Download or read book Cilungu Phonology written by Lee Bickmore and published by Center for the Study of Language and Information Publica Tion. This book was released on 2007 with total page 558 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cilungu is an underrepresented language spoken in northern Zambia and Tanzania whose future is far from certain, given ongoing urbanization and the ascendancy of other regional languages. The product of over fifteen years of fieldwork, Cilungu Phonology presents a comprehensive description and analysis of this endangered language. Featuring a reference grammar and formal analysis of Cilungu, this volume will be a major contribution to our understanding of tonology, since several of the forty-four processes analyzed appear to be unique to the language. It also includes a discussion of morphology, both nominal and verbal.

Download or read book The Phonology of Chichewa written by Laura J. Downing and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-06-02 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides thorough descriptive and theory-neutral coverage of the full range of phonological phenomena of Chichewa, a Malawian Bantu language. Bantu languages have played and continue to play an important role as a source of data illustrating core phonological processes such as vowel harmony, nasal place assimilation, postnasal laryngeal alternations, tonal phenomena such as High tone spread and the OCP, prosodic morphology, and the phonology-syntax interface. Chichewa, in particular, has been a key language in the development of theoretical approaches to these phenomena. In this volume, Laura Downing and Al Mtenje examine not only these well-known features of Chichewa but also less well-studied phonological topics such as positional asymmetries in the distribution of segments, the phonetics of tone, and intonation. They survey important recent theoretical approaches to phonological problems such as focus prosody, reduplication, and vowel harmony, where Chichewa data is routinely referred to in the literature. The book will serve as a resource for all phonologists interested in these processes, regardless of their theoretical background, as well as Bantu scholars and linguists working on interface issues.

Download or read book Understanding Phonology written by Carlos Gussenhoven and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-03-27 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Understanding Phonology, Fourth Edition provides a clear, accessible and broad introduction to Phonology. Introducing basic concepts, it provides a comprehensive account of phonological issues such as segmental contrasts; syllables and moras; quantity, tone, intonation and stress; feature geometry; and prosodic constituent structure. This new edition has been reorganized and revised with key features including: A brand new eResource at www.routledge.com/9781138961425, which contains a full answer key for all exercises, and audio recordings of illustrative examples; Illustrations in languages from all six continents and all major language families, including Arabic, Mandarin, Finnish, Zulu and Hawaiian; Over 140 exercises to test understanding, including new exercises involving larger data sets; Revised coverage of tone, stress and opacity in OT. Understanding Phonology is essential reading for students coming to this topic for the first time.

Download or read book Phonological Tone written by Lian-Hee Wee and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-02-28 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the physiology and acoustics to their patterning across human languages, tone is one of the fundamental constructs in human languages that is also among the hardest to apprehend. Drawing upon a large number of languages around the world, this volume explores the concept of tone starting from its physical properties of articulation and acoustics to its manifestation in phonology. Designed as a comprehensive study accessible to the novice and useful for the expert, each chapter covers a particular aspect of tone in increasing depth and complexity, weaving together key concepts and theories that provide complementing or competing accounts of tone's phonological intricacies. In the process, one uncovers the underlying laws and principles that inform today's understanding of the subject to form a more synthesized view that also allows us to explore the relation of tone to other important areas of humanity such as literature, history, music and cognition.

Download or read book Representing Structure in Phonology and Syntax written by Marc van Oostendorp and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2015-08-17 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Formal grammars by definition need two parts: a theory of computation (or derivation), and a theory of representation. While recent attention in mainstream syntactic and phonological theory has been devoted to the former, the papers in this volume aim to show that the importance of representational details is not diminished by the insights of such theories.

Download or read book The Bantu Languages written by Mark Van de Velde and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-01-30 with total page 788 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by an international team of experts, this comprehensive volume presents grammatical analyses of individual Bantu languages, comparative studies of their main phonetic, phonological and grammatical characteristics and overview chapters on their history and classification. It is estimated that some 300 to 350 million people, or one in three Africans, are Bantu speakers. Van de Velde and Bostoen bring together their linguistic expertise to produce a volume that builds on Nurse and Philippson’s first edition. The Bantu Languages, 2nd edition is divided into two parts; Part 1 contains 11 comparative chapters, and Part 2 provides grammar sketches of 12 individual Bantu languages, some of which were previously undescribed. The grammar sketches follow a general template that allows for easy comparison. Thoroughly revised and updated to include more language descriptions and the latest comparative insights. New to this edition: • new chapters on syntax, tone, reconstruction and language contact • 12 new sketch grammars • thoroughly updated chapters on phonetics, aspect-tense-mood and classification • exhaustive catalogue of known languages with essential references This unique resource remains the ideal reference for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of Bantu linguistics and languages. It will be of interest to researchers and anyone with an interest in historical linguistics, linguistic typology and grammatical analysis.

Download or read book Theory and description in African Linguistics written by Emily Clem and published by Language Science Press. This book was released on 2019 with total page 788 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The papers in this volume were presented at the 47th Annual Conference on African Linguistics at UC Berkeley in 2016. The papers offer new descriptions of African languages and propose novel theoretical analyses of them. The contributions span topics in phonetics, phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics and reflect the typological and genetic diversity of languages in Africa. Four papers in the volume examine Areal Features and Linguistic Reconstruction in Africa, and were presented at a special workshop on this topic held alongside the general session of ACAL.

Download or read book Phonological Tone written by Lian-Hee Wee and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-02-28 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the concept of tone, its physical properties and intricate patterning in phonology, to unravel key 'mysteries' that have been subject to great debate in the field.

Download or read book The Dynamics of Language written by Rajend Mesthrie and published by Juta and Company (Pty) Ltd. This book was released on 2018-06-26 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Linguistics – the close study of language and languages – is an indispensable foundation for all forms of knowledge. The African continent is blessed with hundreds of languages which act as local repositories of culture and interaction. South Africa alone has eleven official languages, plus Sign Language, many heritage languages, and new languages of global movements and migration. Part of the linguist’s business is to document, record and affirm languages and diversity. Applied linguists use their training to understand and enhance the role of language in education and upliftment, and the opportunities and challenges of new technologies of communication. The International Congress of Linguists meets every five years to reflect the development of the field and 2018 is the first time that the congress is being held in Africa. This book is a collection of the plenary and focus papers presented at the conference and thus represents current thinking in the major branches of language study as represented by leading local and international scholars. The papers discuss the history of languages, their structure, acquisition, diversity and use. At the same time due regard is paid to the African continent in connection with its linguistic diversity, multilingualism and educational and societal concerns. The Congress is meant to affirm the value of the languages of Africa, of languages and Linguistics in general, as well as to inspire and equip younger scholars to undertake advanced research into language in its many facets.

Download or read book Perspectives on Element Theory written by Sabrina Bendjaballah and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-08-23 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Element Theory (ET) covers a range of approaches that consider privativity a central tenet defining the internal structure of segments. This volume provides an overview and extension of this program, exploring new lines of research within phonology and at its interface (phonetics and syntax). The present collection reflects on issues concerning the definition of privative primes, their interactions, organization, and the operations that constrain phonological and syntactic representations. The contributions reassess theoretical questions, which have been implicitly taken for granted, regarding privativity and its corollaries. On the empirical side, it explores the possibilities ET offers to analyze specific languages and phonological phenomena.

Download or read book Tense and Aspect in Bantu written by Derek Nurse and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2008-07-03 with total page 423 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Derek Nurse looks at variations in the form and function of tense and aspect in Bantu, a branch of Niger-Congo, the world's largest language phylum. Bantu languages are spoken in central, eastern, and southern sub-Saharan Africa south of a line between Nigeria and Somalia. By current estimates there are between 250 and 600 of them, as yet neither adequately classified nor fully described. Professor Nurse's account is based on data from more than 200 Bantu languages and varieties, a representative sample of which is freely available on the publisher's website. He devotes substantial chapters to the analysis and comparison of the different tense and aspect systems found in Bantu. He also examines the verbal categories with which they interact, including negation and focus. Synchronic and diachronic perspectives are interwoven throughout the book. Following a brief history of Bantu over the last five thousand years, the final two chapters look systematically at the history of tense and aspect in Bantu. The first deals with the reconstruction of the earlier forms from which contemporary structures, morphemes, and categories are derived, and the second with the processes of change, including grammaticalization, by means of which older analytical structures and independent lexical items moved as they became incorporated as grammatical inflections and categories.

Download or read book A grammar of Choguita Rar muri In collaboration with Luz Elena Le n Ram rez Sebasti n Fuentes Holgu n Bertha Fuentes Loya and other Choguita Rar muri language experts written by Gabriela Caballero and published by Language Science Press. This book was released on 2022-11-22 with total page 686 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides the first comprehensive grammatical description of Choguita Rarámuri, a Uto-Aztecan language spoken in the Sierra Tarahumara, a mountainous range in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua belonging to the Sierra Madre Occidental. A documentary corpus developed between 2003 and 2018 with Choguita Rarámuri language experts informs the analysis and is the source of the examples presented in this grammar. The documentary corpus, which consists of over 200 hours of recordings of elicited data, narratives, conversations, interviews, and other speech genres, is available in two archival collections housed at the Endangered Languages Archive and at UC Berkeley’s Survey of California and Other Indian Languages. Choguita Rarámuri is a highly synthetic, agglutinating language with a complex morphological system. It displays many of the recurrent structural features documented across Uto-Aztecan, including a predominance of suffixation, head-marking, and patterns of noun-incorporation and compounding (Sapir 1921; Whorf 1935; Haugen 2008b). Other features of typological and theoretical interest include a complex word prosodic system, a wide range of morphologically conditioned phonological processes, and patterns of variable affix order and multiple exponence. Choguita Rarámuri is also of great comparative/historical importance: while several analytical works of Uto-Aztecan languages of Northern Mexico have been produced in the last years (Guerrero Valenzuela 2006, García Salido 2014, Reyes Taboada 2014, Morales Moreno 2016, Villalpando Quiñonez 2019, inter alia), many varieties still lack comprehensive linguistic description and documentation.

Download or read book On reconstructing Proto Bantu grammar written by Koen Bostoen and published by Language Science Press. This book was released on 2023-03-15 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 Africa s Endangered Languages written by Jason Kandybowicz and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-07-10 with total page 521 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Relatively little is known about Africa's endangered languages. Unlike indigenous languages in Australia, North Asia, and the Americas, which are predominantly threatened by colonizers, African languages are threatened most immediately by other local languages. As a result, the threat of language extinction is perceived as lower in Africa than in other parts of the globe, and a disproportionate amount of research is devoted to the study of endangered African languages when compared to any other linguistically threatened region in the world. There are approximately 308 highly endangered languages spoken in Africa (roughly 12% of all African languages) and at least 201 extinct African languages. This volume hopes to illuminate and challenge this trend. Chapters offer both documentary and theoretical perspectives, emphasizing the symbiotic relationship between the two approaches and its implications for the preservation of endangered languages, both in the African context and more broadly. Documentary-oriented chapters deal with key issues in African language documentation including language preservation and revitalization, community activism, and data collection and dissemination methodologies, among others. Theoretically-oriented chapters provide detailed descriptions and analyses of phonetic, phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic phenomena, and connect these to current theoretical issues and debates. Africa's Endangered Languages provides thorough coverage of a continent's neglected languages that will spur linguists and Africanists alike to work to protect them.

Download or read book Morpheme internal Recursion in Phonology written by Kuniya Nasukawa and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2020-01-20 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Generative phonology aims to formalise two distinct aspects of phonological processes: the functional and the representational. Since functions operate on representations, it is clear that the functional aspect is influenced by the form of representations, i.e. different types of representation require different types of rules, principles or constraints. This volume examines the representational issue in phonology and considers what kind of representation is most appropriate for recent models of generative phonology. In particular, it provides the first platform for debate on the place of morpheme-internal structure and on the formal status of phonology in the language faculty, and attempts to identify phonological recursive structure as a means of capturing frequently observed processes.

Download or read book Beyond Markedness in Formal Phonology written by Bridget D. Samuels and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2017-11-16 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, an increasing number of linguists have re-examined the question of whether markedness has explanatory power, or whether it is a phenomenon that begs explanation itself. This volume brings together a collection of articles with a broad range of critical viewpoints on the notion of markedness in phonological theory. The contributions span a variety of phonological frameworks and relate to morphosyntax, historical linguistics, neurolinguistics, biolinguistics, and language typology. This volume will be of particular interest to phonologists of both synchronic and diachronic persuasions and has strong implications for the architecture of grammar with respect to phonology and its interfaces with morphosyntax and phonetics.

Download or read book Morphosyntactic Variation in Bantu written by Eva-Marie Bloom Ström and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-11-05 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores the rich and complex pattern of morphosyntactic variation in the Bantu languages, providing a comprehensive overview of the wealth of empirical and conceptual work in the field. The chapters discuss data from some 80 Bantu languages as well as drawing on a wider comparative set of more than 200 languages from across Central, Eastern and Southern Africa: some studies focus on one specific language in a comparative context; some investigate fine-grained variation among a close-knit group of languages; and others present large-scale comparative studies spanning the whole of the Bantu-speaking area. The contributors address a range of topics from a micro-variation perspective, primarily in the areas of nominal and verbal morphology and syntax and information structure. The volume highlights key aspects of contemporary research in Bantu morphosyntax and outlines distinct and novel approaches to prominent questions; it combines the most recent thinking on morphosyntactic variation in Bantu with different theoretical and methodological approaches and novel empirical data from a wide range of languages.