A Linguistic Geography of Africa (Cambridge Approaches to Language Contact)

More than forty years ago it was demonstrated that the African continent can be divided into four distinct language families. Research on African languages has accordingly been preoccupied with reconstructing and understanding similarities across these families. This has meant that an interest in other kinds of linguistic relationship, such as whether structural similarities and dissimilarities among African languages are the result of contact between these languages, has never been the subject of major research. This 2007 book shows that such similarities across African languages are more common than is widely believed. It provides a broad perspective on Africa as a linguistic area, as well as an analysis of specific linguistic regions. In order to have a better understanding of African languages, their structures, and their history, more information on these contact-induced relationships is essential to understanding Africa's linguistic geography, and to reconstructing its history and prehistory. Front Cover......Page 1 Synopsis ......Page 2 Title Page......Page 4 Copyright......Page 5 Table of Contents......Page 6 Maps......Page 8 Figures......Page 9 Tables......Page 10 Contributors......Page 12 Series editor’s foreword......Page 13 Acknowledgements......Page 15 Abbreviations......Page 16 1 Introduction......Page 20 Language contact......Page 21 Change in typological profil......Page 23 Areal distribution: word order......Page 25 Micro-areas......Page 28 The present volume......Page 29 2.1 On linguistic areas......Page 34 2.2 Earlier work......Page 36 2.3 “Africanisms”......Page 38 2.4 A survey......Page 47 2.5 Conclusions......Page 53 3.1 Phonological zones in Africa......Page 55 3.2 Segmental features......Page 58 3.3 Prosodic features......Page 87 3.4 Summary and discussion......Page 99 4.2 Core grammatical relations......Page 105 4.3 The verb......Page 121 4.4 The noun and the noun phrase......Page 134 4.5 Adpositions......Page 143 4.6 The adjective......Page 144 4.7 Adverbs and ideophones......Page 145 4.8 Word-order typology......Page 146 4.9 Non-verbal predications and copulas......Page 149 4.11 Sentence types......Page 151 4.12 Negation......Page 154 4.13 Focus......Page 156 4.14 Complex constructions......Page 158 4.15 The grammatical coding of spatial relations......Page 164 4.16 Conclusion......Page 167 5.1 Introduction......Page 170 5.2 The linguistic features......Page 172 5.3 Previous approaches......Page 189 5.4 Areal vs. genealogical explanation......Page 193 5.5 Preliminaries to the historical emergence of the Macro-Sudan belt......Page 198 5.6 The Macro-Sudan belt and historical linguistic research in Africa......Page 202 6.1 Introduction......Page 205 6.2 Common features......Page 211 *......Page 212 da ́......Page 232 6.3 Historical conclusions......Page 239 7.1 Introduction......Page 247 7.2 Research history......Page 248 7.3 Proposed new features......Page 253 7.4 Summary......Page 269 8.1 Introduction......Page 270 8.2 The nature of marked-nominative languages......Page 271 8.3 Distribution of marked-nominative languages......Page 283 8.4 Conclusions......Page 289 Bworo, Kefa......Page 290 9.1 The verb-finl type in a crosslinguistic perspective......Page 291 9.2 African languages with a presumed verb-fnal constituent order......Page 293 9.3 The grammatical coding of constituency and dependency relations......Page 309 9.4 Beyond the clause level......Page 312 9.5 Below the clause level: the role of self-organizing principles......Page 320 9.6 Extending the typology or accepting the limits of typological research?......Page 325 Notes......Page 328 References......Page 342 Index......Page 373 "More than forty years ago it was demonstrated that the African continent can be divided into four distinct language families. Research on African languages has accordingly been preoccupied with reconstructing and understanding similarities across these families. This has meant that an interest in other kinds of linguistic relationship, such as whether structural similarities and dissimilarities among African languages are the result of contact between these languages, has never been the subject of major research. The aim of this book is to show that such similarities across African languages are more common than is widely believed. It provides a broad perspective on Africa as a linguistic area, as well as an analysis of specific linguistic regions. In order to have a better understanding of African languages, their structures, and their history, more information on these contact-induced relationships is essential in order to understand Africa's linguistic geography, and reconstruct its history and prehistory."--BOOK JACKET Is Africa a linguistic area? / Bernd Heine & Zelealem Leyew Africa as a phonological area / G.N. Clements & Annie Rialland Africa as a morphosyntactic area / Denis Creissels ... [et al.] The macro-Sudan belt : towards identifying a linguistic area in northern sub-Saharan Africa / Tom Güldemann The Tanzanian Rift Valley area / Roland Kie€ling, Maarten Mous & Derek Nurse Ethiopia / Joachim Crass & Ronny Meyer The marked-nominative languages of eastern Africa / Christa König Africa's verb-final languages / Gerrit J. Dimmendaal. Research on African languages has been preoccupied with understanding similarities across the four distinct language families. This book discusses whether structural similarities and dissimilarities among African languages are the result of contact between these languages, and demonstrates that such similarities are more common than is widely believed. An edited 2007 collection of essays discussing the linguistic relationships between African languages