Download or read book The numeral system of Proto Niger Congo written by Konstantin Pozdniakov and published by Language Science Press. This book was released on 2018-08-31 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book proposes the reconstruction of the Proto-Niger-Congo numeral system. The emphasis is placed on providing an exhaustive account of the distribution of forms by families, groups, and branches. The big data bases used for this purpose open prospects for both working with the distribution of words that do exist and with the distribution of gaps in postulated cognates. The distribution of filled cells and gaps is a useful tool for reconstruction. Following an introduction in the first chapter, the second chapter of this book is devoted to the study of various uses of noun class markers in numeral terms. The third chapter deals with the alignment by analogy in numeral systems. Chapter 4 offers a step-by-step reconstruction of number systems of the proto-languages underlying each of the twelve major NC families, on the basis of the step-by-step-reconstruction of numerals within each family. Chapter 5 deals with the reconstruction of the Proto-Niger-Congo numeral system on the basis of the step-by-step-reconstructions offered in Chapter 4. Chapter 6 traces the history of the numerals of Proto-Niger-Congo, reconstructed in Chapter 5, in each individual family of languages.
Download or read book The Numeral System of Proto Niger Congo written by Konstantin Pozdniakov and published by Saint Philip Street Press. This book was released on 2020-10-09 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book proposes the reconstruction of the Proto-Niger-Congo numeral system. The emphasis is placed on providing an exhaustive account of the distribution of forms by families, groups, and branches. The big data bases used for this purpose open prospects for both working with the distribution of words that do exist and with the distribution of gaps in postulated cognates. The distribution of filled cells and gaps is a useful tool for reconstruction. This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.
Download or read book The Numeral Systems of Nigerian Languages written by Ndimele, Ozo-mekuri and published by M & J Grand Orbit Communications. This book was released on 2016-04-30 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The papers in this collection present the numeral systems of more than twenty Nigerian languages. The papers mainly emanate from a workshop on the numeral systems of Nigerian languages organised by the Linguistic Association of Nigeria during its 23rd Annual Conference which was held at the University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria. The workshop arose from awareness created by Dr. Eugene S.L. Chan on the need for Nigerian linguists to document this severely endangered but very important aspect of natural languages. The quantum of mathematical computations - addition, multiplication, subtraction, or a combination of two or all of these - involved in the numeral systems of Nigerian languages is remarkable. The papers reveal that a variety of numeral systems do exist, such as: binary, decimal, incomplete decimal, duodecimal, quinary, quaternary, ternary, mixed, body-part tally systems, and much more. The book is a resource about how different languages manipulate their numeral systems.
Download or read book Current Issues in Descriptive Linguistics and Digital Humanities written by Moses Effiong Ekpenyong and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-11-30 with total page 714 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a convergence of heterogeneous insights (from languages and literature, history, music, media and communications, computer science and information studies) which previously went their separate ways; now unified under a single framework for the purpose of preserving a unique heritage, the language. In a growing society like ours, description and documentation of human and scientific evidence/resources are improving. However, these resources have enjoyed cost-effective solutions for Western languages but are yet to flourish for African tone languages. By situating discussions around a universe of discourse, sufficient to engender cross-border interactions within the African context, this book shall break a dichotomy of challenges on adaptive processes required to unify resources to assist the development of modern solutions for the African domain.
Download or read book The Diachrony of Classification Systems written by William B. McGregor and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2018-05-14 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Classification is a popular topic in typological, descriptive and theoretical linguistics. This volume is the first to deal specifically with the diachrony of linguistic systems of classification. It comprises original papers that examine the ways in which linguistic classification systems arise, change, and dissipate in both natural circumstances and in circumstances of attrition. The role of diffusion in such processes is explored, as well as the question of what can be diffused. The volume is not restricted to nominal systems of classification, but also includes papers dealing with the less well-known phenomenon of verbal classification. Languages from a wide spread of world regions are examined, including Africa, Amazonia, Australia, Eurasia, Oceania, and Mesoamerica. The volume will be of interest to linguistic typologists, descriptive linguists, historical linguists, and grammaticalization theorists.
Download or read book Vector Semantics written by András Kornai and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-01-07 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book introduces Vector semantics, which links the formal theory of word vectors to the cognitive theory of linguistics. The computational linguists and deep learning researchers who developed word vectors have relied primarily on the ever-increasing availability of large corpora and of computers with highly parallel GPU and TPU compute engines, and their focus is with endowing computers with natural language capabilities for practical applications such as machine translation or question answering. Cognitive linguists investigate natural language from the perspective of human cognition, the relation between language and thought, and questions about conceptual universals, relying primarily on in-depth investigation of language in use. In spite of the fact that these two schools both have ‘linguistics’ in their name, so far there has been very limited communication between them, as their historical origins, data collection methods, and conceptual apparatuses are quite different. Vector semantics bridges the gap by presenting a formal theory, cast in terms of linear polytopes, that generalizes both word vectors and conceptual structures, by treating each dictionary definition as an equation, and the entire lexicon as a set of equations mutually constraining all meanings.
Download or read book East Benue Congo written by John R. Watters and published by Language Science Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is the first in what hopefully will be a growing set of edited volumes and monographs concerning Niger-Congo comparative studies. This first volume addresses matters that are relevant to the entire East Benue-Congo family as well as the particular branches Kainji, Plateau, and Bantoid. In the case of Bantoid, the particular focus is on Grassfields and the Grassfields-Bantu borderland, though other Bantoid subgroups are referenced. The potential topics for comparative studies among these languages are numerous, but this volume is dedicated to presentations on nominal affixes, third person pronouns, and verbal extensions. A forthcoming volume will provide some results of reconstructions and lexicostatistics in Cross River, exploratory reconstructions in Southern Jukunoid, and reconstructions in Ekoid-Mbe and Mambiloid.
Download or read book The Languages and Linguistics of Africa written by Tom Güldemann and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2018-09-10 with total page 1085 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This innovative handbook takes a fresh look at the currently underestimated linguistic diversity of Africa, the continent with the largest number of languages in the world. It covers the major domains of linguistics, offering both a representative picture of Africa’s linguistic landscape as well as new and at times unconventional perspectives. The focus is not so much on exhaustiveness as on the fruitful relationship between African and general linguistics and the contributions the two domains can make to each other. This volume is thus intended for readers with a specific interest in African languages and also for students and scholars within the greater discipline of linguistics.
Download or read book Geographical Typology and Linguistic Areas written by Osamu Hieda and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is Africa a linguistic area (Heine & Leyew 2008)? The present volume consists of sixteen papers highlighting the linguistic geography of Africa, covering, in particular, southern Africa with its Khoisan languages. A wide range of phenomena are discussed to give an overview of the pattern of social, cultural, and linguistic interaction that characterizes Africa's linguistic geography. Most contributors to the volume discuss language contact and areal diffusion in Africa, although some demonstrate, with examples from non-African linguistic data, including Amazonian and European languages, how language contact may lead to structural convergence. Others investigate contact phenomena in social-cultural behavior. The volume makes a large contribution toward bringing generalized theory to data-oriented discussions. It is intended to stimulate further research on contact phenomena in Africa. For sale in all countries except Japan. For customers in Japan: please contact Yushodo Co.
Download or read book Languages of Mainland Southeast Asia written by N.J. Enfield and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2015-03-30 with total page 588 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The studies in this book represent the rich, diverse and substantial research being conducted today in the linguistics of Mainland Southeast Asia. The chapters cover a broad scope. Several studies address questions of language relatedness, often challenging conventional assumptions about the status of language contact as an explanatory factor in accounting for linguistic similarities. Several address the question of Mainland Southeast Asia as a linguistic area, exploring new ways to imagine and define the boundaries, and indeed the boundedness, of a Mainland Southeast Asia area. Two contributions rethink the received notion of the 'sesquisyllable' with new empirical and theoretical angles. And a set of chapters explores topics in the morphology and syntax of the region's languages, sometimes challenging orthodox assumptions and claims about what a typical language of Mainland Southeast Asia is like. Written by leading researchers in the field, and with a substantial overview of current knowledge and new directions by the volume editors N. J. Enfield and Bernard Comrie, this book will serve as an authoritative source on where the linguistics of Mainland Southeast Asia is at, and where it is heading.
Download or read book Grammatical gender and linguistic complexity I written by Francesca Di Garbo and published by Language Science Press. This book was released on 2019 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The many facets of grammatical gender remain one of the most fruitful areas of linguistic research, and pose fascinating questions about the origins and development of complexity in language. The present work is a two-volume collection of 13 chapters on the topic of grammatical gender seen through the prism of linguistic complexity. The contributions discuss what counts as complex and/or simple in grammatical gender systems, whether the distribution of gender systems across the world’s languages relates to the language ecology and social history of speech communities. Contributors demonstrate how the complexity of gender systems can be studied synchronically, both in individual languages and over large cross-linguistic samples, and diachronically, by exploring how gender systems change over time. In addition to three chapters on the theoretical foundations of gender complexity, volume one contains six chapters on grammatical gender and complexity in individual languages and language families of Africa, New Guinea, and South Asia. This volume is complemented by volume two, which consists of three chapters providing diachronic and typological case studies, followed by a final chapter discussing old and new theoretical and empirical challenges in the study of the dynamics of gender complexity.
Download or read book Historical Linguistics 2011 written by Ritsuko Kikusawa and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2013-11-14 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume of selected papers from the 20th International Conference on Historical Linguistics (Osaka, Japan, July 2011) presents a set of stimulating and ground-breaking studies on a wide range of languages and language families. As the scope of studies that can be characterized as ‘Historical Linguistics’ has expanded, ICHL conferences have likewise seen a broadening of topics presented, and this conference was no exception, reflected by the inclusion in this volume of a plenary presentation on the grammaticalization of expressions of negation and gendered kinship in American Sign Language. Three other papers propose new views of the role of grammaticalization in English, Chinese, and Niger-Congo languages. Four of the papers discuss specific problems that arise in the comparison and reconstruction of linguistic features in a range of languages from Asia, Europe and South America. The last six studies deal with innovative approaches to the historical development of suppletion in Romance languages, possessive classifiers in Austronesian, universal quantifiers in Germanic, adjectival sequences in English, exaptation in Celtic and Early English, and drift in Ancient Egyptian.
Download or read book The Cambridge Handbook of African Linguistics written by H. Ekkehard Wolff and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-16 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an in-depth and comprehensive state-of-the-art study of 'African languages' and 'language in Africa' since its beginnings as a 'colonial science' at the turn of the twentieth century in Europe. Compiled by 56 internationally renowned scholars, this ground breaking study looks at past and current research on 'African languages' and 'language in Africa' under the impact of paradigmatic changes from 'colonial' to 'postcolonial' perspectives. It addresses current trends in the study of the role and functions of language, African and other, in pre- and postcolonial African societies. Highlighting the central role that the 'language factor' plays in postcolonial transformation processes of sociocultural modernization and economic development, it also addresses more recent, particularly urban, patterns of communication, and outlines applied dimensions of digitalization and human language technology.
Download or read book The Cangin Languages written by John T. M. Merrill and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-06-19 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cangin languages of Senegal remained hidden from linguists for years, and have only recently been seriously documented. This book traces the history of the Cangin languages, and presents a reconstruction of Proto-Cangin through careful application of historical linguistic methods. This is one of few in-depth historical treatments of a West African language family, and takes into account all existing sources, including previously unpublished data from my own work on Noon. The reconstruction of Proto-Cangin reveals a number of important features now obscured in the modern languages, including a surprisingly rich inventory of noun class prefixes, which are of great importance to the study of the world’s largest language family, Niger-Congo. Included is a catalogue of over 600 Proto-Cangin reconstructions.
Download or read book African Language Structures written by Wm. E. Welmers and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2024-07-26 with total page 502 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wm. E. Welmers surveys a wide range of structural characteristics, both phonological and grammatical, of the languages of sub-Saharan Africa. Drawing on thirty years of experience in the analysis and teaching of African languages, and on work done on some seventy spoken languages, Welmers has organized the volume by linguistic topic. Thus there are extensive discussions of tonal systems in languages from all over sub-Saharan Africa, of noun classes and concord in the Bantu and other Niger-Kordofanian languages, and of the varieties of verbal constructions found in representative languages. African Language Structures emphasizes the organization of language data rather than the technicalities of theoretical linguistics. The material is presented in such a way that students working on the analysis of other languages can be guided in their procedures; Welmers suggests not only what types of structures may be expected, but also how they may be discovered and described. This work is unique in the depth of its linguistic insight over the entire spectrum of language structure and in the breadth of its language coverage. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1973.
Download or read book Nigeria written by Toyin Falola and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2015-02-24 with total page 565 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by leading experts in African studies, this broad introduction to Nigeria follows the history of the republic from the early period to the present day. As Africa's most populated country and major world exporter of oil, Nigeria is a nation with considerable international importance—a role that is hampered by its economic underdevelopment and political instability. This book examines all major aspects of Nigeria's geography, politics, and culture, addressing the area's current attempts at building a strong nation, developing a robust economy, and stabilizing its domestic affairs. Perfect for students of African history, geography, anthropology, and political science, this guidebook provides an overview and history of Nigeria from the early period to contemporary times. Chapters focus on each region in the country; the government, economy and culture of Nigeria; the challenges and problems Nigerians face since the country's independence; and topics affecting everyday life, including music, food, etiquette, gender roles, and marriage.
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.
