A Morphophonology of Komo: Non-tonal phenomena (original) (raw)
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Journal of African Languages and Linguistics, 2015
In this article, we show that the influence of Khoisan languages on five southwestern Bantu click languages spoken in the Kavango-Zambezi transfrontier area is diverse and complex. These Bantu languages acquired clicks through contact with both Khwe and Ju languages. However, they did not simply copy these Khoisan clicks words. They adapted them phonologically, resulting in a reduction of the click inventory and also integrated them into Bantu morphosyntax through the unusual process of paralexification. What is more, clicks do not only occur in words of Khoisan origin, but also spread to native vocabulary as a language-internal change, among other things through sound symbolism. Finally, calques and head-final nominal compounds in a number of these Bantu languages point to structural influence, most likely from Khwe. We argue that the contact-induced changes observed in the southwestern Bantu languages can be partly accounted for by the language shift of native Khoisan speakers who...
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.
1 The Bantu Grammar: Description and Theory Network
2006
The collection of papers in this volume presents results of a collaborative project between the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, the Zentrum für allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Typologie und Universalienforschung (ZAS) in Berlin, and the University of Leiden. All three institutions have a strong interest in the linguistics of Bantu languages, and in 2003 decided to set up a network to compare results and to provide a platform for on-going discussion of different topics on which their research interests converged. The project received funding from the British Academy International Networks Programme, and from 2003 to 2006 seven meetings were held at the institutions involved under the title Bantu Grammar: Description and Theory, indicating the shared belief that current research in Bantu is best served by combining the description of new data with theoretically informed analysis. During the life-time of the network, and partly in conjunction with it, larger ext...
Grammatical and Lexical Comparison of the Greater Ruvu Bantu Languages
This article discusses lexical and grammatical comparison and sub-grouping in a set of closely related Bantu language varieties in the Morogoro region, Tanzania. The Greater Ruvu Bantu language varieties include Kagulu [G12], Zigua [G31], Kwere [G32], Zalamo [G33], Nguu [G34], Luguru [G35], Kami [G36] and Kutu [G37]. The comparison is based on 27 morphophonological and morphosyntactic parameters, supplemented by a lexicon of 500 items. In order to determine the relationships and boundaries between the varieties, grammatical phenomena constitute a valuable complement to counting the number of identical words or cognates. We have used automated cognate judgment methods, as well as manual cognate judgments based on older sources, in order to compare lexical data. Finally, we have included speaker attitudes (i.e. self-assessment of linguistic similarity) in an attempt to map whether the languages that are perceived by speakers as being linguistically similar really are closely related.