Lozi is a Bantu language spoken predominantly in south-western Zambia. It possesses five phonemic vowel qualities and, as is common across Bantu, is noted to exhibit a form of progressive vowel height harmony. Unusually, however, Lozi lacks any alternations targeting front vowels, with only the back rounded vowels showing alternations: high [u] occurs following [i, u, e, a] but mid [o] is found after [o] itself. Furthermore, harmony is said to be limited to verb roots and following extensions, specifically reversives such as -ulul-. This paper presents a case study of vowel-pair frequencies in Lozi in both verbs and noun, where this restriction is supposedly not active, using lexicographic data. As expected based on the generalisation above, the results show that the pairs [a.o, e.o, i.o, o.u, u.o] are all highly infrequent in verbs but that [o.u] is, uniquely, also comparably infrequent in nouns. After an examination of the main data set and supplementary data, I argue this suggests that there exists in Lozi a synchronically active phonotactic restriction against this vowel pair that is blind to part of speech which applies in the non-prefixal domain, with the remaining vowel-pair gaps in verbs now being nothing more than historical residue.
Research on nominal classification in Mabia (Gur) languages, including Dagaare, has generally concluded that their classificatory systems are only partially semantic. This study, focusing on the Lobr variety of Dagaare, provides evidence that Dagaare possesses a historically restructured yet robust nominal classificatory system that is semantically transparent and reflects the ontology of its speech fellowship. The analysis adopts both meaning-based and form-based approaches, with primacy given to the systemic organisation of language. Findings show that classes of THING TYPE ("noun classes") are encoded by number suffixes attached to the noun. The system of THING TYPE is organised around two central notions - humanness and diminution - which generate a network of classes in which human and non-human categories further divide into sub-classes based on both material and social criteria. While THING TYPE marking is overt in the plural, it tends to be covert in the singular. In addition, the study identifies a concurrent system of gender in Dagaare, marked through concord based on humanness and restricted to the plural. Concord targets include demonstratives, non-specific determiners, quantifiers, and anaphoric pronouns. Overall, the study highlights the value of combining systemic and diachronic perspectives to uncover the nuanced ontological principles that underlie nominal classification in African languages.
Planning Amazigh (Berber) languages in Morocco reveals a significant discrepancy between language ideology and language practice. Ideologically, the Moroccan authorities and the Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture (IRCAM), the official body responsible for planning Amazigh, emphasize the concept of a standardized "Moroccan Amazigh" to foster a homogeneous Moroccan identity that absorbs "Amazighness," aiming to prevent the ethnic-based politicization of the Amazigh issue. Practically, however, three main Amazigh varieties exist in Morocco. To address this contradiction, IRCAM adopted a "polynomic approach" to language planning, which allegedly aims to "give full rights to plural uses," modeled after the concept developed in the Corsican context. Upon closer examination, however, the actual planning efforts in Morocco may suggest otherwise, exposing contradictions with the polynomic language ideology. This article examines IRCAM's planning efforts in three key areas - lexical planning, language teaching, and morphological planning - where the "polynomic approach" is purportedly applied. It analyzes what this "polynomic" planning practically means and entails, as well as how it functions as a mediation for the gap between language ideology and language practice.
This study analyzes the Amharic lexrme lebb 'heart' from a cognitive linguistics perspective, contributing to what is known about conceptualization through body-part terms in connection to emotions. Based on the results of the metaphoric and metonymic extension of lebb 'heart' from Amharic monolingual and bilingual dictionaries, the study finds that the heart is intrinsically associated with positive emotions such that it can metonymically stand for courage and love. The concept of "heart" in Amharic is also commonly used with words suggesting negative emotions. However, this connection is mainly possible through compositionality. The Amharic model of the association of the "heart" to positive emotions is also valid for other unrelated languages. Our results suggest that natural languages share important similarities in the body-based conceptualization of emotions.
This article describes the morphology of intransitive verbs in the Agar dialect of Dinka, a Western Nilotic language which exhibits an extreme degree of non-concatenative morphology. Intransitive verbs comprise three groups: verbs that are clearly simple, i.e. underived, verbs that are clearly derived, and verbs whose derivational status seems indeterminable synchronically. The basic form of an intransitive verb (and other verbs), whether simple or derived, is an inflectionally unmarked monosyllable. Derivation does not involve affixation but is expressed by phonological alternations in the root, involving vowel length, vowel quality, voice quality of the vowel and/or tone. Derivational categories of intransitive verbs with an intransitive base include centrifugal, centripetal and plural. Derivational categories of intransitive verbs with a transitive base include antipassive, reciprocal, antipassive centrifugal, antipassive centripetal, antipassive iterative, and middle, the latter having meanings which include anticausative and reflexive. Inflection of intransitive verbs is also to a large extent non-concatenative, with the same types of alternation in the root as in derivational processes. Both derivation and inflection are to a large extent predictable.
Meteorological events (ME) pose a notorious challenge to linguistic encoding due to a basic tension between their semantics and syntactic structure which, in most languages, requires a predicate and at least one participant. Since MEs typically do not involve any canonical participants, there is considerable leeway for languages to either construe participants or to find ways to do without them. This contribution seeks to describe the strategies for the expression of weather concepts in the Gisamjanga variety of Datooga, a Southern Nilotic language of Tanzania, and integrate them into the comparative typological framework of Eriksen et al. 2010. Linguistics of weather: Cross-linguistic patterns of meteorological expressions. Studies in Language 34(3). 565-601 and Eriksen et al. 2012. Weather and language. Language and Linguistics Compass 6(6). 383-402. In doing so, we argue that a typological model which claims to represent the full gamut of ME encoding strategies in human languages must incorporate two additional factors: (a) the domain-internal variation of ME encoding strategies encountered within one language, (b) metaphorical ME expressions which cannot be classified as argument- or predicate-framed since neither predicate nor argument directly refer to any weather event. In sum, both of these factors point to the necessity to extend the typological model of ME expression by the parameter of pragmatical markedness, as exemplified in our concluding section.
While the history of the Bamum language has been well documented, the particulars of its phonology and orthography have received fragmentary treatment. Our contribution to the literature is an attempt to synthesize from the works that have gone before, to pull together disparate threads that have arisen from the influences of German, French, and English traditions. We discuss in turn phonology (noting in particular discrepancies in the accounting for the vowel inventory between sources), analysis of the writing system, and frequency distribution of characters and words. Discussion on historical phonology might shed some light on the development of orthographic principles while the preliminary exploration of the observed statistical patterns of the latest phase of the script, known as A ka u ku mf epsilon mf epsilon, would be useful for future reference. We also offer indications for directions for future research on a wider scale, that would incorporate corpus studies of both the Bamum language and the invented Sh & uuml;mom language that also uses the Bamum script.
Omotic-Mao pronouns have been deeply problematic for reconstruction, leading some scholars to suggest the forms are the result of borrowing or interference. This paper explores new evidence from the participant-reference systems in the four Mao languages (Mawes Aas'e, Ganza, Seezo, and Hoozo) to show that the Mawes Aas'e pronouns, which are the most divergent of the group, are likely the result of complex internal developments. Developments include the innovation of a dual opposition from an inclusive/exclusive distinction, fusion of reduced subject-marking enclitics with their most frequent host (an affirmative marker), the formation of new free pronouns on the basis of these host + enclitic fusions with additional, augmenting morphology to mark number, and the grammaticalization of new 3rd person pronouns from a demonstrative base with number suffixes. Evidence is both internal and comparative and supports an Omotic classification for these languages.
This paper describes the loss of -yi- in Zulu reduplication and suggests a possible connection between the loss of -yi- and the potential for obsolescence of reduplication. The data presented are collected from 79 speakers, and clearly demonstrate the loss of -yi- is stratified along sociolinguistic lines. The absence of -yi- in reduplication is categorical among urban speakers, while it is beginning to be lost among younger rural speakers. Furthermore, some urban speakers are wholly unfamiliar with reduplication, exhibiting no knowledge of the process as a morphophonological phenomenon, nor with the semantic change it effects on the verb. While Zulu is far from being an endangered language, it is unsurprising that urban and rural varieties should show structural differences, and the phenomenon discussed here constitutes one such example. Leliphepha likhuluma ngomahluko phakathi kwesiZulu sasedolobheni nesiZulu sasemakhaya ekusebenziseni impambosi yokwenzayenza (ukuphindaphinda). NgesiZulu sasemakhaya, kusasetshenziswa u"-yi-" ukuphindaphinda izenzo ezineziqu ezinohlamvu olulodwa, njengo -dla no -fa. Abadala basebenzisa u"-yi-" ukuphindaphinda kunabasha. Ukuphindaphinda, abasha basemakhaya basebensiza "-yi-" kancane kunabadala. Abanye abahlala emadolobheni abazi nhlobo ngokuphindaphinda. Loluhlobo lwesimo soshintsho lubizwa ngokuthi ushintsho olusaqhubekayo.
This paper discusses ideophonicity in Gizey (Chadic), viz ., the ability of a word to depict sensory experiences. The term “ideophone” is frequently attested in the Gizey literature. While ideophones are classified as a separate word class (part-of-speech), the questions of what they are (phono-semantic characterisation) and how they function (morphosyntactic characterisation) are absent from that literature. Both concerns are addressed in this paper. I first describe the morphophonological, semantic, and syntactic properties of the words classified as “ideophones”. Then, I show that, indeed, Gizey contains several ideophonic words which distribute across different word classes. Thus, ideophones do not form a separate word class in Gizey as previous literature suggests.
Bilin (ISO 639-3:byn), a Central Cushitic (Agaw) language of Eritrea, exhibits complex patterns of derivational and inflectional verbal morphology. In this article, three verb forms of Bilin, their semantics, morphosyntax, and history, are analysed in detail on grounds of both previous scholarly efforts, especially Reinisch (1881, Die Bilīn-Sprache in Nordost-Afrika . Wien: Carl Gerold’s Sohn), Palmer (1957. The verb in Bilin. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 19(1). 131–159), and Appleyard (2007. Bilin morphology. In Alan S. Kaye (ed.), Morphologies of Asia and Africa , 481–504. Penn State University Press), as well as data elicited through fieldwork. These three forms are the imperfective marker -sɨk , the habitualis suffix -tuk , and the converb -ɛk . It is shown that the Bilin verb paradigm is even richer than assumed, expressing not only tense, aspect, mood, person, and number, but possibly additional grammatical notions such as volitionality.
This paper discusses the different syntactic status of the prenominal marker a in three languages spoken in Burkina Faso and neighbouring countries (Dagara, Mooré and Koromfe) and its respective relation to the determiner system. We argue that the marker is a head-initial determiner in Dagara, a proprial article in Mooré and a nominal expletive in Koromfe and tentatively suggest a possible common pronominal origin. The paper also addresses further points of variation in the higher nominal structure of the three languages concerning DP directionality and the co-occurrence of determiners, demonstratives and possessors, providing a basis for future wider investigations across the Mabia/Gur family.
The Zaghawa language, one of the Saharan languages spoken in western Sudan, specifically the Darfur region, and east-central Chad, is the subject of this descriptive study with special focus on Arabic borrowings. The paper investigates Sudanese Standard Arabic and Baggara Arabic borrowings that have entered Zaghawa through contact with speakers of Arabic. This will be accomplished by showcasing and analyzing the phonological and morphological characteristics of the recipient language, as well as by demonstrating how the Arabic words that were borrowed have been adapted into Zaghawa. The semantic fields of the lexical borrowings are also discussed. Zaghawa exists in a community which is greatly influenced by Islam and the Arabic language. The major dialects of Zaghawa are Wegi, Kube, and Tuba and there are two minor dialects, Dirong and Guruf. Wegi is considered one of the major dialects of Zaghawa wholly spoken in Sudan. The data for this contribution has been collected from speakers of the Wegi dialect living in Khartoum.
Studies on diminutives have primarily focused on European languages and a few African languages. However, the forms and functions of diminutives in the Igbo language remain critically unexplored. This article examines the forms and functions of diminutives in Igbo, as well as accounts for the role of tone in the formation of diminutives in Igbo, using corpus-assisted data. The descriptive analysis reveals that the form of Igbo diminutives can be categorised into synthetic, analytic, and category incorporated. The results show that the suffix -tụ́ is the most productive diminutive marker in Igbo and is used when referring to the contact between entities, temporal shortness (short duration), spatial smallness, small featural differentiation, and politeness. I argue that tone generally does not govern Igbo diminutive constructions. The study contributes to the literature by identifying a third type of diminutives ‘category incorporated’, which refers to verbal constructions that do not prototypically have explicit diminutive forms or markers but have diminutive meanings. This research provides a distinct perspective on the important role of verbs in the formation of diminutives in the Igbo language.
This article constitutes a pioneering comparative study of the use of epistemic possibility adverbs (EPAs) – i.e., sentence or clausal adverbs expressing neutral epistemic support (reminiscent of English ‘perhaps’) – in the Bantu languages of East Africa. In a sample of a total of 77 languages, the semantic and syntactic inter- and intra-clausal distribution of EPAs and the way they interact with other modal markers is investigated. Next, the semasiological background of the East African Bantu EPAs and the range of additional functions they may serve to co-express is explored. Based on the semantic characteristics of the EPAs, their etymons and the linguistic categories they additionally convey, it is proposed that the common conceptualization underlying these patterns of polysemy is the notion of scalarity, and more precisely that of an in-between position between a positive and a negative pole, thus conveying a neutral, indeterminate or interchangeable stance. Through these endeavors, this study offers the first thorough, comparative-based investigation of the development and distribution of epistemic adverbs in Bantu languages, broadening our understanding of expressions of modality and the use of adverbs more generally, both within Bantu languages and beyond.
Hunting gestures, i.e., gestures used to avoid scaring away prey or raising the attention of predators, are a central part of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle of many foragers. These gestures have been documented for several groups in Southern Africa. This article is dedicated to such gestures, specifically those used by the speakers of a moribund East Kalahari Khoe language - Tjwao. It documents the hunting gestures collected in the villages of Sanqinyana and Sifulasengwe in Western Zimbabwe and analyzes them by adopting a formal descriptive approach. The focus is on the phonology and semantics of the gestures. Regarding phonology, handshape, palm orientation, location of the gesture, movement, handedness, and any participation of other parts of the body in the production of a gesture are discussed. Concerning semantics, we examine the referents of the hunting gestures and the type and extent of iconic relationship each gesture entertains with its real-world referent. In light of the analysis, we conclude that the hunting gesture code used by Tjwao speakers largely complies with the profile exhibited by the other hunting gesture codes found across the area, although certain dissimilarities can also be observed. This provides further evidence supporting the existence of the Kalahari Basin Area Sprachbund. Izenzo zokuzingela, ezifana lezisetshenziswa ukwesabisa inyamazana loba ukukhankasela ukuqaphela kwezinyamazana ezizingelwayo, kuyingxenye eyinhloko yendlela yokuphila yokuzingela yabaqoqi abaningi. Lezi zenzo sezike zabhalwa mayelana ngeminye imiphakathi yaseNingizimu Afrika. Kulolucwaningo siqondiswe ezenzweni ezinjalo, ikakhulukazi lezo ezisetshenziswa ngabakhulumi bolimi lwesi Tjwao - ulimi lwesiKhoe-Kwadi olufayo njalo olungakacwaningwa kakhulu. Sibhala ngezenzo zokuzingela eziqoqwe ezigodini zaseSanqinyana naseSifulasengwe eNtshonalanga yeZimbabwe besesizihlaziya ngokusebenzisa indlela ehlelekile yokuchaza. Sigxilwe kakhulu kuphonology kanye lesemantiki. Lolucwaningo luphetha ngokuthi izenzo zokuzingela ezisetshenziswa yizikhulumi zolimi lwesiTjwao zihambisana kakhulu lezenzo zokuzingela ezitholakala zonke indawo, lokuba ukungafanani okuthile kukhona kulezo zenzo sokuzingela. Lokhu kusipha ubufakazi obengeziwe obusekela ukubakhona be-Kalahari Basin Area Sprachbund.
Silozi is one of Zambia's seven national languages, and is also spoken in parts of Botswana, Namibia, and Zimbabwe. At its heart the language can fairly be characterized as a "Shift and Double" one, where an underlying High tone shifts to the following TBU and then doubles onto the next one in defined prosodic domains. Both infinitival forms as well as a range of finite forms in various TAMs are examined. The Obligatory Contour Principle (OCP) plays an interesting role in that while it motivates various processes of High tone deletion, it only rarely constrains the core processes of Tone Shift and Tone Doubling. Some of the High tone deletions are general while others only apply in specific TAMs. As in most Bantu tone languages, Silozi exhibits Melodic High tones which help express certain inflectional properties of the verb. They have two possible landing sites - the penult or the ultima. Once linked, they precipitate the deletion of various lexical High tones on the Subject Marker, Object Marker, or verb root. In all, eleven different tonal rules are described and analyzed.
Pronominal systems of Grassfields Bantu languages stand out in a cross-linguistic perspective by their high degree of referential precision when it comes to specifying the internal composition of groups, as instantiated by the device of pronoun compounding. A comparison of available descriptions of Grassfields Bantu pronoun systems reveals a high degree of diversity with respect to categorical distinctions and compounding principles. Thus, cumulative pronoun compounding in which individual meanings of components are simply added on top of each other is attested side by side with incorporative compounding in which this is not the case, but rather the first pronominal component establishes a unifying bond by also incorporating the reference of the second component. Insights into the principles of pronoun compounding have rarely been exploited for the understanding of synchronic variation of pronoun systems across Grassfields and their historical dynamics. The present contribution seeks to remedy this situation for Babanki of the Central Ring group, following the descriptive lines of Gehling (2004. 'Ich', 'du' und andere: eine sprachtypologische Studie zu den grammatischen Kategorien "Person" und "Numerus". Munster: Lit) and Cysouw (2009. The paradigmatic structure of person marking. Oxford University Press) and fertilizing the historical study of Grassfields pronoun systems by synchronic insights from compounding in Babanki.
Left peripheral topics and foci often differ with respect to resumption: in languages such as Italian, Tzotzil Maya, and Warlpiri, while fronted topics may be co-indexed with a pronominal form in the corresponding argument position, fronted foci correspond to a gap. However, this contrast does not universally apply. In languages such as Anyi and Baule, two Kwa languages of Côte d’Ivoire, subjects and animate objects must be resumed by a pronoun whenever they appear in the left periphery – independent of information structure. The question is whether this instance of cross-linguistic variation arises through differences in the syntax of left peripheral positions in various languages or in the conditions of resumption. The present study examines data from Kwa languages and concludes that the difference lies in the conditions of resumption, which are orthogonal to the syntactic differences between topics and foci. Resumptives have a dual nature in these languages, serving as anaphoric constants (true resumptives) in topicalization and as bound variables (apparent resumptives) in focus constructions. A survey of the relevant facts in further Kwa languages reveals that resumption is determined by factors that are independent from information structure and relate to the recoverability of empty argument positions.
