Lexical Conflation as a Basis for Relexification

Author(s):  
Alain Kihm

Substratal influences as an explanation for creolization (and language change generally) often fail to convince for one major reason, namely that, in most cases, the possible substratum for a given creole language is now separated from the site where creolization took place by a wide historical and geographical gap. This, for example, is the case of the West African languages vis-à-vis the Caribbean Creoles.

2015 ◽  
pp. 181-192
Author(s):  
Elena Perekhvalskaya ◽  

This article deals with the problem of the early stages of creole formation. The significant structural and material similarities between the aspectual systems of the verb in Hiberno-English and in the West Indies English-based creoles are demonstrated. Suggestions are made about the possible impact of the Irish language on the formation of the English-based creoles in the early stages of creolisation. The historical evidence which proves the possibility of language contact between Irish, English and West African languages in the Caribbean in the past is provided.


Author(s):  
Hanétha Vété-Congolo

The Euro-enslavement enterprise in America expanded the European geography temporarily, and, more lastingly, its culturo-linguistic and philosophical influence. The deportation of millions of Africans within that enterprise similarly extended the African presence in this part of the world, especially in the Caribbean. Africans deported by the French Empire spoke languages of the West Atlantic Mande, Kwa, or Voltaic groups. They arrived in their new and final location with their languages. However, no African language wholly survived the ordeal of enslavement in the Caribbean. This signals language as perhaps the most important political and philosophical instrument of colonization. I am therefore interested in “Pawòl,” that is, the ethical, human, and humanist responses Africans brought to their situation through language per se and African languages principally. I am also interested in the metaphysical value of “Pawòl.”


2020 ◽  
pp. 100-122
Author(s):  
Jason Kandybowicz

This chapter concludes the book by considering Anti-contiguity in a cross-linguistic context. It is shown that the proposal can be successfully applied to derive asymmetries in wh- in-situ distribution beyond the West African languages considered in Chapters 2–4. The chapter focuses on thirteen languages from diverse language families (Romance, Bantu, and Indo-Aryan, among others) and considers the implications of data from these languages for the final formulation of the Anti-contiguity condition. On the basis of these considerations, the Anti-contiguity constraint is parameterized. Among the languages considered against the backdrop of the Anti-contiguity proposal in this chapter are French; Spanish; Catalan; Zulu; Bàsàá; Duala; Shona; Lubukusu; Kiitharaka; Hindi-Urdu; Bangla; Iraqi Arabic; and Malayalam.


1963 ◽  
Vol 6 (03) ◽  
pp. 30-31
Author(s):  
Joseph Greenberg

The Third West African Languages Congress took place in Freetown, Sierra Leone, from March 26 to April 1, 1963. This was the third of the annual meetings of those interested in West African languages sponsored by the West African Languages Survey, previous meetings having been held in Accra (1961) and Dakar (1962). The West African Languages Survey is a Ford Foundation project. Additional financial assistance from UNESCO and other sources contributed materially to the scope and success of the meeting. This meeting was larger than previous ones both in attendance and in number of papers presented and, it may be said, in regard to the scientific level of the papers presented. The official participants, seventy-two in number, came from virtually every country in West Africa, from Western European countries and from the United States. The linguistic theme of the meeting was the syntax of West African languages, and a substantial portion of the papers presented were on this topic. In addition, there was for the first time at these meetings a symposium on the teaching of English, French and African languages in Africa. The papers of this symposium will be published in the forthcoming series of monographs planned as a supplement to the new Journal of West African Languages. The other papers are to appear in the Journal of African Languages edited by Jack Berry of the School of Oriental and African Studies.


1981 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 289-302 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland Littlewood ◽  
Maurice Lipsedge

SynopsisVarious studies have shown: (i) increased rates of psychoses in immigrants to Britain, and a particularly high rate of schizophrenia in the West Indian- and West African-born; and (ii) a greater proportion of atypical psychoses in immigrants. A retrospective study of psychotic inpatients from a London psychiatric unit demonstrated increased rates of schizophrenia in patients from the Caribbean and West Africa. These patients included a high proportion of those with paranoid and religious phenomenology, those with frequent changes of diagnosis, formal admissions, and married women. The West Indian-born had been in Britain for nearly 10 years before first seeing a psychiatrist and, if they had an illness with religious symptomatology, were likely to have been in hospital for only 3 weeks. Rates of schizophrenia without paranoid phenomenology were similar in each ethnic group. It is suggested that the increase in the diagnosis of schizophrenia in the West Indian- born, and possibly in the West African-born, may be due in part to the occurrence of acute psychotic reactions which are diagnosed as schizophrenia.


Author(s):  
William O'Reilly

The movement of people in the Atlantic world in the period 1450–1850 is a story of categorisation, organisation, and exploitation of labour in a time of global transformation. More than 25 million people were transported from east to west, to be planted in South, Central and North America, the Caribbean, the Atlantic islands, and the West African littoral. The fruits of this seed labour came irrevocably to transform the demographic composition of the Americas and Africa, and to a lesser extent Europe. Some migrants were slaves, or unfree white colonists, notably convicts and prisoners, or indentured servants whose liberties were severely limited. Religion and language, as well as flora and fauna, travelled with the first colonists; one accident of Spanish and general European colonialism was the environmental and ecological transformation of the Americas. This article also looks at migration in the Atlantic world in relation to Africans, Spain, Portugal, Britain, Ireland, the Netherlands, and France.


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