Mixed Languages

Ma’á/Mbugu is a famous and classic case of a mixed language spoken in Tanzania. The mixed language is in fact a parallel lexicon to a Bantu language, one that is very close to Pare. Both are widely spoken by the community, and existence of the mixed version is a strong marker of their identity and sets them apart from the other populations in the Usambara mountains. The parallel lexicon contains words from a South Cushitic source, Maasai, an earlier East Cushitic source, and manipulated words from the regular lexicon. The language evolved out of a parallel lexicon after language shift from a Cushitic language.

Wandala

Wandala (Central Chadic) is spoken by about 45,000 people in Cameroon and northern Nigeria. The language has grammaticalized phonological means marking types of connections between the elements of the utterance, indicating an expected follow-up, a less expected follow-up, and the absence of a follow-up. The coding of some grammatical relations, such as subject and object, is distributed over a wide range of morphemes. Wandala has two tones. While in nouns both tones can be part of the underlying structure, the tones are not part of the underlying structure of verbs and carry only grammatical function. The language has a rich verbal morphology coding syntactic and semantic relations within the clause. Subject suffixes to the verb mark aspectual and modal functions different from those marked by subject pronouns preceding the verb. Inflectional markers on the verb indicate the grammatical relation of the noun phrase following the verb.

Cara

Cara is a highly endangered, little-documented Central Khoisan (Khoe) language of the East Kalahari branch, spoken by a small number of persons in Botswana’s Central District. The chapter begins with a brief description of phonological inventories on the segmental (consonant and vowel phonemes) as well as suprasegmental level (tones). Derivational and inflectional aspects are discussed, separately for nominals and verbals, under morphological headings such as gender-based noun class system, pronominal paradigms (personal, demonstrative, possessive, and interrogative), structure of finite verbs, verbal extensions, tense and aspect, modality, and negation. The syntactic characteristics dealt with are word order, coordination, subordination, declarative sentences, questions, and relative clauses.

Syntax

This chapter presents an overview of the most important syntactic properties of African languages and language families. It investigates the status of syntactic word categories (noun, verb, adjective, pronoun, etc.) and examines the different word orders and word order alternations that are observed phrase-internally and at the level of the clause. Also discussed are syntactic constructions such as the passive, wh-questions, and relative clauses, as well as morphological phenomena that bear a close relation to syntax, such as case and agreement. Special attention is drawn to syntactic traits which are attested in African languages but which occur rarely, or not at all, outside Africa, such as the SVO–S-Aux-OV word order alternation (found in Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan languages as well as in Northern Khoisan), the construct state nominal (a characteristic of Afro-Asiatic languages), or logophoricity (a feature of subgroups of Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan, and Afro-Asiatic).

Baale

Baale is a Surmic language spoken in the border area between Ethiopia and South Sudan. Whereas genetically it is closely related to Surmic languages farther towards the west (in South Sudan), it has converged towards more distantly related Surmic languages spoken farther towards the east, in Ethiopia, as a result of intensive language contact. This chapter presents a grammatical outline of Baale, and shows how contact phenomena affected the phonological, morphosyntactic, and semantic structure of this Nilo-Saharan language. In addition, the chapter presents prototypical features of a Surmic language, such as the tripartite number-marking system, case, and the distinction between conjoint and disjoint verb forms.

Linguistic Isolates

Next to three major phyla and a range of smaller language families, one finds several linguistic isolates on the African continent. The fact that many isolates are found at the periphery of expansion zones, where they are part of accretion zones, suggests that they represent the last representatives of language families which have become extinct. Climate change, social innovations, and technological innovations probably forced groups to adapt to new situations, which often involved language shift. The genetic classification of these isolates is often problematic because it is difficult to differentiate between borrowing and genetic inheritance, as no closely related languages apparently survived.

Atlantic

Atlantic is one of the controversial branches of the Niger-Congo language family. Both its validity as a genetic group and its internal classification are far from being settled. The longstanding debate on the status and structure of Atlantic cannot be closed before the descriptive situation of these languages allows for sufficient and reliable lexical data; before attempts at applying the comparative method have been made; and before the extensive role of language contact for shaping the languages in question is taken into account. Although no typological feature or feature combinations characterizes the group as a whole, several features are considered typical for Atlantic languages, including noun class systems, consonant mutation, and complex systems of verbal derivation, which have been used to justify suggested genealogical groupings. Atlantic languages, with the exception of Fula, are attested in an area from Liberia to Senegal, stretching from the Atlantic coast to the hinterland.

Central Cushitic

This chapter describes the Central Cushitic (hereafter CC) language family, one of four branches of Cushitic. CC, traditionally known as Agäw, contains four languages: Awŋi, Bilin, Kemantney, and Xamt’aŋa. Apart from Bilin, which is spoken in Eritrea, the CC languages are spoken in the central highlands of Ethiopia. The name CC was evidently given to Agäw on account of the geographical distribution of the North, South, East and the then West Cushitic (later Omotic) subgroups. The morphology, especially the verb morphology, identifies the CC languages as Cushitic, but they are classified as a separate branch of Cushitic on the basis of salient features exhibited in them. CC languages exhibit striking similarities in the lexicon, and due to longstanding language contact there exists much inter-influence with the Ethio-Semitic languages. These and other linguistic properties of CC are discussed in this chapter.

Language and Ethnobotany

This chapter deals with ethnobotany, folk taxonomy, and African languages. In its first part people’s structuring of the plant kingdom with particular reference to life forms, and generic and specific taxa is discussed. Reference is made to relevant folk taxonomic terms and plant names in Bantu languages from East Africa, especially Tanzania, Namibia, to some extent also from the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic. It is interesting to note that on top of widespread taxa like TREE or PLANT habitat-related life forms were traced in various languages such as CLIMBER, VINE in Vidunda or BUSH, SHRUB in Kwangali, and THORN TREE in Ndonga, as well as other specific taxa. In this respect sub-life forms were also recorded and examples given. The second part of the chapter focuses on folk conceptualization and the system of Bantu noun classes.

Niger-congo, with a Special Focus on Benue-congo

Niger-Congo is the largest referential language group in Africa. The extent to which it represents a true genealogical grouping is not established, though there is a large core set of members of the family that all specialists currently accept as related. These languages spread across sub-Saharan Africa, and their most significant common feature from a comparative perspective is a distinctive type of noun class system. The largest subgroup of Niger-Congo is Benue-Congo, which includes the Bantu languages that dominate the southern part of the continent. From a typological perspective, Niger-Congo languages are quite varied, especially with respect to their degree of morphological elaboration. This is also true of Benue-Congo, with some of its languages having an isolating morphological character and others showing extensive agglutinating morphology. Future comparative work on the family would likely benefit from greater integration of the results of sociolinguistic investigations into models of its historical development.