A Description of the Morphosyntactic Structure of the Suba Language (original) (raw)
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A Description of the Morphosynthatic Structure of the Suba Language
Open Science Repository Language and Linguistics, 2013
A systematic description of a language empowers a language for public use, gives it a utilitarian value and also preserves it for future generations. This paper presents a description of the morphosyntactic structure of the Suba language of Kenya. The study is guided by the theory of Distributed Morphology: An approach which highlights the fact that the machinery of what traditionally has been called morphology is not a single component of grammar but rather is distributed among several different components. Data was collected in Mfangano Island because the Island is a homogeneous set up of Suba indigenous people. Focus group discussion was used to collect a corpus of the Suba language. Elicitation was employed as backup methods of data collection. This study contributes immensely to linguistic scholarship; it is an addition to the repertoire of knowledge on linguistic description. To the Suba, the study is expected to confer a certain status on their language that was previously considered to be of little importance; it will give them a sense of equality and worth.
Current issues in the morphosyntactic typology of Sub-Saharan languages
published in Tom Güldemann (ed.), The languages and linguistics of Africa. Mouton De Gruyter. 712-821., 2018
This paper does not aim at providing a general survey of morphosyntactic phenomena already signaled as particularly frequent or rare among Sub-Saharan languages, or showing a particular genetic or areal distribution in Sub-Saharan Africa. The idea here is rather to select topics on which recently published works shed some new light, or which I consider particularly promising on the basis of my own descriptive work on individual languages, or my participation in collective research projects. The questions discussed in this paper are grouped under the following five headings: – Nouns and noun phrases (section 2) – Argument structure and valency operations (section 3) – Clause structure (section 4) – Complex constructions (section 5) – Information structure (section 6)
Grammars and Sketches of the World's Languages Africa
I am very grateful to the following people and institutions for giving me their advice, knowledge, trust, encouragement, time, material, and money. Without their support, I would not have been able to finish this grammar. First and foremost, I would like to thank the Mursi society who taught me their language and culture. Most of all, I would like to thank my supervisors at the Language and Culture Research Centre (LCRC) of James Cook University, Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald and R.M.W. Dixon, who have been my mentors and constant sources of linguistic knowledge during my time in Cairns. I have learned a lot from your abundant knowledge that made me recheck my data, rethink the data and the analysis, including many of the views presented in this grammar. Second, I thank my fieldwork Mursi consultants, Barihuny Girinomeri Araro Toko (primary consultant), Barkadhe Kulumedere (secondary consultant),
Morphosyntactic variation in Bantu: Focus on East Africa
Journal of the Language Association of Eastern Africa
Recent studies have developed a systematic approach to morphosyntactic variation among Bantu languages, taking well-known and widely attested construction types as a starting point and sketching their distribution across the family. One such approach, Guérois et al. (2017), utilises 142 morphosyntactic parameters or features, across a sample of some 50 Bantu languages (Marten et al. 2018). The present paper builds on this work and focusses on 10 parameters of variation where there is a significant difference between the values for East African Bantu languages and non-East African Bantu languages of the sample. The parameters relate to areas such as noun class morphology, agreement, and word order and so cover a wide range of morphosyntactic structures. The paper shows that the differences overall can be used for an initial characterisation of East Africa as a morphosyntactic area, with its own specific language change and language contact dynamics.
Morphosyntactic core features of Kivu Swahili: A synopsis
Afrikanistik-Aegyptologie-Online (AAeO) 1/2016 [https://www.afrikanistik-aegyptologie-online.de/archiv/2016/4479\]: This paper aims to summarize the most salient features of Kivu Swahili, the variety of Kiswahili spoken in the Kivu provinces of DR Congo. It addresses the core differences between ECS (Kiswahili as spoken on the Tanzanian coast) and the Swahili from Goma/Bukavu, also taking into consideration contact-induced change and speakers’ free variations. The paper aims to illustrate the complex morphosyntax of the language, and questions the general description of the variety as a ‘pidginized’ or ‘simplified’ form of Kiswahili, due to its divergence from ECS and the peripheral location of the community of speakers. Moreover, the paper aims to address speakers’ acrolectal reference to the standard variety, and discusses the latter against a theoretical background of the ‘constructedness’ of East Coast Swahili. Some concluding remarks summarize the salient features of Kivu Swahili, and suggest perspectives on more in-depth analyses of the language.
Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 1992
Book Reviews lection of papers emerged from a working conference on Amazonian Languages held at the University of Oregon in 1987, attended by North American, Brazilian, and British linguists. Although some of the papers take an explicitly historicalcomparative focus, others are concerned with particular issues in individual languages. Yet because these always seem to refer to the comparativists' concerns with universals and the differences between syntactic and historical processes, the book has an unusually strong coherence. The two general papers (by Doris Payne, David Payne, Derbyshire and Doris Payne; Jensen, Dooley, and Wise), which are concerned with exploring problems emerging from preliminary attempts to specify general morphological characteristics of South American languages, and the specific discussions of individual languages, are especially interesting for their examination of practical problems in analysis. The authors examine a variety of current theories for their value in helping to solve these problems. Included is discussion of the differences between clitics and particles (Dooley); derivations of noun classification systems (Derbyshire and Doris Payne; Barnes on Tuyuca); noun incorporation (Weir on Nadeb); word formation (Dietrich on Chiriguano and Guarayo); ergativity, nominativity, and transitivity (Francetto on Kuikuro; Thomas Payne on Panare); scope, grammatical rule, and discourse pragmatic control (Dooley; Hoff on Carib); and cognitive processing issues (Lowe on Nambikuara). The South American language data often suggest interesting revisions to these theories. Terence Kaufman's paper "Language History in South America: What We Know and How to Know More" includes an assessment of the (very weak) foundation for Greenberg's recent classification of South American languages. At the same time Kaufman uses, as the basis of a plan of his own, Greenberg's central idea: "compare a rather large standard set of basic vocabulary and grammatical morphemes in all the languages of a particular area in order to catalog similarities in sound and meaning and generate hypotheses about genetic relatedness" (p. 17). Following this, Kaufman describes procedures for the comparative method, including the formulation and evaluation of phonological, lexical, and grammatical reconstructions, that show just how dedicated one must be to do such work-a life's work, as he says. The kind of detailed information on languages needed for making any well-founded statements about genetic affiliation is elaborate indeed, which makes basic data-gathering particularly urgent.