXICAL EVIDENCE DRAFT ONLY [N.B. bibliography and sources not fully complete] Roger Blench Mallam Dendo 8, Guest Road Cambridge CB1 2AL United Kingdom Voice/Answerphone/Fax. 0044-(0)1223-560687 E-mail [email protected] http://homepage.ntlworld.com/roger_blench/RBOP.htm TABLE OF CONTENTS Acronyms and Terminology............................................................................................................................ i 1. Introduction................................................................................................................................................. 1 2. Is there evidence for the unity of Kordofanian?....................................................................................... 3 2.1 Languages falling within Kordofanian.................................................................................................... 3 2.2 Kordofanian Phonology .......................................................................................................................... 3 2.3 Kordofanian noun-class morphology...................................................................................................... 3 3. The lexical evidence for Niger-Congo affiliation...................................................................................... 4 3.1 Previous suggestions ............................................................................................................................... 4 3.2 New and amended proposed cognate sets