This article elaborates on the results of a field experiment conducted among speakers of the Chakali language, spoken in northern Ghana. In the original study, the Color-aid Corporation Chart was used to perform the focal task in which consultants were asked to point at a single colour tile on the chart. However, data from the focal task could not be analysed since the Color-aid tiles had not yet been converted into numerical values set forth by the Commission internationale de l'éclairage (CIE). In this study, the full set of 314 Color-aid tiles were measured for chromaticity and converted into the CIE values at the Daylight Laboratory of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. This article presents the conversion methodology and makes the results of the measurements, which are available in the Online Appendix. We argue that some visual-perception terms cannot be reliably ascribed to colour categories established by the Color-aid Corporation. This suggests that the ideophonic expressions in the dataset do not denote 'colours', as categorised in the Color-aid system, as it was impossible to average the consultants' data into a CIE chromaticity diagram, illustrate the phenomena on the Natural Colour System (NCS) Circle and Triangle diagrams, and conduct a statistical analysis. One of the implications of this study is that a line between a visual-perception term and a colour term could be systematically established using a method with predefined categorical thresholds.

The access to digitised archival material is changing the premises for doing historical research as it changes the relationship between archives and users and facilitates new ways to do historical research. While this article argues that digital archives present opportunities for researchers and students alike, the amazing rise of digital archives is not unproblematic. On the contrary, digitised material is both creating new and reviving old theoretical and methodological pitfalls with regard to how knowledge of the past is created. The use of digital archives is far from unambiguous, and sober assessments of challenges are as important as assessments of their potential.

In Sigu, a previously unrecorded non-natural, secret, and sacred language, the high frequency and meaning variation of the verb sɔ are among the notable aspects of the language. The paper outlines the nature and distribution of the phenomenon using a lexical-translational approach and presents the different usage values of the verb. It then investigates the meanings of sɔ, and how its usage values are related. The analysis proposes that sɔ is lexically underspecified and that linguistic and non linguistic strategies work to narrow down the range of possible meanings.Keywords: lexical manipulation, lexical semantics, underspecification, alternate language

In this paper I propose a classification of Waali nouns from a variationist perspective. On the basis of a three-speaker dataset, a classification is deduced from the singular-plural forms that are found in all three idiolects. As a result, a noun class is defined as the clustering of the intersection of singular-plural pairs across speakers. The complement of the intersection corresponds to the inter-individual variation. It is defined as any differences between two individuals in the representation of at least one linguistic variable. Thus, the paper provides a perspective of describing stability and variability by both deriving a prototype based on the intersection of multi-speakers' data, and acknowledging and accounting for inter-individual variations. The method is argued to be better suited for urban and lingua franca linguistics.

This paper explores from a comparative perspective the strategies employed for the coding of topological relations in two Gur languages, Gurenɛ and Chakali. It identifies the similarities and differences in the coding of semantic concepts that describe topological relations and examines the lexical semantics of locative predicate relations. Our interest in a comparative approach towards lexical semantic variation in the spatial domain is motivated by recent works on the topic (Levinson & Meira, 2003; Levinson, 2003; Levinson & Wilkins, 2006a,b; Ameka & Essegbey, 2006; Ameka & Levinson, 2007). This approach describes the typological diversity of spatial systems and emphasises on the use of standard elicitation stimuli to allow for control and to maximise the reliability and comparability of cross-linguistic results. The paper is a contribution to the phenomenon in these two under-described Gur languages, and to the typology of locative predication presented in Table 1. This typology classifies languages according to the number of contrastive verbs they use in the basic locative construction (BLC). In this paper, we outline the kind of variation one finds within genetically closely related languages (Gurenɛ and Chakali), and within languages classified as Type III in the typology below.

Ce rapport presente le resume du travail effectue, et de celui en cours, dans le cadre de la recherche linguistique mene en vue de decrire et de documenter la langue kyitu (ou siti). A l'origine intitule «The Siti Pilot Project – Description and Documentation of an Endangered Language of Ivory Coast », ce projet finance par le Programme de Documentation des Langues en Danger (ELDP) a pour buts la prise de contact, le temoignage de la situation sociolinguistique, et le recueil de donnees sur cette langue parlee seulement a Vonkoro (Cote d'Ivoire), village situe pres de la rive de la Volta Noire a la frontiere du Ghana. Compte tenu du fait que le nombre des locuteurs kyitu etait presume faible et que la grande partie de l'information disponible sur cette langue etait d'environ 90 ans, il nous a semble necessaire de decouvrir son etat actuel. Au debut du projet, nous presumions qu’elle pouvait etre deja eteinte. Le rapport precise les differents aspects du projet : la rencontre d'information sur la nature et le but du projet aux Kyiras de Vonkoro, les recensements, la transcription et la prise des donnees, la compilation du lexique et du corpus, et l'impact du projet sur la communaute locale. En guise de conclusion, le rapport s'ouvre sur un sujet qui pose indubitablement probleme ; notamment « dire que le kyitu est en voie de disparition serait difficile a justifier, mais dire que le kyitu n'est pas une langue qui risque de disparaitre serait irresponsable ».

Related to (ir)regularities in grammars, this paper is an investigation of the gender system in Tigrinya (ISO/DIS 6393: tir). Considering the literature on the topic (see gender in Schreiber (1887); Leslau (1941); Agostinos (1994); Lipiński (2001)) in which it is basically presented as “flexible” or “free” gender system, I offer an analysis that predicts the behavior of gender in the language. The following roughly exemplifies what I believe is the issue to cover.

The "flexibility" of gender in Tigrinya is uncovered by (i) setting a value for gender for each noun at the lexical level (i.e. bare controllers) and (ii) analysing gender shifts as signals for evaluations (i.e. evaluated controllers). The analysis is formalized as lexical rules which change the value of gend and add an elementary predication in the rels list.

Despite the substantial literature dedicated to it, the status of the reflexive is still controversial. Among others, the question whether reflexive constructions are transitive or intransitive, and if intransitive, whether they are unaccusative or unergative, has been intensively investigated. In this paper, we discuss this issue with data from German and Romance. We argue against the intransitivity hypothesis, showing that the reflexive behaves like a direct object. We implement the transitivity hypothesis in LMT, explaining why some reflexivized verbs behave like unaccusatives, while others show unergative-like behavior.

ABSTRACT, LFG 05 1,Introduction In the Pargram grammar of English, comparatives of