Typological Studies in Language, Volume 64"KEYWORDS ""SIZE HEIGHT "240"WIDTH "160"VOFFSET "4">
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
" />
<DOCINFO AUTHOR ""TITLE "Studies in African Linguistic Typology"SUBJECT "Typological Studies in Language, Volume 64"KEYWORDS ""SIZE HEIGHT "240"WIDTH "160"VOFFSET "4"> Studies in African Linguistic Typology Typological Studies in Language (TSL) A companion series to the journal Studies in Language General Editor Michael Noonan Assistant Editors Spike Gildea, Suzanne Kemmer Editorial Board Wallace Chafe (Santa Barbara) Charles Li (Santa Barbara) Bernard Comrie (Leipzig) Edith Moravcsik (Milwaukee) R.M.W. Dixon (Melbourne) Andrew Pawley (Canberra) Matthew Dryer (Buffalo) Doris Payne (Eugene, OR) John Haiman (St Paul) Frans Plank (Konstanz) Bernd Heine (Köln) Jerrold Sadock (Chicago) Paul Hopper (Pittsburgh) Dan Slobin (Berkeley) Andrej Kibrik (Moscow) Sandra Thompson (Santa Barbara) Ronald Langacker (San Diego) Volumes in this series will be functionally and typologically oriented, covering specific topics in language by collecting together data from a wide variety of languages and language typologies. The orientation of the volumes will be substantive rather than formal, with the aim of investigating universals of human language via as broadly defined a data base as possible, leaning toward cross-linguistic, diachronic, developmental and live-discourse data. Volume 64 Studies in African Linguistic Typology Edited by F. K. Erhard Voeltz Studies in African Linguistic Typology Edited by F. K. Erhard Voeltz University of Cologne John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam/Philadelphia TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements 8 of American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Studies in African Linguistic Typology / edited by F. K. Erhard Voeltz. p. cm. (Typological Studies in Language, issn 0167–7373 ; v. 64) Includes bibliographical references and indexes. 1. African languages--Congresses. 2. Typology (Linguistics)-- Congresses. I. Voeltz, Erhard Friedrich Karl; 1943- II. Series. PL8002.S78 2005 496--dc22 2005053172 isbn 90 272 2975 9 (Hb; alk. paper) © 2005 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa TSL[v.20020404] Prn:21/07/2005; 12:46 F: TSL64DE.tex / p.1 (v) This volume is dedicated to the memory of Joseph H. Greenberg. No other linguist has so influenced African language studies. We all still learn from him. TSL[v.20020404] Prn:21/02/2006; 16:26 F: TSL64CO.tex / p.1 (vii) Table of contents Introduction ix F. K. Erhard Voeltz Future tense and aspect markings in Southern Bantu 1 H. M. Batibo The marking of directional deixis in Somali: How typologically idiosyncratic is it? 13 Philippe Bourdin A typology of subject and object markers in African languages 43 Denis Creissels Head marking, dependent marking and constituent order in the Nilotic area 71 Gerrit J. Dimmendaal Agent phrases in Bantu passives 93 Axel Fleisch Grammaticalization of switch reference: Motivation and means 113 Zygmunt Frajzyngier Complex predicates based on generic auxiliaries as an areal feature in Northeast Africa 131 Tom Güldemann The OHO Constraint 155 Richard J. Hayward The word in Luganda 171 Larry M. Hyman and Francis X. Katamba Case in Africa: On categorial misbehavior 195 Christa König The typology of relative clause formation in African languages 209 Tania Kuteva and Bernard Comrie Deictic categories in particles and demonstratives in three Gur languages 229 Kézié Koyenzi Lébikaza TSL[v.20020404] Prn:21/02/2006; 16:26 F: TSL64CO.tex / p.2 (viii) Table of contents Preprefix or not – that is the question: The case of Kwangali, Kwanyama and Ndonga 251 Karsten Legère Nonverbal and verbal negations in Kabyle (Berber): A typological perspective 263 Amina Mettouchi Grammaticalization chains of the verb Kare ‘to give’ in Kabba 277 Rosmarie Moser Selectors in Cushitic 303 Maarten Mous How Bantu is Kiyansi? A re-examination of its verbal inflections 327 Salikoko S. Mufwene Diathesis alternation in some Gur languages 337 Brigitte Reineke and Gudrun Miehe Structure and function of incorporation processes in compounding 361 Claudia Maria Riehl and Christa Kilian-Hatz Toward a typological perspective for Emai’s BE constructions 377 Donald P. Schaefer and Francis O. Egbokhare Intrinsic focus and focus control in two varieties of Hausa 397 H. Ekkehard Wolff Language index 417 Name index 421 Subject index 425 TSL[v.20020404] Prn:1/12/2005; 9:10 F: TSL64IN.tex / p.1 (ix) Introduction F. K. Erhard Voeltz Universität zu Köln The present volume is a selection of papers presented at the International Symposium: Typology of African Languages held at Sankt Augustin under the auspices of the In- stitut für Afrikanistik, Universität zu Köln. It was the aim of the symposium to give new impetus to African linguistic typological issues and to launch a large scale project roughly to be named ‘Typology of African Languages’ the aim of which it was and is to build upon the foundation laid by Heine 1975. The twenty-one papers brought together here reflect the broad perspective of African linguistic topology studies today. While similar volumes a generation ago would present language material from a very restricted area and perspective, the present contributions reflect the global interest and orientation of current African lin- guistic studies. The studies are nearly all implicational in nature. Based upon a detailed survey of a particular linguistic phenomenon in a given language or language area con- clusions are drawn about the general nature of this phenomenon in the languages of Africa and beyond. They represent as such a first step that may ultimately lead to a more thorough understanding of African linguistic structures. This approach is well justified. Taking the other road, attempting to pick out linguistic details from often fairly superficially documented languages runs the risk that the data and its implica- tions for the structure investigated might be misunderstood. Consequentially only very few studies of this nature giving the very broad perspective, the overview of a particular structure type covering the whole African continent are represented here. African linguistic studies still form a cohesive body without too much theme- specific specialization. The papers are thus arranged here in simple alphabetic order as they were presented at the colloquium itself. We begin with Batibo’s contribution, which deals with the source and development of certain tam markers in two South African Bantu languages, Sotho and Zulu. While he is able to confirm observation made by Bybee et al. 1994 regarding some aspects of grammaticalization in the lan- guages investigated, he nevertheless observes two points of broader issues not covered there: i. the use of a perfect marker ‘-ile’ with ‘future’ meaning in Sotho, and ii. the very differential development of the tam marker ‘go’ in Sotho and Zulu. In the former TSL[v.20020404] Prn:1/12/2005; 9:10 F: TSL64IN.tex / p.2 (x) F. K. Erhard Voeltz language ‘go’ has developed into a ‘near future’ marker, while in the latter, the notions ‘present’ and ‘far future’ are now expressed. Bourdin’s detailed discussion very convincingly shows directional deixis and that the manner of encoding it is not an idiosyncratic property of Somali but based on extensive cross-linguistic evidence, a property of a fairly large number of languages. Creissells investigates subject and object marking in African languages, looking at pronominal/bound indexing on the verb. He comes to the following observations: A very large number of languages in Africa use bound morphemes to mark the sub- ject. Fairly often the agreement markers fuse with the tam or polarity markers. When languages have what he calls stage I subject markers, they can often not be distin- guished from independent pronouns. It is fairly rare to find languages which allow only bound subject markers but not also bound object makers. ‘Exotic’ patterns of subject and object marking as found in ‘ergative’ languages are very rare in Africa. In ditransitive/three-argument verbs it is the overwhelming tendency to index the recipient/the patient/the ‘indirect’ object rather than the ‘direct’ object. Dimmendaal deals primarily with the notion of areal types and areal diffusion. Making reference to Nilo-Saharan as a whole, he shows that in one sub-branch, Nilotic, head marking rather than dependent marking has become the rule. It is argued that this change can be related to the fact that the languages are predominantly verb-initial languages. As the next step in the development some Eastern Nilotic languages have developed (again) dependent marking while keeping head-marking at the clausal lan- guages. In neighboring (related) Surmic languages variations of head- and dependent marking must be viewed as resulting from contact with other languages and a high degree of multilingualism. Different strategies used for marking ‘agent’ in Bantu passives are the focus of Fleisch’s contribution. While Bantu languages display a high degree of homogeneity in the formation of the passives, a fairly large number of strategies for marking agents can be observed. In most cases these agent phrases are morphologically transparent. The choice of which kind of agent marking is used appears to depend much more on areal than genetic features of a given language. The agent phrase is, moreover, very frequently also used in other grammatical constructions, showing that there is not an integral link between the passive verbal piece and the agent as such. Frajzyngier demonstrates that grammaticalization can be motivated by the inter- nal properties of a grammatical system. This kind motivation does not play a role as a notion in most contemporary studies of grammaticalization. Secondly he presents a specific analysis of the grammaticalization of switch-reference of Mina, demonstrat- ing how morphological switch-reference markers grammaticalized from two types of pronouns.