Both Bantu and Romance languages use a V(erb) S(ubject) construction to express thetic ("out-of-the-blue") sentences. Two types of languages can be distinguished within these language families, with respect to the verbal agreement in a thetic VS sentence: in type 1 the verb has …
The volume consists of papers prepared for the International Symposium of Chadic Linguistics (Boulder, Colorado, May 1-2, 1987). Although the papers are representative of the current work being done in the field of Chadic linguistics, they also reflect the current and past inter…
This volume deals with issues on negation patterns in languages of West Africa and the adjacent north and east. The first aim is to provide data on various aspects of negation in African languages. Although the topics addressed here reflect a great diversity of negation patterns…
"This paper briefly summarises the current state of research on the classification of Taa. It suggests a genealogical (historical) classification based on the evidence of grammatical and phonological features in the data from 20 varieties. The split between West!Xoon of Namibia …
In The Tigre Language of Ginda?, Eritrea, David L. Elias documents the dialect of the Tigre language spoken in the town of Ginda?, Eritrea (East Africa). Basic aspects of grammar, as well as texts in phonetic transcription, are provided.
Swahili Grammar and Workbook provides a practical and comprehensive companion to Swahili grammar, filling in gaps left by other textbooks. Presenting the essentials of Swahili grammar in a highly accessible fashion, it reduces complex language topics to helpful rules and mnemoni…
"This book is a description of Luwo, a Western Nilotic language of South Sudan. Luwo is used by multilingual, dynamic communities of practice as one language among others that form individual and flexible repertoires. It is a language that serves as a means of expressing the Sel…
"The Arabic Influence on Northern Berber provides an overview of the effects of language contact on a wide array of Berber languages spoken in the Maghrib. These languages have undergone important changes in their lexicon, phonology, morphology, and syntax as a result of over a …
This book is intended for university students and anyone interested in learning Standard Swahili grammar as spoken in the East African Community of Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda. The most comprehensive grammar book currently available, some of the concepts covered in this book are …
Semitic words and names appear in unprecedented numbers in texts of the New Kingdom, the period when the Egyptian empire extended into Syria-Palestine. In his book, James Hoch provides a comprehensive account of these words--their likely origins, their contexts, and their implic…
Die zum Westtschadischen gehoerenden Bole-Tangale-Sprachen werden in Nordostnigeria in einem Gebiet von ungewoehnlicher sprachlicher Diversitaet gesprochen. Die Arbeit befasst sich mit einem synchronen Vergleich der Verbalsysteme von dreizehn ausgewaehlten Bole-Tangale-Sprachen.…
This is the first book on the syntax of the Niger-Conger language family, which includes most of the languages of sub-Saharan Africa. Aboh, who is a native speaker of one of the languages (Gungbe) discussed, analyzes different aspects of the syntax of the "Kwa" language group. A…
Swahili, or more properly Kiswahili, was once an obscure littoral dialect of an East African Bantu language. Today more than one hundred million people use Swahili, making it one of the few truly international languages: Swahili is to eastern and central Africa what English is t…
"Why are you learning Zulu?" When Mark Sanders began studying the language, he was often asked this question. In Learning Zulu, Sanders places his own endeavors within a wider context to uncover how, in the past 150 years of South African history, Zulu became a battleground for …
Manding is a common name for several closely related languages in West Africa: Maninka (or Malinke), Bamana (or Bambara), Jula, Mandinka, Xasonka, etc., spoken by up to 40 million people. In this dictionary, forms of Malian Bamana and Guinean Maninka are included. The polysemy o…
