Previous studies on Gizey (glottocode: gize1234, Masa < Chadic < Afroasiatic) have treated the monosyndetic and bisyndetic uses of the conjunction māj/mɛ̄j as semantically equivalent. This paper challenges that view, presenting novel evidence that these two forms of conjunction cannot always be equated. We argue that the distributional differences between monosyndetic and bisyndetic conjunction can be better understood by considering how they contribute to the coherence of the discourse that contain them. Using Segmented Discourse Representation Theory (SDRT), we show that monosyndetic and bisyndetic conjunction are compatible with coordinating discourse relations (e.g. RESULT, NARRATION, PARALLEL, CONTRAST) and are congruently incompatible with subordinating discourse relations (e.g. ELABORATION, EXPLANATION). Furthermore, whereas monosyndetic conjunction can appear with all coordinating relations, bisyndetic conjunction is restricted to the structural discourse relations, namely PARALLEL and CONTRAST.
Continued in-depth historical-comparative research into Central Chadic phonology reveals that present-day Central Chadic languages possess a number of phonemes that cannot be reconstructed for Proto-Central Chadic. Among the driving forces for their evolution were processes of ‘prosodification’, whereby articulatory features such as PAL (palatal), LAB (labial), NAS (nasal) and GLOT (glottal) disassociate from their original host segments and become ‘floating’ and thereby free to re-associate with other hosts within the word. In Chadic linguistics, such suprasegmental processes and effects are referred to as ‘prosodies’. As a result, present-day languages possess innovative palatalised, labialised, prenasalised, and glottalised consonants and approximants as much as considerably enriched vowel systems. The paper discusses diachronic scenarios according to which ‘secondary’ glottal(ised) segments emerge in addition to safely reconstructed ‘primary’ *ɓ and *ɗ. In one scenario, allophonic glottal stops end up as a floating feature (GLOT), which re-associates with another segment in the chain of phonemes resulting in glottal ‘colouring’ of the new host. In a parallel scenario, an allophonic glottal stop ends up in abutting position to another segment, with which it fuses and likewise fosters a new synchronic glottal phoneme.
The typological generalizations that emerge from comparing phoneme inventories and phonological processes in as many of the world’s languages as possible are the foundation of theory building in phonetics and phonology. Since one-third of the world’s languages are spoken in Africa, one would expect them to be well-represented in typological surveys of segment types and segment inventories. However, this is not the case. This paper aims to address that gap by surveying, specifically, the occurrence of laryngeal stop qualities – voiceless unaspirated, voiced, voiceless aspirated, implosive and ejective – in a large (300+) geographically and genetically diverse sample of African languages. The results of the survey turn out to challenge common assumptions about laryngeal markedness for stops and stop inventories, demonstrating the importance of this kind of areally-focused typological survey and the need for more phonetic investigations of African languages as the basis for future surveys.
In Nuer, a highly fusional and predominantly monosyllabic West Nilotic language, morphology is expressed primarily by stem-internal changes that affect vowel quality, voice quality, tone, vowel length and the stem-final consonant. This paper focuses on the interrelated alternations in vowel quality and voice quality, showing how these two parameters are used to encode inflection and derivation. Because the relation between the sets of the participating vowels is not systematic in a phonological sense, the alternations are analysed by postulating abstract morphological categories termed vowel grades. The proposed analysis enables us to unambiguously categorise the patterns of morphological marking on verbs, nouns, and adjectives. In addition, it simplifies the vowel inventory relative to earlier accounts. Finally, the proposed analysis contributes to our understanding of the diachronic development of vocalic phenomena in the West Nilotic languages.
Previous work has established that focus in Luganda is clearly signaled through the choice of syntactic configuration and morphological marking. There has been no indication in the literature to date that there is any use in the language of acoustic prominence cues for focus such as those found in English or Mandarin.The present article provides experimental evidence that vowels in focused expressions in Luganda have greater duration, higher peak f0, greater peak intensity, and more compressed postfocal f0 range than corresponding vowels in nonfocused expressions. Such acoustic marking of focus is largely redundant in Luganda, due to the clear syntactic and morphological marking, but such redundancy is an effective adaptation to a noisy environment.On the basis of the combined cues from the syntax, morphology and phonetics, Luganda speakers were able to accurately match a statement to the Wh-question that it answers. Allowed a free choice of answering strategies, Luganda speakers displayed a strong preference for the preverbal focus construction (a cleft-like structure) and for placement of the focused phrase at the beginning of the answer statement.
This study investigates how three-participants events such as transfer events (e.g. GIVE orSEND) or communicative events (e.g. TELL) are encoded in Wagi, a yet underdescribeddialectal variety of the Nilo-Saharan language Beria. With reference to Margetts & Austin’s(2007) seminal typology of event types and encoding strategies the following strategies werefound in Wagi: (1) three-place predicate strategies with the subtypes direct-argumentstrategy and causative strategy, (2) oblique and adjunct strategies, (4) converb strategy, and(5) directional strategy. A special focus of this study lies on the converb strategy, as itconstitutes an addition to the typology established by Margetts & Austin. It features acompound verb consisting of a converb expressing the main action and a verb form with theliteral meaning ‘give’, and is used to express benefaction. The two verb forms jointlydetermine the argument structure of the expression.
Abstract Across world languages, speakers are known to structure information in such a way that they accommodate the discourse context in which the utterances are made. In so doing they put into consideration the mental state of the hearer and also their own communication intentions (see Dooley 2020). This achieves effective communication. Such strategies in information structure are found in object expression. The data for this research was gathered from narratives collected through story telling sessions organized during the field study. Elicitation was also used to complement the data collected this way. The investigation was guided by the hypothesis that the accessibility hierarchy is the main discourse factor that determines the choice of object expression. The results are that the hypothesis holds true for most referring expression such as full lexical NP, demonstratives, and their NP combinations (though with exceptions), object markers, NP + relative clause, and zero anaphora. This notwithstanding, there are substantial cases of deviations that lay ground for discovery of complementary factors like predicate type, use of direct speech and pragmatic emphasis. It can therefore be concluded that while accessibility is key, there are other complementary factors that come into play in determining the Kîîtharaka object expression paradigm.
As one of the major Afro-Asiatic languages, the Oromo language, Afaan Oromoo (Oromic) is a language with grammatical gender: all nouns are either feminine or masculine. The gender category is one of the least studied items of the language, and consequently little attention is paid to its proper assignment and agreement when writing or speaking, especially among the current school generation in Oromia. On the other hand, gender assignment in this language is relatively transparent and easy to learn. It is mainly motivated by the phonology of the final syllable of nouns. The natural gender and semantics have little roles to play. In this paper the general rules of gender assignment in Oromic, based on the eastern dialect, will be discussed. The challenges and the common mistakes for language learners will also be addressed, and issues to follow up on will be put forward for researchers.
This article presents a historical-comparative analysis of the morphophonological effects of the verb ending *‑ide, i.e. imbrication and vowel lowering, in the Kikongo Language Cluster. It focuses on the kind of vowel lowering that is to be distinguished from progressive Vowel Height Harmony (pVHH) as triggered by mid vowel roots. Kikongo stands out in being the sole Bantu group to include languages that miss pVHH but display vowel harmony in the presence of *‑ide. After having identified cross-linguistic patterns of variation and uniformity in the morphonological effects of *-ide in four relatively well-described Kikongo languages that do not undergo pVHH, we examine the geographic distribution of those patterns across the KLC and observe a south-north bias, especially in the spread of vowel lowering. The morphophonological effects of *-ide are far more widespread than pVHH, both in terms of geography and genealogy, which makes reconstructing lowering of *‑ide to Proto-Kikongo (PK) far more likely than would have been the reconstruction of pVHH. We conclude that *-ide in PK, i.e. when not imbricated into a preceding morpheme, did indeed always have two identical vowels, but that it was either *-idi or *‑ele depending on the root vowel. In other words, we reconstruct a bisyllabic final suffix whose V1 and V2 are identical and whose intermediary consonant is coronal. We account for the non-lowering of *-ide, occurring mostly in the northern part of the KLC, as an innovation resulting from the push back of this morphophonological alternation. We argue that those WK, NK and KK languages which miss *-ide vowel lowering lost it due to analogical levelling aiming at paradigm uniformity. Likewise, some SK and NK languages constrained its effects following the emergence of pVHH. Thus, rather than being a conservative relic area not affected by *‑ide vowel lowering, the northwestern part of the KLC (and Kihungan in the far east) is an innovative region where much of the morphophonology of *‑ide inherited from PK was dismantled. The variation observed today across the KLC is explained by varieties being more or less progressive in their tendency towards disactivating the morphophonology of *-ide.
This article is a description and analysis of tone patterns in Rere inalienable possessive constructions. Rere, an under-documented Kordofanian language spoken in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan, exhibits both alienable and inalienable personal possessives. Alienable possessives employ possessive pronouns followed by the noun. Inalienable possessives are marked by bound person suffixes. The suffixes bear different tone depending on the root they attach to, and the root can differ tonally depending on nominative or accusative case. We argue that the tone that expones case fits with Rere’s general pattern of case marking via tone changes, but the suffixes differ tonally predictably depending on the underlying tone of the root. The findings of this study contribute to understanding Rere’s complex tone patterns and enhancing knowledge of Kordofanian languages in general.
Abstract Recent studies (Childs 2008, 2015; Albaugh, 2018) on the situation of languages in Sierra Leone, where many languages are either dead or at the verge of extinction, suggest that dominant local languages, namely Temne, Mende and Krio, other than the ex-colonial language, English, pose the greatest threat to the continued existence of other local languages. This view patterns with claims in the literature (Mufwene & Vogourous 2008; Anchimbe, 2006; Batibo 2005) that in Sub-Saharan Africa, it is mostly African languages that endanger minority languages. Using data drawn from surveys, interviews, the 2004 and 2015 population and housing censuses, I argue that though dominant local languages are not entirely free from blame, Arabic and English play the most crucial role in the negative attitude towards local languages and consequently the death or disappearance of some of these languages. Thus, this paper adds to the growing body of evidence that foreign languages, including ex-colonial languages, continue to play the most divisive role in the death of smaller local languages in countries where the ex-colonial language is still the only official language.
This paper deals with bridging constructions in Hamar, a South Omotic language spoken in Southwest Ethiopia. Bridging constructions are stylistic devices and discourse linkage strategies consisting of sequences of two clauses which mark the end and the beginning of a discourse unit. Commonly known under the label ‘tail-head linkage’, bridging constructions are usually reported for polysynthetic languages of Papua New Guinea and Amazonian languages, but they are widespread also on the African continent; in the African linguistics tradition they are discussed in relation to phenomena such as clause chaining, converbs and switch reference. The three types of linkage strategies attested cross-linguistically (Guérin and Aiton 2018) are very common in Hamar discourse: the recapitulative linkage type (or tail-head), in which the lexical predicate of the preceding clause is repeated in the form of a converb or subordinate verb form; the summary linkage type, which involves the light verbs hayá ‘to do’ and hamá ‘to express’, depending on the (in)transitivity of the summarized event; and the mixed linkage type, which combines features of the two main types. The three constructions play an important role in structuring Hamar discourse, and they are associated with various functions including backgrounding events, marking a transitional point between episodes in a story or marking conversational turns, keeping track of the main event line and recapitulating quotation events.
This research explores the usage of Akan wh-questions and relative clauses in discourse, employing a combination of data exploration and linguistic analysis. The study investigates the function of focused questions in illocutionary metonymy and the discourse role of relative clauses in conjunction with the particle na. A key aspect of this investigation is the examination of the particle’s role in signaling narrative structure and discourse frame. The research methodology is inductive, initially focusing on identifying patterns through corpus linguistic investigation before proceeding with data extraction and curation. To ensure data quality, a representative dataset was prepared and subsequently utilized in a small survey conducted as part of the study. The findings are examined within the context of current linguistic perspectives, with the aim to elucidate their potential theoretical implications.
This special issue addresses how evidentiality and mirativity are expressed in various Bantu languages. Both the notions of evidentiality and mirativity remain underexamined for the Bantu languages – the following quote is quite typical: “It appears that expressing evidentiality as a verbal affix or clitic is the most common strategy.
Abstract This paper provides a descriptive analysis of some issues concerning the morphology of Yorùbá comparatives and superlatives. Data were obtained from the researcher who is a native speaker of the language as well as from two adults (A man and a woman) in their fifties who are also native speakers of the language. I was able to describe and translate the data using my intuition as a native speaker of the language. The data were grouped into three categories, monosyllabic, disyllabic and trisyllabic adjectives. The implication of the analysis shows that in Yoruba, tone is a distinct marker of the comparative and the superlative. Also, the comparative and the superlative suffix reflects inflectional morphology, and can attach to any tone pattern of base adjectives that are monosyllabic, disyllabic, or trisyllabic. In addition, within the framework of construction morphology, the study provides a word construction schema to account for the comparative and the superlative forms.
This paper provides a preliminary semantic description of the verbal category referred to in modern grammar books of Moroccan Arabic as the “medio-passive” (e.g. Harrell 1962). This category is distinguished by the medio-passive marker ‘t-’ that is prefixed to a verb stem to express a variety of grammatical meanings. The origin of this prefix can be traced back to a similar morpheme in Forms V, VI and VII of the verb in Classical Arabic associated with reflexive, reciprocal, resultative and similar meanings. Most of these meanings still survive in the MA medio-passive form, which is also used to express the passive. Following the classification suggested by Kemmer (1993), this paper discusses four major uses of the medio-passive in MA. These are the passive (e.g. t-hǝrrǝs ‘to be broken’), the reciprocal (e.g. t-fahǝm ‘to get to mutual understanding’), the reflexive (e.g. t-ʕǝllǝm ‘to learn/teach oneself), and the middle (e.g. t-ʕǝʒʒǝb ‘to be surprised’) uses. The description is intended to serve as a basis for future comparison of the medio-passive in MA with its counterparts in other languages and the role diachronic change plays in shaping this grammatical category.
This article offers the first comprehensive study of relative constructions among the members of the Western Serengeti (WS) group, a group of closely related Great Lakes Bantu language varieties spoken in the Mara region in northern Tanzania. The study has both a synchronic and a diachronic angle. First, we offer a systematic description of the various relativization types found in these varieties with regard to the phonological (prosodic) and (morpho-)syntactic traits of both subject and non-subject relativization. Next, we situate our findings within a historical-comparative framework, with particular reference to Van de Velde’s (2021, forthcoming) Bantu Relative Agreement (BRA) Cycle. Linking the source of the main relative marker to the proximal demonstrative, we offer a fine-grained reconstruction of its development into a relativizer. We propose that the WS relative constructions instantiate Stage 1b of the BRA cycle while simultaneously showing remnants of what is either the direct reflex of the relative construction reconstructed for Proto-Bantu (Van de Velde forthcoming) or the final Stage 3b of an earlier cycle. In this endeavor we are able to zoom in to the processes at play at the turning point where an old and a new relative cycle intersect.
Musical surrogate languages like talking drums remain understudied in the linguistics literature, despite their close connection with the phonetics and phonology of the spoken language. African surrogate languages tend to be based on tone, making them a unique angle for studying a language’s tonal system. This paper looks at the encoding of Akan tone in three instrumental surrogate languages: the atumpan drums, the seperewa harp, and the abɛntia horn trumpet. Each instrument presents different organological constraints that could shape how the tone system is transposed to musical form. Drawing on novel data elicited with musicians in Ghana, we show that all three systems are built on a two-tone foundation mirroring the Akan tone system, but with subtle differences in the treatment of downstep and intonational effects like phrase-final lowering and lax question intonation.
This paper presents data from Gã (Kwa, Niger-Congo language spoken in Ghana) that show that controlled subjects of non-finite predicates must be overt in this language. The presence of an overt pronominal subject in a non-finite embedded clause is surprising from the perspective of languages such as English and French, where such subjects must be covert (PRO). We provide evidence that the overt pronoun in Gã patterns with obligatorily controlled PRO (Hornstein 1999; Landau 2013) and argue for the minimal pronoun analysis of Kratzer (2009).
Abstract This paper has the primary objective of establishing the pragmatic basis for concluding on a present perfect sentence as currently or continuously relevant and the simple past sentence as currently not relevant. This is an attempt to make the concept current relevance as used in relation to present perfect and simple past sentences in Akan determinate for Akan. Three to four formal tests were conducted to reach the following conclusions: The one primary focus or motivation for making a simple past or present perfect sentence in Akan is to indicate the validity/persistence or non-validity/non-persistence of a past event context as at the moment of speech; context is defined here as non-temporal in the form of some evidence of a past event in some space, and/or as temporal such as the period of time within which an event remains/is valid. In summary, in Akan a past event is currently relevant when context(s) of it in focus is/are current (i.e. persists or is valid as at the moment of speech) - present perfect; and currently not relevant when context(s) of it in focus is/are non-current (i.e. not persistent or valid as at the moment of speech) – simple past.
