Download or read book African Languages written by Bernd Heine and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2000-08-03 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an introduction to African languages and linguistics, covering typology, structure and sociolinguistics. The twelve chapters are written by a team of fifteen eminent Africanists, and their topics include the four major language groupings (Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan, Afroasiatic and Khoisan), the core areas of modern theoretical linguistics (phonology, morphology, syntax), typology, sociolinguistics, comparative linguistics, and language, history and society. Basic concepts and terminology are explained for undergraduates and non-specialist readers, but each chapter also provides an overview of the state of the art in its field, and as such will be referred to also by more advanced students and general linguists. The book brings this range of material together in accessible form for anyone wishing to learn more about this challenging and fascinating field.

Download or read book Ancient Egyptian and Afroasiatic written by María Victoria Almansa-Villatoro and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2023-08-23 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By challenging assumptions regarding the proximity between Egyptian and Semitic Languages, Ancient Egyptian and Afroasiatic provides a fresh approach to the relationships and similarities between Ancient Egyptian, Semitic, and Afroasiatic languages. This in-depth analysis includes a re-examination of the methodologies deployed in historical linguistics and comparative grammar, a morphological study of Ancient Egyptian, and critical comparisons between Ancient Egyptian and Semitic, as well as careful considerations of environmental factors and archaeological evidence. These contributions offer a reassessment of the Afroasiatic phylum, which is based on the relations between Ancient Egyptian and the other Afroasiatic branches. This volume illustrates the advantages of viewing Ancient Egyptian in its African context. In addition to the editors, the contributors to this collection include Shiferaw Assefa, Michael Avina, Vit Bubenik, Leo Depuydt, Christopher Ehret, Zygmunt Frajzyngier, J. Lafayette Gaston, Tiffany Gleason, John Huehnergard, Andrew Kitchen, Elsa Oréal, Chelsea Sanker, Lameen Souag, Andréas Stauder, Deven N. Vyas, Aren Wilson-Wright, and Jean Winand.

Download or read book Applicative Constructions in the World s Languages written by Fernando Zuniga and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2024-01-29 with total page 1297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a state-of-the-art cross-linguistic survey of applicative constructions in the functional-typological tradition. An introductory section sets the terminological and analytical stage, presents the methodology used by the different chapters, and provides a typological outlook. The individual contributions address the morphological, syntactic and semantic variation of applicatives, as well as their discourse-pragmatic function. They cover all major language families and some isolates that feature some illuminating version of the phenomenon, paying special attention to language-internal variation and unity. The phenomena surveyed range from those instances usually considered canonical (valency-increasing, syntactically and semantically predictable, productive, dedicated, and optional) to those occasionally understudied in descriptive works and frequently neglected in comparative studies (valency-neutral, rather unpredictable, lexicalized, syncretic, and/or obligatory).

Download or read book Research in Afroasiatic Grammar Two written by Jacqueline Lecarme and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2003-01-01 with total page 558 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume contains 22 of the papers presented at the 5th Conference on Afroasiatic Languages (CAL 5) held at Université Paris VII in June 2000. The authors report their latest research on the syntax, morphology, and phonology of quite a number of languages (Arabic, Hebrew, Amharic, Tigrinya, Coptic Egyptian, Berber, Hausa, Beja, Somali, Gamo). The articles discuss new solutions to familiar questions such as the free state/construct state alternation of nouns, the Semitic template system, and the morphosyntax of nominal and verbal plurality. Ten of the papers center on morphology, especially the relation of phonology to syntax and morphology; others address questions at the syntax/semantics/pragmatics interface; two papers also offer comparative and historical perspectives. Taken as a whole, the papers provide an accurate picture of the state of current research in Afroasiatic linguistics, containing important new data and new analyses. Given its coverage, the book is a valuable resource for anyone interested in Afroasiatic languages and theoretical linguistics.

Download or read book Morphologies of Asia and Africa written by Alan S. Kaye and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2007-06-23 with total page 1420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1997, Eisenbrauns published the highly-regarded two-volume Phonologies of Asia and Africa, edited by Alan Kaye with the assistance of Peter T. Daniels, and the book rapidly became the standard reference for the phonologies of the Afro-Asiatic languages. Now the concept has been extended, and Kaye has assembled nearly 50 scholars to write essays on the morphologies of the same language group. The coverage is complete, copious, and again will likely become the standard work in the field. Contributors are an international Who’s Who of Afro-Asiatic linguistics, from Appleyard to Leslau to Voigt. It is with great sadness that we report the death of Alan Kaye on May 31, 2007, while these volumes were in the final stages of preparation for the press. Alan was diagnosed with bone cancer on May 1 while on research leave in the United Arab Emirates and was brought home to Fullerton by his son on May 22.

Download or read book Syntax Theory and Analysis Volume 3 written by Tibor Kiss and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2015-03-10 with total page 708 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Handbook represents the development of research and the current level of knowledge in the fields of syntactic theory and syntax analysis. Syntax can look back to a long tradition. Especially in the last 50 years, however, the interaction between syntactic theory and syntactic analysis has led to a rapid increase in analyses and theoretical suggestions. This second edition of the Handbook on Syntax adopts a unifying perspective and therefore does not place the division of syntactic theory into several schools to the fore, but the increase in knowledge resulting from the fruitful argumentations between syntactic analysis and syntactic theory. It uses selected phenomena of individual languages and their cross-linguistic realizations to explain what syntactic analyses can do and at the same time to show in what respects syntactic theories differ from each other. It investigates how syntax is related to neighbouring disciplines and investigate the role of the interfaces especially the relationship between syntax and phonology, morphology, compositional semantics, pragmatics, and the lexicon. The phenomena chosen bring together renowned experts in syntax, and represent the consensus reached as to what has to be considered as an important as well as illustrative syntactic phenomenon. The phenomena discuss do not only serve to show syntactic analyses, but also to compare theoretical approaches with each other.

Download or read book Grammaticalization Scenarios from Africa the Americas and the Pacific written by Walter Bisang and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2020-09-21 with total page 634 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume intends to fill the gap in the grammaticalization studies setting as its goal the systematic description of grammaticalization processes in genealogically and structurally diverse languages. To address the problem of the limitations of the secondary sources for grammaticalization studies, the editors rely on sketches of grammaticalization phenomena from experts in individual languages guided by a typological questionnaire.

Download or read book ACAL in SoCAL written by Yaqian Huang and published by Language Science Press. This book was released on 2024-05-23 with total page 580 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume contains a selection of papers that were presented at the 53rd Annual Conference on African Linguistics, which was held virtually at the University of California San Diego. There are 21 papers covering phonology, morphology, syntax, lexical semantics, sociolinguistics, typology and historical linguistics. The volume features a keynote paper that proposes a novel community-based approach to language documentation. African languages investigated in detail include Wolof, Mende, Dangme, Kusaal, Nzema, Anii, Nigerian Pidgin, Tunen, Nyokon, Vale, Lokoya, Lopit, Otuho, Kalenjin, Tiriki, Oromo, Tigrinya, Asá, Qwadza, and Ikalanga.

Download or read book Proceedings of the XVth International Conference of Ethiopian Studies Hamburg July 20 25 2003 written by Siegbert Uhlig and published by Otto Harrassowitz Verlag. This book was released on 2006 with total page 1140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The XVth International Conference of Ethiopian Studies took place in Hamburg in July 2003. More than 400 scientists from over 25 countries participated. 130 contributions from the program were selected for this volume. They are mostly written in English and deal on the regions of Ethiopia and Eritrea and cover the span from the 4th Century to the present. The volume is divided into the following chapters: Anthropology (20 Articles), History (25), Arts (10), Literature and Philology (10), Religion (5), Languages and Linguistics (25), Law and Politics (10), Environmental, Economic and Educational Issues (10).

Download or read book The Semitic Languages written by John Huehnergard and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-02-18 with total page 773 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Semitic Languages presents a comprehensive survey of the individual languages and language clusters within this language family, from their origins in antiquity to their present-day forms. This second edition has been fully revised, with new chapters and a wealth of additional material. New features include the following: • new introductory chapters on Proto-Semitic grammar and Semitic linguistic typology • an additional chapter on the place of Semitic as a subgroup of Afro-Asiatic, and several chapters on modern forms of Arabic, Aramaic and Ethiopian Semitic • text samples of each individual language, transcribed into the International Phonetic Alphabet, with standard linguistic word-by-word glossing as well as translation • new maps and tables present information visually for easy reference. This unique resource is the ideal reference for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of linguistics and language. It will be of interest to researchers and anyone with an interest in historical linguistics, linguistic typology, linguistic anthropology and language development.

Download or read book Reflexive constructions in the world s languages written by Katarzyna Janic and published by Language Science Press. This book was released on 2023-07-11 with total page 888 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This landmark publication brings together 28 papers on reflexive constructions in languages from all continents, representing very diverse language types. While reflexive constructions have been discussed in the past from a variety of angles, this is the first edited volume of its kind. All the chapters are based on original data, and they are broadly comparable through a common terminological framework. The volume opens with two introductory chapters by the editors that set the stage and lay out the main comparative concepts, and it concludes with a chapter presenting generalizations on the basis of the studies of individual languages.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Ethiopian Languages written by Ronny Meyer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-01-15 with total page 1425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook provides a comprehensive account of the languages spoken in Ethiopia, exploring both their structures and features and their function and use in society. The first part of the volume provides background and general information relating to Ethiopian languages, including their demographic distribution and classification, language policy, scripts and writing, and language endangerment. Subsequent parts are dedicated to the four major language families in Ethiopia - Cushitic, Ethiosemitic, Nilo-Saharan, and Omotic - and contain studies of individual languages, with an initial introductory overview chapter in each part. Both major and less-documented languages are included, ranging from Amharic and Oromo to Zay, Gawwada, and Yemsa. The final part explores languages that are outside of those four families, namely Ethiopian Sign Language, Ethiopian English, and Arabic. With its international team of senior researchers and junior scholars, The Oxford Handbook of Ethiopian Languages will appeal to anyone interested in the languages of the region and in African linguistics more broadly.

Download or read book Universal Grammar in the Reconstruction of Ancient Languages written by Katalin É. Kiss and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2011-12-22 with total page 533 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philologists aiming to reconstruct the grammar of ancient languages face the problem that the available data always underdetermine grammar, and in the case of gaps, possible mistakes, and idiosyncracies there are no native speakers to consult. The authors of this volume overcome this difficulty by adopting the methodology that a child uses in the course of language acquisition: they interpret the data they have access to in terms of Universal Grammar (more precisely, in terms of a hypothetical model of UG). Their studies, discussing syntactic and morphosyntactic questions of Older Egyptian, Coptic, Sumerian, Akkadian, Biblical Hebrew, Classical Greek, Latin, and Classical Sanskrit, demonstrate that descriptive problems which have proved unsolvable for the traditional, inductive approach can be reduced to the interaction of regular operations and constraints of UG. The proposed analyses also bear on linguistic theory. They provide crucial new data and new generalizations concerning such basic questions of generative syntax as discourse-motivated movement operations, the correlation of movement and agreement, a shift from lexical case marking to structural case marking, the licensing of structural case in infinitival constructions, the structure of coordinate phrases, possessive constructions with an external possessor, and the role of event structure in syntax. In addition to confirming or refuting certain specific hypotheses, they also provide empirical evidence of the perhaps most basic tenet of generative theory, according to which UG is part of the genetic endowment of the human species - i.e., human languages do not "develop" parallel with the development of human civilization. Some of the languages examined in this volume were spoken as much as 5000 years old, still their grammars do not differ in any relevant respect from the grammars of languages spoken today.

Download or read book The Bloomsbury Companion to Syntax written by Silvia Luraghi and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-03-14 with total page 561 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Bloomsbury Companion to Syntax is the definitive guide to a key area of linguistic study.

Download or read book The T Stems in Soqotri written by Maria Bulakh and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2024-07-18 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents the results of a field research on the verbal system of Soqotri, a little-studied language spoken on the island of Soqotra (Arabian Sea) and belonging to the Modern South Arabian branch of Semitic. The investigation focuses on the so-called T-stems (marked by the infix -t-), mostly employed as derivational means of detransitivisation. In this book you will find comprehensive descriptions of the synchronic morphology and semantics of the T-stems, as well as an inquiry into their diachronic background. Simultaneously, the study is a contribution to the general typology of detransitivising derivation in the languages of the world.

Download or read book Aspectuality and Temporality written by Zlatka Guentchéva and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2016-03-09 with total page 754 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together a collection of articles exploring tense and aspect phenomena in a variety of non-related languages: Indo-European (Albanian, Bulgarian, Armenian, English, Norwegian, Hindi), Hamito-Semitic (Berber, Zenaga Berber, Arabic varieties, Neo-Aramaic), African (Wolof, Langi), Asian (Badaga, Korean, Mongolian languages – Khalkha, Buriat, Kalmuck – Thaï, Tibetic languages), Amerindian (Yucatec Maya, Sikuani), Greenlandic (Eskimo) and Oceanian (Nêlêmwa). Each article is grounded in solid empirical knowledge. It offers an in-depth study of aspectual and temporal devices as manifested in many diverse and complex ways from a cross-linguistic perspective and seeks to contribute to our understanding of the domain under consideration and more broadly to linguistic typology and theoretical linguistics, especially the enunciative approach. The book gives readers access to a collection of data and is of particular interest to scholars working on aspectuality and temporality, on pragmatics, on areal linguistics and on typology.

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.