A Grammar of Fwe. A Bantu Language of Zambia and Namibia (original) (raw)

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...

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.

Accounting for the Morphophonological Alternations in Classes 1 and 2 of Bantu Languages of Zone A

Generally, noun class prefixes of Bantu languages have two or more variants which can be accounted for by phonological and/or morphological rules. These rules might be straightforward, natural and psychologically real, or sometimes complicated and less natural in that it is not always clear what phonological processes are involved. These complications have been noticed with gender 1/2 prefixes of the Bantu languages of Zone A. This paper examines the alternations noted in classes 1 and 2 (for the lexemes "man," "woman" and "child") of two Bantu languages, Bankon (A42) and Mokpe (A22) to demonstrate the difficulty in accounting for those alternations. A detailed analysis is provided with a wide range of alternative hypotheses.

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.

LiBRI Journal - The Evolution Of NA in Bantu Languages

2017

<br>The link word na in Bantu languages has been identified as one of the forms inherited from the ancestral language, commonly known as Proto-Bantu (Guthrie, 1971; Greenberg,1948; Meeussen, 1969). This form has been reconstructed in Proto-Bantu with the meaning of "and" and "with". Its main role has been recognized as to link together two syntactic units in a coordinative or associative manner. This paper examines the two original functions of na as a marker of coordination or association of syntactic units in Bantu languages. It shows how some languages have extended its use through the process of grammaticalization to assume other functions. Thus, the paper concludes by observing that the evolution of the na form is one of the cases in which words in Bantu languages have evolved to acquire other functions (Polomé, 1977; Guthrie, 1971). However, there are also cases in which units belonging to one grammatical category change to other categories. <b>...