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A Grammar of Contemporary Igbo
In twenty-five chapters this book covers phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. The chapters are organized in four discrete parts: phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. They are uneven in terms of scope covered, length, the density of their contents and their degrees of difficulty. Each chapter ends with ‘Some References’ relevant to both the topic(s) treated in the chapter, in Igbo linguistics, and in general linguistics.
Diversity in African languages
Diversity in African Languages contains a selection of revised papers from the 46th Annual Conference on African Linguistics, held at the University of Oregon. Most chapters focus on single languages, addressing diverse aspects of their phonology, morphology, semantics, syntax, information structure, or historical development. These chapters represent nine different genera: Mande, Gur, Kwa, Edoid, Bantu, Nilotic, Gumuzic, Cushitic, and Omotic. Other chapters investigate a mix of languages and families, moving from typological issues to sociolinguistic and inter-ethnic factors that affect language and accent switching. Some chapters are primarily descriptive, while others push forward the the...
Convergence: English and Nigerian Languages
The present volume, which is the 5th in the Nigerian Linguists Festschrift Series, is devoted to Professor Munzali A. Jibril, a celebrated icon in university administration, and an erudite Professor of English Linguistics. The title of this special edition was specifically chosen to crown Professor Jibril’s academic prowess in both English and indigenous Nigerian languages, and to mark and laud his official departure from active university lectureship. 72 assessed papers are included from the many submitted. Papers cover the main theme of the volume, i.e. the interaction between English and indigenous Nigerian languages, and there are a number of papers on other secular areas of linguistics such as: language and history, language planning and policy, language documentation, language engineering, lexicography, translation, gender studies, language acquisition, language teaching and learning, pragmatics, discourse and conversational analysis, and literature in English and African languages. There is also a rich section devoted to the major ‘traditional’ fields of linguistics - phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics.
The numeral system of Proto-Niger-Congo
This book proposes the reconstruction of the Proto-Niger-Congo numeral system. The emphasis is placed on providing an exhaustive account of the distribution of forms by families, groups, and branches. The big data bases used for this purpose open prospects for both working with the distribution of words that do exist and with the distribution of gaps in postulated cognates. The distribution of filled cells and gaps is a useful tool for reconstruction. Following an introduction in the first chapter, the second chapter of this book is devoted to the study of various uses of noun class markers in numeral terms. The third chapter deals with the alignment by analogy in numeral systems. Chapter 4 offers a step-by-step reconstruction of number systems of the proto-languages underlying each of the twelve major NC families, on the basis of the step-by-step-reconstruction of numerals within each family. Chapter 5 deals with the reconstruction of the Proto-Niger-Congo numeral system on the basis of the step-by-step-reconstructions offered in Chapter 4. Chapter 6 traces the history of the numerals of Proto-Niger-Congo, reconstructed in Chapter 5, in each individual family of languages.
A Grammar of Emai
This reference grammar is the first ever description of West Africa’s Edoid language Emai. It incorporates narrative, lexical and grammatical field results over the last three decades. Treated are morphology, syntax and argument structure after an introductory phonology and orthographic overview highlighting grammatical and lexical tone. Individual chapters delineate noun and verb phrase structure as well as clause shape in discourse and clause combination. Noun inflection and derivation are detailed as is verb inflection in the context of tense, aspect and modality. Noun phrase character encompasses remnant noun classes, nominal modification types and pronoun forms followed by conjunction...
The Oxford Handbook of Vowel Harmony
This handbook provides a detailed account of the phenomenon of vowel harmony, a pattern according to which all vowels within a word must agree for some phonological property or properties. Vowel harmony has been central in the development of phonological theories thanks to its cluster of remarkable properties, notably its typically 'unbounded' character and its non-locality, and because it forms part of the phonology of most world languages. The five parts of this volume cover all aspects of vowel harmony from a range of theoretical and methodological perspectives. Part I outlines the types of vowel harmony and some unusual cases, before Part II explores structural issues such as vowel inven...
Class Marking in Emai
Class Marking in Emai examines the retention, reduction, and transformation of inflectional resources pertaining to noun class in Emai, an Edoid language of south-central Nigeria. Ronald P. Schaefer and Francis O. Egbokhare demonstrate that in contrast to its Bantu relations, Emai retains form class prefixes on a relatively small group of nouns that distribute across eleven declension sets. Prefix addition rather than prefix alternation arises when ideophonic adverbials become syntactically displaced due to information structure and when Emai borrows lexical items from other languages. Reduction is evident in two primary domains: agreement class or gender and prefixes that alternate to express form class and grammatical number. As for transformation, it characterizes tonal, nominal and pronominal domains. Putting Emai and its noun class system into a broader cultural and archaeological context of historical language change, this book explores what it means to be a Benue Congo language with a reduced inflectional system.
Rethinking Universals
Universals of language have been studied extensively for the last four decades, allowing fundamental insight into the principles and general properties of human language. Only incidentally have researchers looked at the other end of the scale. And even when they did, they mostly just noted peculiar facts as ''quirks'' or ''unusual behavior'', without making too much of an effort at explaining them beyond calling them ''exceptions'' to various rules or generalizations. Rarissima and rara, features and properties found only in one or very few languages, tell us as much about the capacities and limits of human language(s) as do universals. Explaining the existence of such rare phenomena on the one hand, and the fact of their rareness or uniqueness on the other, is a reasonable and interesting challenge to any theory of how human language works. The present volume for the first time compiles selected papers on the study of rare linguistic features from various fields of linguistics and from a wide range of languages.
Voice syncretism
This book provides a comprehensive typological account of voice syncretism, focusing on resemblance in formal verbal marking between two or more of the following seven voices: passives, antipassives, reflexives, reciprocals, anticausatives, causatives, and applicatives. It covers voice syncretism from both synchronic and diachronic perspectives, and has been structured in a manner that facilitates convenient access to information about specific patterns of voice syncretism, their distribution and development. The book is based on a survey of voice syncretism in 222 geographically and genealogically diverse languages, but also thoroughly revisits previous research on the phenomenon. Voice syn...
