On reconstructing Proto-Bantu grammar

On reconstructing Proto-Bantu grammar
Author: Koen Bostoen
Publisher: Language Science Press
Total Pages: 862
Release: 2023-03-15
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3961104069

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.

The Bantu Languages

The Bantu Languages
Author: Derek Nurse
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 727
Release: 2006-03-21
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 1135796831

Gerard Philippson is Professor of Bantu Languages at the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales and is a member of the Dyamique de Langage research team of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Lyon II University. He has mainly worked on comparative Bantu tonology. Other areas of interest include Afro-Asiatic, general phonology, linguistic classification and its correlation with population genetics.

Bantu Lexicography

Bantu Lexicography
Author: J. G. Kiango
Publisher:
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2000
Genre: Bantu languages
ISBN:

A History of African Linguistics

A History of African Linguistics
Author: H. Ekkehard Wolff
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 377
Release: 2019-06-13
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 1108417973

The first global history of African linguistics as an emerging autonomous academic discipline, covering Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australia, and Europe.

The Kongo Kingdom

The Kongo Kingdom
Author: Koen Bostoen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 335
Release: 2018-11-15
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1108474187

A unique and forward-thinking book that sheds new light on the origins, dynamics, and cosmopolitan culture of the Kongo Kingdom from a cross-disciplinary perspective.

The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Typology

The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Typology
Author: Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 1661
Release: 2017-03-30
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1316790665

Linguistic typology identifies both how languages vary and what they all have in common. This Handbook provides a state-of-the art survey of the aims and methods of linguistic typology, and the conclusions we can draw from them. Part I covers phonological typology, morphological typology, sociolinguistic typology and the relationships between typology, historical linguistics and grammaticalization. It also addresses typological features of mixed languages, creole languages, sign languages and secret languages. Part II features contributions on the typology of morphological processes, noun categorization devices, negation, frustrative modality, logophoricity, switch reference and motion events. Finally, Part III focuses on typological profiles of the mainland South Asia area, Australia, Quechuan and Aymaran, Eskimo-Aleut, Iroquoian, the Kampa subgroup of Arawak, Omotic, Semitic, Dravidian, the Oceanic subgroup of Austronesian and the Awuyu-Ndumut family (in West Papua). Uniting the expertise of a stellar selection of scholars, this Handbook highlights linguistic typology as a major discipline within the field of linguistics.

Language Dispersal Beyond Farming

Language Dispersal Beyond Farming
Author: Martine Robbeets
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2017-12-21
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027264643

Why do some languages wither and die, while others prosper and spread? Around the turn of the millennium a number of archaeologists such as Colin Renfrew and Peter Bellwood made the controversial claim that many of the world’s major language families owe their dispersal to the adoption of agriculture by their early speakers. In this volume, their proposal is reassessed by linguists, investigating to what extent the economic dependence on plant cultivation really impacted language spread in various parts of the world. Special attention is paid to "tricky" language families such as Eskimo-Aleut, Quechua, Aymara, Bantu, Indo-European, Transeurasian, Turkic, Japano-Koreanic, Hmong-Mien and Trans-New Guinea, that cannot unequivocally be regarded as instances of Farming/Language Dispersal, even if subsistence played a role in their expansion.