AMO · Afrikanistische Monographien

The endangerment of minority languages on the African continent is the focus of this book. The social environment of language shift as well as the process preceding the extinction of languages are also dealt with. Within a frame of reference of language displacement, declining and replacing languages, shifting speech communities, as well as settings of language displacement is discussed and illustrated.

Matthias Brenzinger is one of the world's leading experts on issues relating to language endangerment and language death. In this book, he proposes a number of generalizations on what induces a number of African societies to give up their own language in favour of some other language.

The book is of especial interest to africanists, sociologists, anthropologists, and sociologists.

Based on the theory of natural categorization, this study investigates the domain of body part vocabularies. The book rests on field research carried out in Kenya. In the course of this research altogether eighteen languages belonging to all three language phyla found in Kenya were studied in some detail. One of the conclusions reached by the author is that people conceptualize and categorize their experiences universally in a similar way because the human body is structurally the same no matter which language they speak.

Kognitive Strukturen von Körperteilvokabularien in kenianischen Sprachen is a fundamental linguistic contribution to the field of African Studies in general and to cognitive linguistics in particular.

Possession is a central aspect of language. This book presents a functional analyses of nominal and verbal possession in Swahili. It suggests that there is a systematic relationship between possessive relations on a cognitive level and their functional equivalents. Hereby culture-specific concepts of the Swahili in the area of possession are discovered and discussed. Possession im Swahili is a fundamental linguistic contribution to the field of AfricanStudies in general and our knowledge of the Swahili language in particular. It also provides a key to the understanding of certain aspects of Swahili culture.

Grundzüge einer Grammatik aus der Grammatikalisierungsperspektive.

This book is intended to describe the grammar of the pygmy language Baka (Ubangi familiy), South-East Cameroon. The description includes new analysis and approaches mainly in the verbal system and the paradigm of prepositions. It is the first attempt to present not only the synchronic structure and functions of a language but rather to reconstruct, on the basis of its synchronic morphosyntax, the various grammaticalization processes which make up the actual shape of the language. For example, instead of being accidental, instances of polysemy can be understood as representing highly motivated steps in the development of the language.

The book is of interest in particular to africanists, general linguists, anthropologists, and psychologists.

Eine komparatistische Untersuchung über den Roman der Wolof und der Manding.

This ground breaking study discusses the cultural and linguistic dilemma of Wolof and Manding writers in a francographic environment.
It offers an overview of literature by Wolof and Manding authors written in both African languages and French. Cultural continuity and the transformation of text-syntactic and text-semantic elements of oral literature in contemporary writing are the focus of this book. The study shows that only a good knowledge of the traditional epics and narratives enables the critic to interpret contemporary literature of the Manding and the Wolof.

A comparatistic analysis of the following thematic areas completes this study: the treatment of traditional Wolof and Manding religion, and of Islam, as well as the social role of women as presented by Wolof and Manding writers.

This book is of interest mainly to students of African literature.

Gola is one of the South West Atlantic Mel languages spoken in Liberia on which only little reserarch has been done so far.

The book gives an outline of the morphosyntax of this language based on original field work in West Africa.

The following areas are covered: Phonology, parts of speech, clause structure, sentence structure including observations on text cohesion. A brief typological characterisation of the language concludes the book. Interesting aspects of Gola typology are both pre- and suffixing noun class markers and a large range of devices for expressing deontic and epistemic modality.

The Morphosyntax of Gola is of interest in particular to linguists, anthropologists, sociologists.

In most previous treatments, the Maa language in general and the Maasai dialect in particular have been described as being characterized by the presence of a tense system. In this volume it is argued that Maa does not have verbal tenses, rather that it is an aspect language. The main aspectual categories are discussed in more detail. The analysis shows that a better understanding of these categories requires taking the various verb classes of the language into consideration. The book also describes the use of aspect in narrative discourse and the grammaticalization patterns that these categories have undergone.

The book is of interest mainly to students of African linguistics, general linguistics, and of cognitive linguistics.

This is the first description of a language that is on the verge of extinction. The Kuliak group, of which So and Ik are the only remaining members, has thus far eluded genetic classification.

The So, also known as Tepes (Tepeth), live on three mountain ranges in the Karamoja district of Uganda. The dialect described here is that of Moroto. The book covers phonology, morphology and syntax. So has an idiosyncratic vowel harmony system. The number morphology exhibits a diversity of plural suffixes as well as a singulative. The case system shows signs of internal breakdown in the context of language death. The verbal morphology is complex showing interalia directional derivation. The verb occurs sentence-initially preceded by sentential tense/mood clitics, one of which, the multifunctional "narrative", is discussed at some length. Ten texts with glosses and an English translation complete this work.

Ein Beitrag zur Rekonstruktion historischer Syntax.

This book is intended to put an end to the long-standing and controversial debate concerning the basic word order of Proto-Niger-Congo. In the theoretical part of the book, the author concentrates on that type of word order change that is an unavoidable outcome of the grammaticalization of tense/aspect periphrasis. In the empirical part, those languages are investigated that exhibit the structural preconditions for word order change through tense/aspect grammaticalization. It is shown that all Niger-Congo languages belong to either of two types: a) SVO languages without an inherent tendency to develop SOV structures, and b) SVO languages that exhibit different degrees of an emerging SOV syntax. There are only a few languages where periphrastic aspects and tenses have been grammaticalized to such an extent that those languages nowadays have to be classified as possessing a basic order SOV. It is concluded that for a number of reasons Proto-Niger-Congo must have had a subject-verb-object syntax.