N-initial nouns in Landuma and their counterparts in Mande (original) (raw)

An areal typology of kin terms in the Nuba Mountain languages

Journal of African Languages and Linguistics, 2022

Despite the relatively large amount of linguistic and anthropological data on kinship terminologies in the languages of the Nuba Mountains, we still lack cross-linguistic studies attempting at reconstructing the areal history of this highly variable lexical field. This paper aims at comparing the formal and semantic features of kin terms across the languages of the Nuba Mountains in order to provide historical evidence for their transmission through inheritance or their possible diffusion via language contact. The comparative study surveys the kinship terminologies of 10 languages belonging to the three phyla attested in the Nuba Mountains (i.e. Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan, and Kadu). In the first part of the paper, I analyze the morphosyntactic properties and functions of kin terms. By adopting a componential perspective of analysis, I then focus on the semantics of kin terms in the languages of the sample. The comparison eventually illustrates a high degree of typological variation whose origins can be traced back to the different genetic affiliations of the Nuba Mountain languages. It is also argued that matter and/or pattern borrowing can possibly occur in the domain of kin terms. However, language contact is less significant than shared sociocultural factors in triggering formal and semantic similarities across different kin terminologies. Above and beyond, the study intends to contribute to the ongoing debate on whether the Nuba Mountains constitute an ‘accretion’ zone and to point out some instances of micro-scale linguistic convergence between the languages of the region.

Vestigial noun suffixes in Mambay (Adamawa): Vestiges of what?

Mambay and related Kebi-Benue languages are characterized by recurrent noun endings that look like noun class markers, but do not function as such. Other authors have described these noun endings as traces of a historical system of noun classification (section 2). In this paper1, I will re-examine this hypothesis. First, I focus on noun affixation in Mambay (3) and show that recurrent noun endings may be viewed as suffixes based on three synchronic indicators: distributional imbalance in the noun lexicon, addition and substitution of noun suffixes, and the semantic value associated with some of the noun endings (4). Comparative and historical support for Mambay noun endings as suffixes is brought into the discussion, and each of these vestigial suffixes is then considered in the context of the Kebi-Benue family (5). Finally, referring to the data that have been presented, I submit the idea that the majority of noun suffixes in Kebi-Benue cannot be traced to a historical system of noun classification, but are the product of an unevenly applied noun-to-noun derivation that has allowed a reconfiguration of noun structure in the languages of this family (5.3).

Suppletive kin term paradigms in the languages of New Guinea

Linguistic Typology, 2014

Kin terms in some languages have suppletive roots according to the person of the possessor, as in Kaluli na:la ‘my daughter’, ga:la ‘your daughter’ versus ida ‘her/his daughter’. Suppletion is generally seen as a language-specific morphological peculiarity, but in this context there are a number of lexical and morphological similarities across languages, suggesting the motivation may also lie in the nature of kin terms themselves. We offer a typological assessment suppletive kin terms through a case study of the languages of New Guinea, where the phenomenon appears to be particularly common.

The noun classification of Cala (Bogoŋ) A case of contact-induced change

Nominal Classification in African Languages, 2000

A comparison of Cala or Bogoŋ, an Eastern Gurunsi language spoken in western Ghana at the periphery of the Gurunsi zone, with its linguistic relations Bago and Kusuntu shows, that Cala must have significantly modified its noun classification in the recent past. Bago and Kusuntu like most Eastern Gurunsi languages possess "full-fledged" noun class systems, where class markers are predominantly-though not exclusively-suffixed to the noun, and where concord is marked by a set of specific (pronoun) morphemes. In Cala on the other hand we notice a general drop of singular suffixes, an increase of the use of prefixes to distinguish singular and/or plural forms, and a reduction of the set of functioning concord morphemes coupled with a change of features. Particularly the remarkable increase of class prefixes in Cala has already been noted in the literature and partially attributed to contact with the surrounding Kwa languages: Adele, known in the literature as one of the Togo-Remnant languages, and the North Guang languages Nawuri and Gicode, all of which possess class systems where class markers are almost exclusively prefixed to the noun. On the basis of new linguistic materials and historical data gained from oral traditions, the paper attempts to present an outline of the noun classification of Cala, by taking into account possible and attested linguistic contacts.

A typological portrait of Mano, Southern Mande

Linguistic Typology, 2020

This paper provides a typological survey of Mano, a Mande language of Guinea and Liberia. It sketches a linguistic portrait of Mano as a representative member of the Southern branch of the Mande family. The family features shared by Mano include S-Aux-O-V-X word order, the parallelism between nominal and verbal syntax, and the ubiquity of passive lability. The branch features include rich tonal morphology, the unstable character of nasal consonants, and rich pronominal paradigms, including auxiliaries that index the person and number of the subject. Some of the features presented here have not been sufficiently analyzed in the Mandeist literature, so it is unclear how unusual Mano is in comparison to other Mande languages in terms of the large class of inalienably possessed nouns, or the clause-level nominalization that may include another clause as its constituent. Finally, some properties are almost certainly specific to Mano, such as the dedicated tonal forms used in conditional ...