Matatu ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chantal Zabus

The essay shows how Ezenwa–Ohaeto's poetry in pidgin, particularly in his collection (1988), emblematizes a linguistic interface between, on the one hand, the pseudo-pidgin of Onitsha Market pamphleteers of the 1950s and 1960s (including in its gendered guise as in Cyprian Ekwensi) and, on the other, its quasicreolized form in contemporary news and television and radio dramas as well as a potential first language. While locating Nigerian Pidgin or EnPi in the wider context of the emergence of pidgins on the West African Coast, the essay also draws on examples from Joyce Cary, Frank Aig–Imoukhuede, Ogali A. Ogali, Ola Rotimi, Wole Soyinka, and Tunde Fatunde among others. It is not by default but out of choice and with their 'informed consent' that EnPi writers such as Ezenwa–Ohaeto contributed to the unfinished plot of the pidgin–creole continuum.


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-66
Author(s):  
I. O. A. Adeleye ◽  
U. J. Ikhatua

Twelve ram lambs of the West African Forest type of between 15.7 and 24.6 kg were divided into four groups of 3 animals each. A group was assigned to one of four diets consisting of the following concentrate: grass hay ratios - 20 : 80 (A), 40 : 60 (B), 60 : 40 (C) and 80 : 20 (D). Feed intake, nutrient digestibilities and efficiency of feed utilization were measured. As the level of concentrate increased, the contents of crude protein ether extract, nitrogen-free extract (NFE) and gross energy of the diets increased, while the crude fibre and ash contents decreased almost linearly. Voluntary feed intake increased with increasing levels of concentrate, with diet C having a significantly higher (P 0.01) Relative Intake (RI) value than the other diets. Both the Nutritive Value Index (NVI) and Digestible Energy (DE) intake values were significantly higher (P. 0.01) in diets C and D than the other diets. Generally, the digestion coefficients for the gross energy, crude protein, crude fibre and nitrogen free extract increased with increasing levels of concentrate, the values being significantly higher (P 0.01) in diets C and D, while diet A showed a significantly lower (P 0.05) dry matter digestion coefficient value when compared with either diets. Although a similar trend was observed in the digestion coefficient for ether extract, the differences were not significant (P 0.05). With the exception of animals on diet C which had the highest daily weight gains, average daily weight gains and efficiency of feed utilization increased with successive substitution of concentrate for grass hay.


Africa ◽  
1961 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 258-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
Akin L. Mabogunje

Opening ParagraphDuring the sitting of the West African Lands Committee in 1912, the witnesses who were called before the Committee from Egba Division emphatically stated that sales of both farm and town lands had been going on in Egbaland for some considerable time and had become accepted as normal. Equally significant was the vigour with which witnesses from all the other Yoruba sub-tribes countered the suggestion that sale of land existed or was permitted by the traditional land law and custom. H. L. Ward Price in his report also pointed out that sales of land had been going on in Egbaland for at least sixty years before he was writing in the 1930's. From the evidence he collected, it would seem that land sales dated back to between 1860 and 1880.


Author(s):  
Ulrike Gut

This chapter describes the history, role, and structural properties of English in the West African countries the Gambia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana, Nigeria, the anglophone part of Cameroon, and the island of Saint Helena. It provides an overview of the historical phases of trading contact, British colonization and missionary activities and describes the current role of English in these multilingual countries. Further, it outlines the commonalities and differences in the vocabulary, phonology, morphology, and syntax of the varieties of English spoken in anglophone West Africa. It shows that Liberian Settler English and Saint Helenian English have distinct phonological and morphosyntactic features compared to the other West African Englishes. While some phonological areal features shared by several West African Englishes can be identified, an areal profile does not seem to exist on the level of morphosyntax.


1980 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 369-372 ◽  
Author(s):  
E.N. Saad

The following is a brief description of a collection of Arabic materials deposited by John Paden at the Herskovits Africana Library, Northwestern University. The collection includes 424 numbered volumes of which about half enclose manuscript materials while the other half enclose published books and pamphlets, most of them privately printed in Kano, Zaria, or Cairo. The collection altogether (and especially so among the pamphlets) includes a substantial proportion of works of West African authorship. However, the classical Muslim/Arabic literature, and especially the basic jurisprudential treatises and the better known diwans of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, are well represented in the collection.This summary is made up of three parts, beginning with a few words on the classical Muslim/Arabic works in the collection. The second part is concerned with the unusual manuscript materials and includes a listing and description of these materials. Finally, the third part will be concerned with individual West African authors whose works are well represented in the collection. In most cases, these authors are represented by privately printed materials or by manuscripts of which copies generally tend to be found elsewhere.In the references to specific manuscripts below, no attempt will be made to describe the calligraphy, the size of pages, etc. The purpose is to call attention to the availability of the sources under consideration, especially since they are scheduled to be microfilmed by the Cooperative Africana Microform Project soon.Though mostly represented by manuscript copies, the diwans of Arabic poetry present little interest since they tend to be recent copies of works long ago published in numerous printings and editions elsewhere.


Africa ◽  
1951 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 261-278 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paula Brown

Opening ParagraphThe development of large centralized states in West Africa has long been recognized. The complexity of organization of the few well-known kingdoms, but not their differences in size and structure, is constantly emphasized in the literature. The number and variety of West African groups which have not developed states have, on the other hand, frequently been underestimated. In a comparative review by Professors Fortes and Evans-Pritchard two types of political system, centralized and segmentary, have been described for Africa as a whole, with examples of each in West Africa. A survey of West African societies suggests, however, that finer distinctions are possible and that not all these societies can be placed in one or other of these two categories. In particular, this classification omits consideration of ‘stateless’ societies in which associations, rather than a segmentary lineage system, regulate political relations; and it fails to distinguish different types of authority and political structure in states.


Author(s):  
Rajend Mesthrie

Four types of English exist in Africa, identifiable in terms of history, functions, and linguistic characteristics. West African Pidgin English has a history going back to the 15th century, 400 years before formal colonization. Creole varieties of English have a history going back to repatriation of slaves from the Caribbean and the United States in the 19th century. Second language varieties, which are the most widespread on the continent, are prototypically associated with British colonization and its education systems. L1 (First language) English occurred mostly in Southern and East Africa, and is best represented in South Africa. The latter shows significant similarities with the other major Southern Hemisphere varieties of English in Australia and New Zealand. All four subgroups of English are growing in numbers.


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.


2016 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 275-299 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manoel Souza D'Agrella-Filho ◽  
Franklin Bispo-Santos ◽  
Ricardo Ivan Ferreira Trindade ◽  
Paul Yves Jean Antonio

ABSTRACT: In the last decade, the participation of the Amazonian Craton on Precambrian supercontinents has been clarified thanks to a wealth of new paleomagnetic data. Paleo to Mesoproterozoic paleomagnetic data favored that the Amazonian Craton joined the Columbia supercontinent at 1780 Ma ago, in a scenario that resembled the South AMerica and BAltica (SAMBA) configuration. Then, the mismatch of paleomagnetic poles within the Craton implied that either dextral transcurrent movements occurred between Guiana and Brazil-Central Shield after 1400 Ma or internal rotation movements of the Amazonia-West African block took place between 1780 and 1400 Ma. The presently available late-Mesoproterozoic paleomagnetic data are compatible with two different scenarios for the Amazonian Craton in the Rodinia supercontinent. The first one involves an oblique collision of the Amazonian Craton with Laurentia at 1200 Ma ago, starting at the present-day Texas location, followed by transcurrent movements, until the final collision of the Amazonian Craton with Baltica at ca. 1000 Ma. The second one requires drifting of the Amazonian Craton and Baltica away from the other components of Columbia after 1260 Ma, followed by clockwise rotation and collision of these blocks with Laurentia along Grenvillian Belt at 1000 Ma. Finally, although the time Amazonian Craton collided with the Central African block is yet very disputed, the few late Neoproterozoic/Cambrian paleomagnetic poles available for the Amazonian Craton, Laurentia and other West Gondwana blocks suggest that the Clymene Ocean separating these blocks has only closed at late Ediacaran to Cambrian times, after the Amazonian Craton rifted apart from Laurentia at ca. 570 Ma.


2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 27-31
Author(s):  
Claudia Brazzale

Over the past decade, so-called African dance has become increasingly popular in Italy, growing in tandem with local West African diasporic communities and the national concern over immigration. Although the circulation of African dance provides West African migrants with an important form of self-identification and subsistence, it often revolves around problematic discourses rooted on the myth and romance with the primitive. Constructing and capitalizing on the fetishization of black bodies, African dance mobilizes complex economies of desire that rest on an orientalist fascination with the Other. While these economies reify racist stereotypes, they also enable significant communities of knowledge and interracial encounters.


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