Download or read book A Reference Grammar of Mbili written by Funwi F. Ayuninjam and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 1998 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Reference Grammar of Mbili explores the major linguistic components of the Mbili language from a primarily descriptive point of view and within the cultural context of this Bantu language spoken in Cameroon. It presents a detailed and accessible account of the roots and history of the language, clearly situated within both the Niger Congo language group in general and the Grassfield Bantu language sub group specifically. The language portion begins with a descriptive introduction to the sound segments of Mbili and the methods of combining them. It then moves into the suprasegments of the language, including tone, stress, and intonation; it investigates the interaction of tone, tense, and mood, as well as the distribution of tone and intonation in Mbili. Segmental and suprasegmental phonemes are related in terms of what they require, tolerate, and exclude. The next presentation deals with the morphology of nouns and verbs. On the one hand it establishes a structural identification of the noun classes and determines a functional and semantic categorization of the classifiers; on the other hand it identifies and relates the temporal, aspectual, and modal categories of Mbili, and also studies the semantics of the verb through a case grammar analysis. Finally, the book approaches syntax through a clause and sentence level of analysis to explain the nature of sentence structure in a manner related to English sentence structure. The appendix contains a lexicon as well as traditional folk stories and their translations to convey aspects of Cameroonian culture and examples of the nature of the Mbili language.
Download or read book Negation Patterns in West African Languages and Beyond written by Norbert Cyffer and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2009-08-27 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume deals with issues on negation patterns in languages of West Africa and the adjacent north and east. The first aim is to provide data on various aspects of negation in African languages. Although the topics addressed here reflect a great diversity of negation patterns, the following typological features have been identified to be prominent in our region: conflict or even incompatibility between negation and focus, use of other indirect means of negating non-indicative mood (covered under the term ‘Prohibitive’), different negation patterns in different Tense-Aspect-Moods (e.g. Imperfective vs. Perfective), lack of negative indefinites, and disjunctive negative marking (often referred to as ‘double negation’). The articles presented here show that areal factors have played a significant role in the development of negation strategies in the languages of West Africa and beyond. On the other hand genetic factors seem to be less prominent.
Download or read book On reconstructing Proto Bantu grammar written by Koen Bostoen and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2023-05-26 with total page 862 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about reconstructing the grammar of Proto-Bantu, the ancestral language at the origin of current-day Bantu languages. While Bantu is a low-level branch of Niger-Congo, the world’s biggest phylum, it is still Africa’s biggest language family. This edited volume attempts to retrieve the phonology, morphology and syntax used by the earliest Bantu speakers to communicate with each other, discusses methods to do so, and looks at issues raised by these academic endeavours. It is a collective effort involving a fine mix of junior and senior scholars representing several generations of expert historical-comparative Bantu research. It is the first systematic approach to Proto-Bantu grammar since Meeussen’s Bantu Grammatical Reconstructions (1967). Based on new bodies of evidence from the last five decades, most notably from northwestern Bantu languages, this book considerably transforms our understanding of Proto-Bantu grammar and offers new methodological approaches to Bantu grammatical reconstruction.
Download or read book Bamanankan Learners Reference Grammar written by Amadou Tidiane Fofana and published by National African Languages Resource ctr. This book was released on 2003 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book An Introduction to Linguistic Typology written by Viveka Velupillai and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2012 with total page 540 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers an introduction to linguistic typology that covers various linguistic domains from phonology and morphology over parts-of-speech, the NP and the VP, to simple and complex clauses, pragmatics and language change. This title also includes a discussion on methodological issues in typology.
Download or read book Youth Language Practices and Urban Language Contact in Africa written by Rajend Mesthrie and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-09-09 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An up-to-date, theoretically informed study of male, in-group, street-aligned, youth language practice in various urban centres in Africa.
Download or read book Human Language Technology Challenges for Computer Science and Linguistics written by Zygmunt Vetulani and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-06-04 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 9th Language and Technology Conference: Challenges for Computer Science and Linguistics, LTC 2019, held in Poznan, Poland, in May 2019. The 24 revised papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 67 submissions. The papers are categorized into the following topical sub-headings: Speech Processing; Language Resources and Tools; Computational Semantics; Emotions, Decisions and Opinions; Digital Humanities; Evaluation; and Legal Aspects.
Download or read book The Emergence of Distinctive Features written by Jeff Mielke and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008-03-13 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Emergence of Distinctive Features will be of essential interest to phonologists and typologists, as well as to syntacticians, cognitive scientists, and scholars outside linguistics interested in the nature of language and its acquisition."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Typological Studies written by Guglielmo Cinque and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-02-04 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Cinque takes a generative perspective on typological questions relating to word order and to the syntax of relative clauses. In particular, Cinque looks at: the position of the Head vis à vis the relative clause in relation to the position of the verb vis à vis his object; a general cross-linguistic analysis of correlatives; the need to distinguish a sentence-grammar, from a discourse-grammar, type of non-restrictives (with languages differing as to whether they possess both, one, the other, or neither); a selective type of extraction from relative clauses; and a tentative sketch of a more ample work in progress on a unified analysis of externally headed, internally headed, and headless relative clauses.
Download or read book The Paradigmatic Structure of Person Marking written by Michael Cysouw and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2009-01-29 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores person markers, the linguistic elements that provide points of reference to speech-act participants. Michael Cysouw develops a new framework for the typology of person marking based on the rejection of the notion of plurality for its analysis. When a mother says "Mummy is going to say goodnight now", Mummy is the person marker in a way that in English is confined to motherese but which is used more commonly in some other languages and may also be characteristic of much earlier forms. Dr Cysouw divides the person markers of 400 languages into paradigms. He considers how the structure of these person paradigms relates to their function. His investigation provides a clear account of how person markers work syntactically, pragmatically, and semantically as well as giving fresh insights into aspects of linguistic change, language-relatedness, and the interfaces between discourse, syntax, and semantics. The combination of a typological and a comparative approach results in the first outline of a cognitive map of the paradigmatic structure of person marking.
Download or read book Functional Structure from Top to Toe written by Peter Svenonius and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume consists of nine original chapters on central issues in theoretical syntax, all written by distinguished authors who have made major contributions to generative syntax, plus an introductory chapter by the editor. Dedicated to Tarald Taraldsen, the collection reflects the diverse energies that have pushed the cartographic program forward over the last decade. The first three papers deal with subject extraction, the que/qui alternation, and relative clause formation. Luigi Rizzi presents arguments that subjects are 'criterial' and that subject extraction is highly restricted. Hilda Koopman and Dominique Sportiche concur, suggesting that what appears to be subject extraction in French has been misanalyzed, and involves a relative structure. Adriana Belletti shows that children avoid using object relatives, preferring subject relatives, even when it requires passivization. The fourth paper, by Ian Roberts, analyzes the loss of pro-drop in the history of French and Brazilian Portuguese. The papers by M. Rita Manzini and Richard S. Kayne both present novel analyses of complementizers, suggesting that they are essentially nominal, rather than verbal. The final three papers address the relationship of morphology to syntax. The first two argue for a syntactic approach to word formation, Guglielmo Cinque's in a typological context and Anders Holmberg's within an analysis of Finnish focus constructions. The final paper, by Edwin Williams, presents an argument for the limitations of the syntactic approach to word formation.
Download or read book African Language Learners Reference Grammar Series written by and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Coordination and Subordination written by Sandra Pereira and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2016-06-22 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent studies on the syntax and semantics of complex sentences have dealt with several challenges to the traditional boundaries between coordination and subordination. Some constructions belong to one of the two types according to syntactic criteria but relate to the other type on semantic grounds, whereas other constructions are not compatible with either the canonical syntactic or semantic tests traditionally employed to establish this distinction. Other constructions, by contrast, seem to have evolved in such a way that they now cross the divide between both types. The collection of papers in this volume delves further into the theoretical implications of previous analyses and focuses on a wide array of data from different languages, taking those challenges as a point of departure to develop innovative perspectives and to advance thought-provoking ideas.
Download or read book Focus Strategies in African Languages written by Enoch Oladé Aboh and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2008-08-27 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last two decades, focus has become a prominent topic in major fields in linguistic research (syntax, semantics, phonology). Focus Strategies in African Languages contributes to the ongoing discussion of focus by investigating focus-related phenomena in a range of African languages, most of which have been under-represented in the theoretical literature on focus. The articles in the volume look at focus strategies in Niger-Congo and Afro-Asiatic languages from several theoretical and methodological perspectives, ranging from detailed generative analysis to careful typological generalization across languages. Their common aim is to deepen our understanding of whether and how the information-structural category of focus is represented and marked in natural language. Topics investigated are, among others, the relation of focus and prosody, the effects of information structure on word order, ex situ versus in situ strategies of focus marking, the inventory of focus marking devices, focus and related constructions, focus-sensitive particles. The present inquiry into the focus systems of African languages has repercussions on existing theories of focus. It reveals new focus strategies as well as fine-tuned focus distinctions that are not discussed in the theoretical literature, which is almost exclusively based on well-documented intonation languages.
Download or read book In Search of an Independent Ambazonian Nation Dimensions of Identity and Freedom written by Harry A. Akoh and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The African Mother Tongue and Mathematical Ideas written by Abdul Karim Bangura and published by Vernon Press. This book was released on 2020-06-02 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book by renowned scholar Dr Abdul Karim Bangura combines linguistics and mathematics to show how and why African-centred mathematical ideas can be a driving force in Africa’s development efforts. Bangura explores the concept that Africa has been the centre of the History of Mathematics for thousands of years, as the civilizations that emerged across the continent developed contributions which would enrich both ancient and modern understanding of nature through mathematics. However, scholars and other professionals working in the field of mathematics education in Africa have identified a plethora of issues in carrying out their tasks. This is highlighted by one of the most compelling arguments in the book, which is that a major reason for these problems is the fact that the African mother tongues has been greatly neglected in the teaching of mathematics in the continent. Bangura asserts that a change has to be made in order for Africa to benefit from the exceptional opportunities mathematics offer, showing that, even if there is a great body of work connecting linguistics and mathematics, few analyses have been performed on the link between African languages and mathematics—and the ones that have been made are not theoretically-grounded on linguistics. Thus, the book begins by identifying the objects of study of linguistics and mathematics, and delineates which ones they have in common. Next, since the object of study of linguistics is language, the nine design features of language are employed to examine each of the objects as it pertains to African languages. After that, mathematical ideas of sustainability and those of tipping points are suggested as means to help Africa’s development efforts.
Download or read book A Reference Grammar of Oshindonga Oshiwambo written by Derek Fivaz and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
