scholarly journals A phylogenetic analysis of stable structural features in West African languages

2016 ◽  
pp. 62-94
Author(s):  
Kristoffer Friis Bøegh ◽  
Aymeric Daval-Markussen ◽  
Peter Bakker
Keyword(s):  
Structural Features ◽  
West African ◽  
Phylogenetic Networks ◽  
African Language ◽  
African Languages ◽  
Language History ◽  
Distributional Properties ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Language Sample ◽  
Selection Of

Lexical comparison has long dominated the study of West African language history. Ap-proaching the subject from a different perspective, this paper compares a sample of West African languages based on a selection of typological features proposed to be temporally stable and hence possible markers of historical connections between languages. We utilize phylogenetic networks to visualize and compare typological distances in the language sample, in order to assess the extent to which the distributional properties of the selected features reflect genealogy, areality, or no plausible historical signal. Languages tend to cluster in accordance with genealogical relationships identified in the literature, albeit with a number of inconsistencies argued to reflect contact influences and chance resemblances. Results support the contention that typology can provide information about historical links between West African languages.

Morphological Processes in Haitian Creole

1989 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne-Marie Brousseau ◽  
Sandra Filipovich ◽  
Claire Lefebvre
Keyword(s):  
West African ◽  
African Language ◽  
African Languages ◽  
Haitian Creole ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Morphological Processes ◽  
Creole Languages ◽  
Selection Of

In this paper we examine the morphology of Haitian with respect to two issues widely discussed in the literature on creoles: 1) the substratum issue, formulated in our view in terms of the role played by relexification in the formation of Haitian Creole; and 2) the widespread assumption that creole languages are morphologically simpler than their lexifier language. These two issues are not unrelated. The morphological simplicity assumption is based on a comparison of creole with European languages that have contributed the bulk of their respective lexicons. In order to discuss the two issues, we will compare the productive morphology of Haitian with that of French (the lexifier language), and Fon, a contributive West African language. The major findings of this paper with respect to the issues addressed here are the following: 1) productive affixes of Haitian Creole pattern in a significant way with the model of contributing West African languages more so than with French; and 2) the presumed morphological simplicity of creoles reduces to the selection of the unmarked option with respect to the position of morphological heads.

scholarly journals Ida War—An Appreciation

Africa ◽  
1950 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-4
Author(s):  
D. Westermann
Keyword(s):  
Sound Production ◽  
West African ◽  
African Studies ◽  
African Languages ◽  
European Universities ◽  
Scientific Analysis ◽  
The Subject ◽  
African Linguistics ◽  
The University ◽  
New Phase

Professor Ida C. Ward, until 1948 head of the African Department of the School of Oriental and African Studies in the University of London, was equally eminent as a teacher and researcher; she had lectured in many European universities and her distinguished gifts were known and appreciated in Europe and America. It is largely through her work and her personality that the African Department of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, has become a world-famous institution in the field of African linguistics. Her name will forever be connected with the study of African languages, and in particular of African tone languages. It was the function of tone in West African languages on which her work centred, and her achievements in this difficult and delicate field have initiated a new phase in our knowledge of African speech. Hers was the unfailing ear, the keen observation of sound-production and the art of reproducing foreign sounds and new sound-sequences, which make the true phonetician. What gave her work such fullness of life and actuality was its intimate linking with practical language study. It may be said that many of her important discoveries were the immediate outcome of her teaching. Teaching, practising, and researching were to her an indissoluble unit. ‘The practical depends on the scientific, for one can never tell what practical problems—or solutions of problems—will be thrown up by meticulous scientific analysis’, and ‘on the other hand, the practical application of scientific research keeps the researcher within bounds, as it were, and will not allow him too far into the realms of conjecture and theorising’. She was an ideal and enthusiastic teacher, never tiring, never losing patience. A group consisting of herself, an African assistant, and a small cluster of students was her ideal; here all were partners in the same aim, and all took an active part in the subject discussed.

The African Diaspora and Language

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maureen Warner-Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
African Diaspora ◽  
West African ◽  
African Language ◽  
African Languages ◽  
West Central ◽  
Cultural Spaces ◽  
Native American Language ◽  
Religious Nature

Nowhere in the Americas is any African language used for routine communicative purposes. But fossilized spoken texts, songs, and chants are still performed for rituals, largely but not exclusively of a religious nature. Such events exist in non-mainstream cultural spaces. However, African lexical items and phrases have been retained in the lingua francas of the Americas, languages which have themselves been shaped by the confluence of African, European, and Native American language speakers. Most of these languages are considered “creoles.” They contain not only lexical but also syntactic, phonological, semantic, and idiomatic residues of various West African and West Central African languages. In a reverse movement of language diffusion, English-lexified creole speakers have influenced the formation of Krio in Sierra Leone and its offshoot “pidgins.”

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