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1
McPherson, Laura, and Michael Obiri-Yeboah. "Akan tone encoding across musical modalities." Studies in African Linguistics 52, no. 1and2 (April 28, 2024): 160–88. http://dx.doi.org/10.32473/sal.52.1and2.133067.
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Musical surrogate languages like talking drums remain understudied in the linguistics literature, despite their close connection with the phonetics and phonology of the spoken language. African surrogate languages tend to be based on tone, making them a unique angle for studying a language’s tonal system. This paper looks at the encoding of Akan tone in three instrumental surrogate languages: the atumpan drums, the seperewa harp, and the abɛntia horn trumpet. Each instrument presents different organological constraints that could shape how the tone system is transposed to musical form. Drawing on novel data elicited with musicians in Ghana, we show that all three systems are built on a two-tone foundation mirroring the Akan tone system, but with subtle differences in the treatment of downstep and intonational effects like phrase-final lowering and lax question intonation.
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AOR, Terfa, Margaret Nguemo IOREMBER, and Moses TSEVENDA. "PALATALISATION IN THE TIV PHONOLOGY." International Journal of Language, Linguistics, Literature and Culture 01, no. 01 (2022): 05–20. http://dx.doi.org/10.59009/ijlllc.2022.0002.
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Palatalisation is a well-known phonological process and a repairing strategy in the Tiv phonology which has not been adequately explored. Palatalisation in the Tiv phonology examines the phonotactic constraints of palatalisation and explores the functions that palatalisation performs in the Tiv phonology. This study has adopted Generative Phonological Model that was jointly co-authored by Chomsky and Halle’s (1968) Sound Patterns of English (SPE). The study used participant-observation instrument in this study. The study used both primary and secondary materials for gathering of data. In this study, the researcher got raw data, transcribed, translated and classed them into phonotactic constraints and functions of palatalisation in Tiv. From this study, it has been discovered that Tiv palatalisation has phonetic and orthographic classes; palatalisation results in consonant clusters, pluralisation, epenthesis, deletion and metathesis; palatalisation is a phonological process, secondary articulation and phonological change. The study is, therefore, recommended to scholars, lecturers and writers who are learning, teaching, researching and writing scholarly works on Linguistics, Nigerian and African Languages and English Language.
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Downing, Laura J. "Introduction." ZAS Papers in Linguistics 55 (January 1, 2011): 1–6. http://dx.doi.org/10.21248/zaspil.55.2011.405.
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In spite of this long history, most work to date on the phonology-syntax interface in Bantu languages suffers from limitations, due to the range of expertise required: intonation, phonology, syntax. Quite generally, intonational studies on African languages are extremely rare. Most of the existing data has not been the subject of careful phonetic analysis, whether of the prosody of neutral sentences or of questions or other focus structures. There are important gaps in our knowledge of Bantu syntax which in turn limit our understanding of the phonology-syntax interface. Recent developments in syntactic theory have provided a new way of thinking about the type of syntactic information that phonology can refer to and have raised new questions: Do only syntactic constituent edges condition prosodic phrasing? Do larger domains such as syntactic phases, or even other factors, like argument and adjunct distinctions, play a role? Further, earlier studies looked at a limited range of syntactic constructions. Little research exists on the phonology of focus or of sentences with non-canonical word order in Bantu languages. Both the prosody and the syntax of complex sentences, questions and dislocations are understudied for Bantu languages. Our project aims to remedy these gaps in our knowledge by bringing together a research team with all the necessary expertise. Further, by undertaking the intonational, phonological and syntactic analysis of several languages we can investigate whether there is any correlation among differences in morphosyntactic and prosodic properties that might also explain differences in phrasing and intonation. It will also allow us to investigate whether there are cross-linguistically common prosodic patterns for particular morpho-syntactic structure.
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Fuchs, Susanne, and Silke Hamann. "Papers in phonetics and phonology." ZAS Papers in Linguistics 37 (January 1, 2004): 243. http://dx.doi.org/10.21248/zaspil.37.2004.243.
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Table of Contents:
T. A. Hall (Indiana University): English syllabification as the interaction of markedness constraints
Antony D. Green: Opacity in Tiberian Hebrew: Morphology, not phonology
Sabine Zerbian (ZAS Berlin): Phonological Phrases in Xhosa (Southern Bantu)
Laura J. Downing (ZAS Berlin): What African Languages Tell Us About Accent Typology
Marzena Zygis (ZAS Berlin): (Un)markedness of trills: the case of Slavic r-palatalisation
Laura J. Downing (ZAS Berlin), Al Mtenje (University of Malawi), Bernd Pompino-Marschall (Humboldt-Universitat Berlin): Prosody and Information Structure in Chichewa
T. A. Hall (Indiana University). Silke Hamann (ZAS Berlin), Marzena Zygis (ZAS Berlin): The phonetics of stop assibilation
Christian Geng (ZAS Berlin), Christine Mooshammer (Universitat Kiel): The Hungarian palatal stop: phonological considerations and phonetic data
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Wolff, H. Ekkehard. "Did Proto-Chadic have velar nasals and prenasalised obstruents?" Afrika und Übersee 95 (December 31, 2022): 135–64. http://dx.doi.org/10.15460/auue.2022.95.1.265.
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Ever since the Afroasiatic affiliation of Chadic as a whole was suggested by Joseph H. Greenberg in his seminal re-classification of African languages since the 1950s and has been generally accepted, i.e. encompassing both ‘Chado-Hamitic’ and ‘Chadic’ languages of influential pre-Greenbergian genetic classifications, the issue of whether Proto-Chadic possessed prenasalised obstruents and velar nasals has been repeatedly raised and debated in the literature, yet without final consent. All of the 196 presently known Chadic languages would appear to possess these consonants in their synchronic phonemic inventories. The present article reviews the debate in view of recently available new insights on the historical phonology and lexical reconstruction based on data from 66 of the 79 known Central Chadic languages, i.e. the most numerous and most diverse branch of Chadic. According to these recent comparative studies of Central Chadic that allow to reconstruct Proto-Central Chadic phonology and lexicon, there is massive evidence to show that both velar nasals and prenasalised obstruents emerged as results of natural phonological processes probably already on the proto-language level, but need not be reconstructed for the proto-language’s phonemic inventory. And if Proto-Central Chadic did not have these consonants as inherited phonemes, then this would also be true for its predecessor, Proto-Chadic. The major processes leading to the emergence of velar nasals and prenasalised obstruents were segmental fusion and the emergence of prensalisation prosody that arose from the de-segmentalisation and prosodification of reconstructed nasals. The article summarises the evidence and gives illustrative examples for the reconstructed phonological processes, which created conditioned allophones that eventually became phonologised yielding synchronic phonemes in the modern Central Chadic languages.
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Bird, Steven. "Strategies for Representing Tone in African Writing Systems." Written Language and Literacy 2, no. 1 (July 23, 1999): 1–44. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/wll.2.1.02bir.
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Tone languages provide some interesting challenges for the designers of new orthographies. One approach is to omit tone marks, just as stress is not marked in English (zero marking). Another approach is to do phonemic tone analysis, and then make heavy use of diacritic symbols to distinguish the "tonemes" (shallow marking). While orthographies based on either system have been successful, this may be thanks to our ability to manage inadequate orthographies, rather than to any intrinsic advantage which is afforded by one or the other approach. In many cases, practical experience with both kinds of orthography in sub-Saharan Africa has shown that people have not been able to attain the level of reading and writing fluency that we know to be possible for the orthographies of non-tonal languages. In some cases this can be attributed to a socio linguistic setting which does not favour vernacular literacy. In other cases, the orthography itself may be to blame. If the orthography of a tone language is difficult to use or to learn, then a good part of the reason may be that the designer either has not paid enough attention to the FUNCTION of tone in the language, or has not ensured that the information encoded in the orthography is ACCESSIBLE to the ordinary (non-linguist) user of the language. If the writing of tone is not going to continue to be a stumbling block to literacy efforts, then a fresh approach to tone orthography is required — one which assigns high priority to these two factors. This article describes the problems with orthographies that use too few or too many tone marks, and critically evaluates a wide range of creative intermediate solutions. I review the contributions made by phonology and reading theory, and provide some broad methodological principles to guide those who are seeking to represent tone in a writing system. The tone orthographies of several languages from sub-Saharan Africa are presented throughout the article, with particular emphasis on some tone languages of Cameroon.
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Benson, Peace. "Ideophones in Dzə (Jenjo), an Adamawa language of Northeastern Nigeria." Language in Africa 1, no. 3 (December 25, 2020): 336–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.37892/2686-8946-2020-1-3-336-352.
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Ideophone is a phenomenon dominant in African languages. Dzə is an under-investigated and under-documented Adamawa language found in Taraba, Adamawa and Gombe States, Northeastern Nigeria. It was noticed that the language has a lot of ideophones. It became necessary to study it to understand its importance in the language. This study is to draw the attention of scholars working on Adamawa languages and ideophones. It will also thus form part of the grammar of Dzə someday. The study of ideophone is not exhaustive, especially in the minority languages of Northeastern Nigeria. The study shows that Dzə ideophones express intensity, emphasis and description. Dzə ideophones have unique phonological features and some of the sounds found in the conventional phonology of Dzə are not found in the ideophones. The phoneme /ŋ/ is common in the coda position of the ideophones. Ideophones modify verbs, adjectives and nouns in Dzə. They also function as adverbs and are elements that constitute a noun phrase. They augment other word classes like nouns, verbs and adjectives.
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Suzman, Susan M., and Busi Tshabalala. "Investigation of Language Impairment in Zulu." South African Journal of Communication Disorders 47, no. 2 (December 31, 2000): 25–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/sajcd.v47i2.975.
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Research into the nature of language impairment in African languages is just beginning (Demuth and Suzman, 1997). This paper presents findings from two case studies of Zulu children diagnosed as language-impaired. Speech samples from Sipho, 2;7 and 3;7 and Nompumelelo 5;6 were analysed for phonology, morphology, syntax and pragmatics. From these case studies, a profile of language impairment begins to emerge for Zulu. It is characterized by use of simple sentences and nonstandard verbal complexes. It reflects differential access to morphology. Children use NC and agreement morphology productively but they do not have access of subtle syntactic markers encoding semantic complexity. Infrequent use of verb extensions, participials, subjunctives and relative clause markers in Zulu contributes to reliance on simple sentences and stereotyped connectives.
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Roberts, David, and Stephen L. Walter. "Writing grammar rather than tone." Units of Language – Units of Writing 15, no. 2 (August 10, 2012): 226–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/wll.15.2.06rob.
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Some orthographies represent tone phonemically by means of diacritics; others favor zero marking. Neither solution is entirely satisfactory. The former leads to graphic overload; the latter to a profusion of homographs; both may reduce fluency. But there is a ‘third way’: to highlight the grammar rather than the tone system itself. To test this approach, we developed two experimental strategies for Kabiye: a grammar orthography and a tone orthography. Both are modifications of the standard orthography that does not mark tone. We tested these in a quantitative experiment involving literate L1 speakers that included dictation and spontaneous writing. Writers of the grammar orthography perform faster and more accurately than writers of the tone orthography, suggesting that they have an awareness of the morphological and syntactic structure of their language that may exceed their awareness of its phonology. This suggests that languages with grammatical tone might benefit from grammatical markers in the orthography. Keywords: tone; grammar; orthography; African languages; quantitative experiment
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Lee, Jackson L. "The Representation of Contour Tones in Cantonese." Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society 38 (September 25, 2012): 272. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/bls.v38i0.3335.
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<p>A central question in tonal phonology is the representation of tone. One of the focal points is the representation of contour tones, especially since Goldsmith (1976) and subsequent works have analyzed contour tones in Bantu languages as sequences of level tones. Cross-linguistically, it is generally well-recognized, following Yip’s (1989) terminology, that contour tones in African languages are typically clusters, which are sequences of level tones and consist of multiple tonal root nodes, and that contour tones in Asian languages are typically tone units, which have only one tonal root node. This paper points out an important exception—Cantonese— particularly in light of Yip (2001) and Barrie (2007) on Chinese contour tones. The correct view is at least implied in earlier analyses: Cantonese tones, contour and level alike, should be represented as sequences of level tones but not unitary tone units.</p>
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Konoshenko, Maria. "Tones and paradigms: a study of grammatical tones in Mande verbal inflection." Journal of African Languages and Linguistics 43, no. 2 (October 1, 2022): 165–97. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/jall-2022-8900.
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Abstract This paper explores how grammatical tones (GTs) are organized into inflectional paradigms in a sample of 20 Mande languages (Niger-Congo), where tonal morphology plays a central role in the expression of TAMP meanings. Adopting the Canonical Typology approach, I assess the degree of canonicity in Mande GTs based on their formal and semantic properties. I show that verbal grammatical tones are mainly realized as replacive in Mande; they are independent from segmental morphemes and may be strongly influenced by surface phonology. Verbal GTs tend to be used in idiosyncratic sets of TAMP constructions and form phonologically determined inflectional classes in Mande, as in many other African languages. I argue that GTs attested in Perfective and Irrealis constructions in modern Mande languages are likely to be an old phenomenon already present in Proto Mande. The consistency of morphological tone assignment in Mande verbs suggests that GTs may be genetically quite stable morphological markers.
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Benson, Peace. "A Description of Dzә (Jenjo) Nouns and Noun Phrases, an Adamawa Language of Northeastern Nigeria." Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University. Asian and African Studies 12, no. 4 (2020): 490–504. http://dx.doi.org/10.21638/spbu13.2020.402.
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Dzə [jen] is an Adamawa language spoken in some parts of Taraba, Adamawa and Gombe states in Northeastern Nigeria. The study presented in the article syntactically describes nouns and noun phrases in Dzə. In an attempt to document Dzə and taking into consideration that Dzə is an under-investigated and under-documented language, the result will provide important data to typological research and to linguists working on Adamawa languages. The study adopts a descriptive research design in collecting, describing and analyzing the data. The data was obtained from fieldwork in December 2014, personal observations of daily conversations, introspection and the Dzə Bible. In the article, a brief overview of the phonology and tone of Dzə is provided. It also shows the different kinds of nouns, pronouns and noun phrases in Dzə; simple and complex noun phrases. The language is rich in pronouns, consisting of subject pronouns, object pronouns, reflexive pronouns, interrogative pronouns and possessive pronouns. As it is with most African languages, the elements that constitute a noun phrase occur after the head noun. These elements are articles, demonstratives, possessives, adjectives, numerals, quantifiers, genitive constructions (inalienable and alienable possessives) and relative clauses. This is a preliminary study of Dzə and it is open for further research and contributions.
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Mallya, Gerald John. "Phonological Processes in Chagga Nativized Lex-emes Borrowed From Standard Swahili: A Chagga - English Comparative Study." Indonesian Journal of English Language Studies (IJELS) 4, no. 1 (October 29, 2018): 1–18. http://dx.doi.org/10.24071/ijels.v4i1.1635.
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Linguistics as a present study, acts as an instrument towards promoting local languages. This recent study aims at studying some of phonological processes in Chagga language (Particularly Kibosho and Marangu varieties). Chagga is a Bantu language family spoken by Chagga people of Tanzania, south of Mount Kilimanjaro. Borrowing is the act of taking a word or a phrase from one language and used it in another language. The present study is carried out under Generative CV Phonology Theory, developed by linguists, Keyser and Clements in (1983). This theory strives to guide the present study on scrutinize phonological processes with their rules in Kibosho and Marangu varieties. The very study is the phonological type of study which employs qualitative method. The study employs Interview to observe the pronunciation by native speakers, voice note as linguistic variable need for homogenous resemblance of the uttered lexical items and the phonological processes. To answer study question one the study observes there are three major causes of phonological processes in Chagga as in English with very little variations namely: Phonological processes motivated by syllable structure rules [vowel insertion/ epenthesis], Phonological processes in Chagga language affecting syllable [consonant deletion] and Phonological processes motivated by phonemic reasons [cluster tolerance, feature change]. In adhering problem two the study has found similar phonological processes between English and Chagga with very little differences especially on phonemes which undergo the changes hence advocates for further analyses in local African and Asian languages to pursue a similar study or any nearly phonological study in order to preserve and promote local linguistics contents from ones native language.Keywords: Phonological processes, Nativazation, Phonological rules, Chagga languageI
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Mutaka, Ngessimo, and Larry M. Hyman. "Syllables and morpheme integrity in Kinande reduplication." Phonology 7, no. 1 (May 1990): 73–119. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0952675700001123.
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Within the expanding framework of non-linear morphology, no wordformation process has sparked more interest than reduplication. Once relegated to a secondary status with a few examples, reduplication has now arrived centre stage as a testing ground for alternative theories of multitiered morphology and phonology. The innovative work of McCarthy (1981) and Marantz (1982) on this subject has laid the groundwork for subsequent formal treatments of reduplication, including Levin (1983), Broselow & McCarthy (1984), Clements (1985), Odden & Odden (1985), Schlindwein (1986, 1988), McCarthy & Prince (forthcoming), Kiparsky (1986), Mester (1986) and Steriade (1988), among others. These varying accounts of reduplication have been tested against a large and growing body of data from most parts of the world. Surprising to us, however, since every Bantu language we are familiar with has one or more reduplicative processes, relatively little attention has been focused on this rather large linguistic group of several hundred languages coverin a major part of the African continent.
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Nyarko, Isaac, Kwasi Adomako, and John Odoom. "Assessing the Phonological Processes in Akan Child Language." Ghana Journal of Linguistics 12, no. 1 (November 6, 2023): 24–47. http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/gjl.v12i1.2.
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This paper seeks to examine the phonological processes embedded in the speech errors of child phonology in Akan, a Niger-Congo (Kwa) language. The study has become necessary because cross-linguistically, several works have been undertaken on child language acquisition but very little or no attention has been given to that of Akan. Most of these works on African languages have centered on the acquisition processes with little on the phonological processes underpinning child language. Therefore, this study bridges the gap by providing a discussion of some phonological processes that underline the acquisition of Akan children. In the course of the phonological development of the Akan child as part of language acquisition, these processes occur as phonological simplification strategies to resolve relatively challenging natural adult forms of Akan expressions. This is either due to an articulatory accident or a defect in the speech organ. It is against this backdrop that Fromkin (1973) opines that a slip of tongue is evidence of a phonological process in action. Hence, this paper concludes that the inadequacies in child language acquisition trigger various phonological processes such as vocalization, stopping, de-affrication, anteriorization, fronting, cluster reduction, reduplication as a phonological simplification strategy in the acquisition of Akan.
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Downing, Laura J., Lutz Marten, and Sabine Zerbian. "Papers in Bantu grammar and description." ZAS Papers in Linguistics 43 (January 1, 2006): 278. http://dx.doi.org/10.21248/zaspil.43.2006.281.
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The collection of papers in this volume presents results of a collaborative project between the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, the Zentrum für allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Typologie und Universalienforschung (ZAS) in Berlin, and the University of Leiden. All three institutions have a strong interest in the linguistics of Bantu languages, and in 2003 decided to set up a network to compare results and to provide a platform for on-going discussion of different topics on which their research interests converged. The project received funding from the British Academy International Networks Programme, and from 2003 to 2006 seven meetings were held at the institutions involved under the title Bantu Grammar: Description and Theory, indicating the shared belief that current research in Bantu is best served by combining the description of new data with theoretically informed analysis. During the life-time of the network, and partly in conjunction with it, larger externally funded Bantu research projects have been set up at all institutions: projects on word-order and morphological marking and on phrasal phonology in Leiden, on pronominal reference, agreement and clitics in Romance and Bantu at SOAS, and on focus in Southern Bantu languages at ZAS. The papers in this volume provide a sampling of the work developed within the network and show, or so we think, how fruitful the sharing of ideas over the last three years has been. While the current British Academy-funded network is coming to an end in 2006, we hope that the cooperative structures we have established will continue to develop - and be expanded - in the future, providing many future opportunities to exchange findings and ideas about Bantu linguistics.
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Williamson, Kay. "Hounkpati B. C. Capo: A comparative phonology of Gbe. (Publications in African Languages and Linguistics, 14.) xxiv, 238 pp. Berlin and New York: Foris Publications; Garome, Bénin: Labo Gbe (Int.), 1991. DM 138." Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 58, no. 2 (June 1995): 429–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0041977x00011587.
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Pascoe, Michelle, and Seppo Tuomi. "Segmental Phonology and Black South Mrican English Speakers: Communicative Success with Standard Dialect Listeners." South African Journal of Communication Disorders 47, no. 2 (December 31, 2000): 99–110. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/sajcd.v47i2.983.
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The study investigated the nature of the listener confusion that occurs when Black South African English (BSAE) speakers communicated a list of common English words to speakers of Standard South African (StdSAE) English. Specific difficulties with vowels, diphthongs and consonants are discussed in terms of their effect on intelligibility. It is suggested that all segmental features of BSAE relate to two distinct levels: a functional (meaning) level and an aesthetic level. This study focused on the functional level, and aimed to describe the segmental features of BSAE speech that affect meaning. Such a distinction has particular relevance for speech and language therapists who need to have a clear rationale for their work with BSAE-speaking clients. Treatment of speech problems due to first language transfer, is discussed in terms of this emerging client group within South Africa, and more generally.
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Maddieson, Ian. "Articulatory Phonology and Sukuma “Aspirated Nasals”." Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society 17, no. 2 (July 25, 1991): 145. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/bls.v17i2.1646.
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Odden, David. "The Intersection of Syntax, Semantics and Phonology in Kikongo." Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society 17, no. 2 (July 25, 1991): 188. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/bls.v17i2.1658.
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Lee, Jamie Shinhee. "Globalization of African American Vernacular English in popular culture." English World-Wide 32, no. 1 (February 17, 2011): 1–23. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/eww.32.1.01lee.
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This study examines crossing (Bucholtz 1999; Cutler 1999; Rampton 1995) in Korean hip hop Blinglish as a case study of globalization of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) in popular culture. Blinglish in Korean hip hop can be understood as a prime example of “English from below” (Preisler 1999) to informally express subcultural identity and style. The findings of the study suggest that AAVE features appear at different linguistic levels including lexis, phonology, and morpho-syntax in Korean hip hop Blinglish but do not demonstrate the same degree of AAVE penetration, with a frequency-related hierarchy emerging among these linguistic components. The area of Korean hip hop Blinglish with the heaviest crossing influence from AAVE is found to be lexis followed by phonology. The presence of AAVE syntactic features is somewhat restricted in type and occurrence, indicating that the verbal markers in AAVE are considerably varied and intricate, and syntactic elements are not as easily crossed by non-AAVE speakers as lexical items.
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ANDRES, C., and R. VOTTA. "AFRICAN AMERICAN VERNACULAR ENGLISH: VOWEL PHONOLOGY IN A GEORGIA COMMUNITY." American Speech Supplement 94, no. 1 (January 1, 2010): 75–98. http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/00031283-supplement_94-1-75.
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de Haas, Wim G. "Phonological implications of skeleton and feature underspecification in Kasem." Phonology 5, no. 2 (August 1988): 237–54. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0952675700002281.
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The West African language Kasem, which is spoken by the Kasenas on both sides of the northern border between Ghana and Burkina Faso, figured prominently in the abstractness controversy in the late seventies. The analyses proposed by Halle (1978) and Phelps (1975, 1979), in particular, show most clearly that the framework of linear phonology does not provide a suitable model for the description of the complex set of alternations that can be observed in the nominal system of this language. I will argue that the theory of underspecification (cf. Kiparsky 1982, 1985; Archangeli 1984; among others) together with the principles of CV phonology (cf. McCarthy 1979, 1981; Clements & Keyser 1983; Levin 1985) provide the necessary equipment to account for the Kasem facts in a relatively simple and insightful way. It will turn out that these subtheories enable us to collapse several seemingly independent processes into a rather small set of language-specific rules.
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Nettle, Daniel. "Coevolution of phonology and the lexicon in twelve languages of West Africa." Journal of Quantitative Linguistics 5, no. 3 (December 1998): 240–45. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09296179808590132.
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Christodoulou, Christiana, and Ianthi Maria Tsimpli. "Linguistic illusions and misconceptions: The role of language variation in language development across three varieties of American English." Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America 8, no. 1 (May 3, 2023): 5532. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/plsa.v8i1.5532.
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Prior research on the linguistic abilities of Southern English- (SE) and African-American English-speaking children (SAAE) revealed unexpectedly high rates of risk for a language disorder (Christodoulou & Tsimpli 2021; Moland & Oetting 2021). This study examines the performance of 139 SE-, 46 SAAE-, and 35 Mainstream American English-speaking children (MAE), aged 2-13, and analyzes their performance, through twelve sections, in four key linguistic domains: syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and phonology, using a standardized assessment test. Results revealed a parallel performance across the three groups in all linguistic domains. The highest means of accuracy were noted with phonology and the lowest with semantics. Analysis of the participants’ performance by age evidenced a virtually identical performance across the three groups after age 6 or 7, but considerable variations were noted with younger children. Results from the current study contradict results from previous work showing considerably high rates of risk for a language disorder for the SAAE-speaking children, as their performance is parallel to not only that of SE-speaking children but it also the performance of MAE-speaking children. Results from the current study could help guide educational policies, especially for early education programs, as well as diagnostic assessment and rehabilitation.
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Hyman, Larry M., and William R. Leben. "Beauty of construction, richness of expression." Brill's Journal of Afroasiatic Languages and Linguistics 15, no. 2 (November 21, 2023): 433–75. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18776930-01502001.
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Abstract A History of the Hausa Language is the first book-length historical study of any language of the Chadic branch of Afro-Asiatic. It synthesizes and updates the scholarly output on the topic by Paul Newman, for many decades Hausa’s most productive and influential scholar. In this review article we discuss Newman’s most striking findings on the history of Hausa’s phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexicon, adding questions and critiques where called for. We find the book to be a contribution without parallel to Hausa and to African linguistics.
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POUWELS, RANDALL L. "EAST AFRICAN COASTAL HISTORY." Journal of African History 40, no. 2 (July 1999): 285–96. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0021853798007403.
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Swahili and Sabaki: A Linguistic History. By DEREK NURSE and THOMAS J. HINNEBUSCH. Edited by THOMAS J. HINNEBUSCH, with a special addendum by GERARD PHILIPPSON. (University of California Publications in Linguistics, 121). Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press 1993. Pp. xxxii+780. $80 (ISBN 0-520-09775-0).Shanga. The Archaeology of a Muslim Trading Community on the Coast of East Africa. By MARK HORTON. (Memoirs of the British Institute of East Africa, 14). London: The British Institute in Eastern Africa, 1996. Pp. xvi+458. £75 (ISBN 1-872-56609-x).Nurse's and Hinnebusch's Swahili and Sabaki: A Linguistic History is the most comprehensive study yet done of Swahili history through linguistic analysis. It is an encyclopedic work representing many years of research by the authors and other scholars, and it focuses particularly on the emergence and evolution of the Swahili language. The massive and diverse evidence they marshal is, of course, almost entirely linguistic: as such they discuss four basal parameters of language relationship and change, namely lexis, morphology, phonology and tone. (The last two are treated together, and G. Philippson reviews the latter.)
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Schröder, Anne, Frederic Zähres, and Alexander Kautzsch. "Ethnic variation in the phonology of Namibian English." English World-Wide 41, no. 2 (June 9, 2020): 193–224. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/eww.00046.sch.
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Abstract Studies on the pronunciation of Namibian English (NamE) have shown strong evidence for ethnically conditioned variation within the NamE vowel system. Thus, NamE should not be seen as a monolithic entity but rather as a group of ethnically and/or socially conditioned varieties. In this paper, we undertake a first approach to Baster English, a potential ethnic variety of NamE. The Rehoboth Basters constitute a unique ethnically mixed Afrikaans-speaking group from South Africa, who settled in Namibia in the 19th century and are known for their strong sense of a separate local and ethnic identity. Triangulating the results of a quantitative questionnaire on language attitudes and acoustic analyses of vocalic features in informants’ pronunciation, we demonstrate how the Basters’ unique identity translates into linguistic practice in a multi-ethnic and multilingual environment.
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Takács, Gábor. "Semito-Hamitic or Afro-Asiatic consonantism and lexicon: Episodes of a comparative research I (Part 2: Marcel Cohen’s Essai comparatif)." Lingua Posnaniensis 64, no. 2 (January 18, 2023): 177–209. http://dx.doi.org/10.14746/linpo.2022.64.2.7.
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A retrospective account on past comparative research on Afro-Asiatic (AA) or Semito-Hamitic / Hamito-Semitic (SH / HS, resp.) phonology (first of all consonantism, also root structure) and lexicon, segmented into episodes according to diverse (often overlapping in time) trends is now under way and will be presented part by part in a series of papers. The present paper contains the first ever direction of this research, labelled “Semito-Hamitology” covering studies seeking, in their conception, the “African”, i.e. “Hamitic” kinship of Semitic.
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McCarthy, John J. "Alan S. Kaye (ed.) (1997). Phonologies of Asia and Africa (including the Caucasus). Technical advisor: Peter T. Daniels. Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns. 2 vols. Pp. xxi+1041." Phonology 15, no. 1 (August 1998): 111–14. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0952675798003509.
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This is an unusual book. For one thing, it is huge: two volumes, over 1000 pages, with articles on fifty different languages or groups. For another, the list of contributors is quite diverse, including a few phonologists with specific language interests (Shmuel Bolozky, Robert D. Hoberman, Maria-Rosa Lloret and Joseph L. Malone), a few linguists who are better known for their work in areas other than phonology (Bernard Comrie, Jeffrey Heath, H. Craig Melchert and Johanna Nichols) and a group of distinguished experts on particular languages or families (including Giorgio Buccellati, Gene Gragg, Robert Hetzron, Wolf Leslau, Paul Newman and others).The goals of this book are also a bit unusual. In his introduction, the editor says this:The idea for this volume came about as I searched in vain for a book which would enable my students to gain a concrete familiarity of solid phonological work by subjecting them to the exposure of many of today's (hard-)working linguists who would concisely describe and comment on the phonological processes in and structures of languages which they have carefully scrutinized, both ancient or medieval and modern. (p. xvi)This is an attractive concept; undergraduate and beginning graduate students would undoubtedly benefit from studying and perhaps attempting to reanalyse a carefully presented description of the phonemic system and morphophonemic processes of an unfamiliar language. More advanced graduate students or established scholars could also benefit from having access to compact descriptions that summarise potentially interesting phenomena and give references to consult for further research.
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Takács, Gábor. "Semito-Hamitic or Afro-Asiatic consonantism and lexicon: Episodes of a comparative research I (Part 1: The long century of Semito-Hamitology until the middle of the 20th century)." Lingua Posnaniensis 64, no. 1 (January 3, 2023): 135–73. http://dx.doi.org/10.14746/linpo.2022.64.1.6.
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A retrospective account on past comparative research on Afro-Asiatic (AA) or Semito-Hamitic / Hamito-Semitic (SH/HS, resp.) phonology (first of all consonantism, also root structure) and lexicon, segmented into episodes according to diverse trends (often overlapping in time) is now under way and will be presented part by part in a series of papers. The present paper contains the first ever direction of this research, labelled “Semito-Hamitology” covering studies seeking, in their conception, the “African”, i.e. “Hamitic” kinship of Semitic, without a permanent communis opinio over the whole century of this ‘trend’ (better: amalgamate era) regarding the limits of the family.
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Guérin, Maximilien. "Les prédicats complexes en wolof." Morphology and its interfaces 37, no. 2 (December 31, 2014): 209–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/li.37.2.02gue.
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Determining the morphosyntactic status of verbal constructions is an enduring issue in African linguistics. In Wolof, most verbal constructions are split predicate constructions involving a predicative marker, which encodes the greater part of the grammatical content, and a verb, which contributes to the lexical content. The aim of the current paper is to investigate the morphosyntactic status of these complex predicates. Based on several kinds of criteria (phonology, morphology and semantics), I show that the predicative markers must be analysed as phonologically dependent words (clitics). Thus, Wolof complex predicates clearly display syntactic construction features and cannot therefore be considered as morphological units.
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WROBLEWSKI, M., T. STRAND, and S. DUBOIS. "MAPPING A DIALECT "MIXTURY": VOWEL PHONOLOGY OF AFRICAN AMERICAN AND WHITE MEN IN RURAL SOUTHERN LOUISIANA." American Speech Supplement 94, no. 1 (January 1, 2010): 48–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/00031283-supplement_94-1-48.
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Olivo, Warren. "Phat Lines." Written Language and Literacy 4, no. 1 (March 19, 2001): 67–85. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/wll.4.1.05oli.
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This paper focuses on the spelling conventions used in a corpus of written rap music lyrics intended for public consumption. The non-standard spellings evident in this corpus are used deliberately for various purposes, one of which is to graphically represent the phonological and syntactic features of African American Vernacular English (AAVE). This use of non-standard orthography can be seen as a way for the writer to demonstrate a positive evaluation of the non-standard speech forms that characterize rap music performances. Other non-standard spellings bear no relation to the grammar or phonology of AAVE. However, through the use of processes such as “inversion”, these non-standard spellings invoke alternative meanings while simultaneously calling attention to the arbitrariness of dominant spelling conventions. It is argued that, overall, the non-standard spelling conventions employed in rap music lyrics function to create and sustain hip-hop culture as an “anti-society”.
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Avelino, Heriberto. "Mexico City Spanish." Journal of the International Phonetic Association 48, no. 2 (February 2, 2017): 223–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0025100316000232.
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Spanish is a Romance language spoken by approximately 405,638,110 speakers in the world (Lewis, Simons & Fenning 2013). Two major varieties are distinguished, Peninsular Spanish (Spain) and the Spanish spoken in the Americas, although it is also spoken natively in some parts of Africa, and in the United States. Spanish in the Americas comprises several dialects well differentiated by variations in the lexicon, phonology and, more importantly, in intonational patterns. In Mexico 86,211,000 (88% of the population) use Spanish as their first language, and a significant number of indigenous people have Spanish as their second language. The variety illustrated here is representative of the speech of the educated middle-class population from the metropolitan zone (three female and three male speakers in their 30s), which has as its center Mexico City, the most densely populated urban area in the country with more than 20 million people according to the Mexican National Census (INEGI 2010).
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Archibald, John. "Segmental and Prosodic Evidence for Property-by-Property Transfer in L3 English in Northern Africa." Languages 7, no. 1 (February 6, 2022): 28. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/languages7010028.
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In this paper, I argue in favour of property-by-property transfer in the third language acquisition of English by L1 Arabic and L2 French speakers in Northern Africa (Algeria and Tunisia) based on a reanalysis of previous work. I provide a phonological analysis of their spontaneous production data in the domains of consonants, vowels, stress, and rhythm. The L3 phonology shows evidence of influence from both L1 Arabic and L2 French, with mixed influences found both within and across segmental and prosodic domains. The vowels are French-influenced, while the consonants are Arabic-influenced; the stress is a mixture of Arabic and French influence while the rhythm is French. I argue that these data are explained if we adopt a Contrastive Hierarchy Model of feature structure with the addition of parsing theories such as those proposed by Lightfoot. These data provide further evidence in support of the Westergaard’s Linguistic Proximity Model. I conclude by showing how this approach can allow us to formalize a measure of linguistic I-proximity and thus explain when the L1 or L2 structures will transfer.
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Nimbona, Gélase, and Anne Catherine Simon. "La prononciation du français au Burundi: influence du français de Belgique et du kirundi." Journal of Language Contact 15, no. 3-4 (December 26, 2023): 481–511. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/19552629-15030002.
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Abstract French in Burundi offers an interesting case of language contact: speakers have Kirundi as their first language and French imported during the colonial era was the variety spoken in Belgium, which does not share all the features of reference French. In this study, we analyze a corpus of 12 speakers (including 4 women; mean age 38.5) producing different speaking styles collected according to the methodology of the Phonologie du Français Contemporain project: word reading, text reading, and free narration. The results of the pronunciation analysis concern vowels, consonants and schwa. We identify eight pronunciation features that differ from reference French. In addition, we analyze for each one the possible interferences with Kirundi or with Belgian French. In conclusion, we discuss which of these features can be considered pan-African.
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Guy, Gregory R., and Cecelia Cutler. "Speech style and authenticity: Quantitative evidence for the performance of identity." Language Variation and Change 23, no. 1 (March 2011): 139–62. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0954394510000232.
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AbstractThe question of what constitutes an authentic speaker, particularly with regard to African American Vernacular English (AAVE), has been the subject of some debate in sociolinguistics (Butters, 1984; Labov, 1980; Sweetland, 2002) and arises anew in the case of white hip-hop–affiliated youth (WHHs) who converge toward AAVE in their speech. This paper takes a quantitative approach to this question by examining how speech style alters the relationship between the frequencies of a variable in different linguistic environments. Guy (1991b) showed that the exponential relationship in English among rates of coronal stop deletion (CSD) in several morphological categories is systematically distorted by constraints on the surface-level phonology. Because stylistic variation appears to operate at this level, such distortion provides an internal measure of a speaker's stylistic shifting away from their neutral vernacular usage. Data on CSD deletion from WHHs who style shift toward AAVE show this kind of distortion when compared with the speech of AAVE speakers. This data provide strong internal evidence in support of the idea that some WHHs are “performing” a speech style that diverges from their unmarked style.
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Van Acker, Sifra, Sara Pacchiarotti, Edmond De Langhe, and Koen Bostoen. "Ancient West-Coastal Bantu Banana Vocabulary: Testing Linguistic Method for Reconstructing Musa History in Africa." Studies in African Linguistics 50, no. 2 (September 19, 2021): 285–325. http://dx.doi.org/10.32473/sal.v50i2.122286.
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Lexical data has been key in attempts to reconstruct the early history of the banana (Musa sp.) in Africa. Previous language-based approaches to the introduction and dispersal of this staple crop of Asian origin have suffered from the absence of well-established genealogical classifications and inadequate historical-linguistic analysis. We therefore focus in this article on West-Coastal Bantu (WCB), one specific branch within the Bantu family whose genealogy and diachronic phonology are well established. We reconstruct three distinct banana terms to Proto-West-Coastal Bantu (PWCB), i.e. *dɪ̀‑ŋkòndò/*mà‑ŋkòndò ‘plantain’, *dɪ̀‑ŋkò/*mà‑ŋkò ‘plantain’ and *kɪ̀‑túká/*bì‑túká ‘bunch of bananas’. From this new historical-linguistic evidence we infer that AAB Plantains, one of Africa’s two major cultivar subgroups, already played a key role in the subsistence economy of the first Bantu speakers who assumedly migrated south of the rainforest around 2500 years ago. We furthermore analyze four innovations that emerged after WCB started to spread from its interior homeland in the Kasai-Kamtsha region of Congo-Kinshasa towards the Atlantic coast, i.e. dɪ̀‑kòndè ‘plantain’, kɪ̀‑tébè ‘starchy banana’, banga ‘False Horn plantain’, and dɪ̀‑tòtò ‘sweet banana’. Finally, we assess the historical implications of these lexical retentions and innovations both within and beyond WCB and sketch some perspectives for future lexicon-based banana research.
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Hualde, José Ignacio, and Armin Schwegler. "Intonation in Palenquero." Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 23, no. 1 (April 18, 2008): 1–31. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/jpcl.23.1.02hua.
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The least understood aspect of Palenquero phonology is its intonational system. This is a serious gap, as it is precisely in the realm of prosody that the most striking phonological differences between Palenquero and (Caribbean) Spanish are apparent. Although several authors have speculated that African influence may be at the source of Palenquero’s peculiar intonation, to date published research offers no detailed information about the intonation of the creole. The goal of this study is to remedy this situation. Here we identify several specific intonational features where conservative (or older-generation) Palenquero differs from (Caribbean) Spanish. One of these features is a strong tendency to use invariant word-level contours, with a H tone on the stressed syllable and L tones on unstressed syllables, in all sentential contexts, including prenuclear positions. A second feature that we have identified is the use of a sustained phrase-final high or mid level contour in declaratives accented on the final syllable, and a long fall in declaratives accented on the penult. The final section addresses the issue of the possible origin of these intonational features. We point out similarities with Equatorial Guinea Spanish and conclude that, at some point in the history of Palenquero, the Spanish prosodic system was interpreted as involving lexical tone, in conformity with claims in the literature regarding several Atlantic creoles.
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Maselli, Lorenzo, Véronique Delvaux, Jean-Pierre Donzo, Sara Pacchiarotti, and Koen Bostoen. "Labial-velar stops in Sakata (Bantu C34)." Studies in African Linguistics 52, no. 1and2 (April 28, 2024): 125–47. http://dx.doi.org/10.32473/sal.52.1and2.132606.
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The present contribution bears on the documentation and description of a few unusual sounds, i.e. double labial-velar articulations, in a number of Bantu zone C varieties belonging to the so-called “Sakata cluster” in the southwestern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). These phonemes, often considered typical of a linguistic area known as the “Macro-Sudan Belt”, are considerably more common in southern Central Africa than previously thought. The case of the Sakata varieties at hand represents one of particular interest considering the wide array of labial-velar articulations they present. First, we provide a spectral analysis of the data available to us, discussing the question of whether some of the sounds documented here should be described as labial-velar fricatives. Second, we proceed to review well-established models of sound change to test them against our data, with special focus on kiNgingele. We conclude by proposing that the presence of labial-velars in Sakata is part of a broader set of “uncommon” linguistic features present in northwestern Bantu: this, in turn, might point to the fact that the languages of the region went through stages of greater phonological diversity than suggested by today’s relative homogeneity. Sakata labial-velars may just be one trace of this diversity. Keywords: phonetic documentation, articulatory phonology, Bantu languages, acoustics, sound change
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Fajobi, Eunice, and Bolatito Akomolafe. "Investigating the Phonological Processes Involved When Yoruba Personal Names Are Anglicized." English Language and Literature Studies 9, no. 1 (January 24, 2019): 24. http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ells.v9n1p24.
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Personal names, in African context, are not arbitrary. They are like signposts that convey a wide range of invaluable information about the bearers. Also, they are like a ‘social DNA’ that discloses the identity, family background, family history, family vocation and family deity of the bearer (Onadipe, 2012). Sadly however, studies, which are mostly sociolinguistic in perspective, abound to show that some of these given personal names are being anglicized among the younger generation of bearers (Soneye, 2008; Faleye & Adegoju, 2012; Raheem, 2013; Filani & Melefa, 2014). From the standpoint of socio-phonology and using Knobelauch’s (2008) Phonological Awareness as our theoretical framework, this paper investigates the phonological changes that Yoruba personal names undergo when they are anglicized; and their implication for the endangerment of Yoruba language. Perceptual and acoustic analyses of the data sourced from the written and verbalized (as well as recorded) anglicized names of 50 informants from a Nigerian University show “stress-shift” as the major prosodic strategy used by speakers to anglicize Yoruba personal names. Other phonological processes identified include re-syllabification, contraction, elision and substitution; but bearers are not overtly aware of these processes. Findings reveal further that though the “new names” are structurally more English than Yoruba, they are nevertheless pronounced with Yoruba tone by some bearers.
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Arnaiz-Villena, Antonio, Fabio Suárez-Trujillo, Valentín Ruiz-del-Valle, Adrián López-Nares, and Felipe Jorge Pais-Pais. "The Iberian-Guanche rock inscriptions at La Palma Is.: all seven Canary Islands (Spain) harbour these scripts." International Journal of Modern Anthropology 2, no. 14 (December 1, 2020): 318–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/ijma.v2i14.5.
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Rock Iberian-Guanche inscriptions have been found in all Canary Islands including La Palma: they consist of incise (with few exceptions) lineal scripts which have been done by using the Iberian semi-syllabary that was used in Iberia and France during the 1st millennium BC until few centuries AD .This confirms First Canarian Inhabitants navigation among Islands. In this paper we analyze three of these rock inscriptions found in westernmost La Palma Island: hypotheses of transcription and translation show that they are short funerary and religious text, like of those found widespread through easternmost Lanzarote, Fuerteventura and also Tenerife Islands. They frequently name “Aka” (dead), “Ama” (mother godness) and “Bake” (peace), and methodology is mostly based in phonology and semantics similarities between Basque language and prehistoric Iberian-Tartessian semi-syllabary transcriptions. These Iberian-Guanche scripts are widespread in La Palma usually together with spiral and circular typical Atlantic motifs which are similar to these of Megalithic British Isles, Brittany (France) and Western Iberia. Sometimes linear incise Iberian-Guanche inscriptions are above the circular ones (more recent) but they are also found underneath (less recent). The idea that this prehistoric Iberian semi-syllabary was originated in Africa and/or Canary Islands is not discarded. It is discussed in the frame of Saharian people migration to Mediterranean, Atlantic (i.e.: Canary Islands) and other areas, when hyperarid climate rapidly established. On the other hand, an Atlantic gene and possibly linguistic and cultural pool is shared among people from British Isles, Brittany (France), Iberia (Spain, Portugal), North Africa and Canary Islands.
Keywords: La Palma, Iberian-Guanche, Latin, Inscriptions, Iberian, Celts, Sahara, Africa, Garafia, Santo Domingo, Canary Islands, Lybic British, Brittons, Basque, Irish, Lybic Canarian, Palmeses, Benahoaritas, Awaritas, Tricias, Prehistory, Guache, Tartessian.
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Deterding, David. "ROSE-JULIET ANYANWU, Fundamentals of phonetics, phonology and tonology (Research in African Studies 15). Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2008. Pp. 329. ISBN: 978-3-631-57746-2 (pbk)." Journal of the International Phonetic Association 41, no. 1 (March 28, 2011): 85–86. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0025100310000320.
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Nihalani, Paroo. "Communication." ITL - International Journal of Applied Linguistics 79-80 (January 1, 1988): 61–75. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/itl.79-80.03nih.
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Abstract The widespread use of the Daniel Jones’s English Pronouncing Dictionary in the commonwealth countries seems to imply that British Received Pronunciation (BRP) is the model of English prescribed for the learners of English in these countries. To my mind, this form of pronunciation represents an unrealistic objective and one that is perhaps undesirable. I consider RP as the ‘normative model’ that limits itself to the consideration of communicative intentions attributed to the speaker only. I should like to argue in favour of a communicative model which goes by the measure of success with which a transaction between two participants is negotiated. In the second part, the paper discusses the importance of para-phonological features such as ‘plesasant’ voice quality for communicative purposes. It is suggested that perhaps a course in Spoken English based on ‘diction’ and ‘dramatics’ rather than on the exact phonetic quality of sounds will prove to be more effective. Phonetic correlates of what is called ‘pleasant’ voice quality have also been discussed. The widespread use of the Daniel Jones’s English Pronouncing Dictionary in the commonwealth countries seems to imply that British Received Pronunciation (BRP) is the model of English prescribed for the learners of English in these countries. To my mind, this form of pronunciation represents an unrealistic objective and one that is perhaps undesirable. I consider RP as the ‘normative model’ that limits itself to the consideration of communicative intentions attributed to the speaker only. I should like to argue in favour of a communicative model which goes by the measure of success with which a transaction between two participants, either individuals and/or groups, is negotiated. RP has a set of rules prescribed for the speaker whereas the hearer-based communicative two-way interactional model considers the hearer as an active participant because it is after all up to the hearer either to accept the speech act as a successful speech act or reject it as more or less inappropriate or unhappy. Only the observation of the hearer’s answer can tell whether the speaker has succeeded in performing his/her speech act. This conventional effect should be analysed in the hearer’s uptake and of the speaker’s acceptance of such acceptance. Within the framework of Speech Act theory, an utterance is treated as an act performed by a speaker in a context with reference to an addressee. This pragmatic model focusses on strips of activity and speech acts as occurring in interaction. Within this framework, events as opposed to system, activity as opposed to rules, actual behaviour as opposed to cultural patterns are in focus. The problem of the choice of an instructional model with regard to spoken English has been debated in most of the commonwealth countries, and it seems to have generated a lot of heat. Arguments in favour of the British native model (BRP) have been advocated by the purists and perfectionists like Daniel Jones (1948), Prator (1968) and some other language conservatives. People like Abercrombie (1956, 1965), Kachru (1979), Bamgbose (1971), Bansal (1966) and Mary Tay (1982) who believe in a more realistic approach have suggested the acceptance of an indigenous model under the name of Educated West African English, Educated Singaporean English, Educated Indian English....etc. There aren’t any marked differences between standard native varieties and the Educated indigenous Englishes as far as morphology and syntax are concerned. Grammar is something ‘sacred’. The phonology of Educated indigenous Englishes, however, varies tremendously and one tends to be rather tolerant about this. Ideally speaking, the nonnative speaker should aim at BRP, because the standard of correct usage in a language, whether it is phonology or grammar, is the usage prevalent among the educated native speakers. British Received Pronunciation (BRP), however, has to be an unrealised ideal, partly because we do not have live speakers of this model. Any language model to be followed in instruction and learning has to be a living model. Furthermore, I am rather apprehensive whether such a thing as RP really exists any more even in Britain. I think even in England where it has such great prestige, the proportion of RP speakers would not exceed 3 per cent in 1988. The younger generation in Britain is beginning to feel more democratic and grow-ing rather hostile to the whole business of RP. Professor David Abercrombie, during his last visit to India, maintained that most of the Heads of Departments of English in British univerisities do not speak RP. He went on to add that their three Prime Ministers - Harold Wilson, Edward Heath and James Callaghan - did not speak RP. I am therefore inclined to agree with Abercrombie (1964:14) that “RP is an anachronism in the present-day democratic society”. In most of the commonwealth countries, it has been fashionable to promote the use of English that has a native-speaker base with everyone being encouraged to speak like a native speaker. Therefore, most of the research in the past on nonnative varieties (e.g., Tay (1982), Bansal (1966), Tiffen (1974)) has sought to identify the ways in which a nonnative variety deviates from a native variety at the segmental level. The typical approach in this tradition is to use the native accent selected for comparison as a template, juxtapose it against the template. Their research, thus, has largely concentrated on the way a nonnative accent deviates from a particular native accent, e.g. Singaporean English and R.P., Taiwanese English and American English, or Fijian English and Australian English. Evidently, the studies referred to fail to distinguish between the core properties of native accents and their accidental proprerties. Bansal’s study, for example, identifies the lack of contrast between “cot” and “caught” in Indian English. To my mind, this is a minor/uninteresting feature because for most speakers of standard American English there is no contrast between “bomb” and “balm” either. Both Indian and American speakers of English distinguish between “caught” and “court”, but this distinction is lost in British English. If keeping the segmental distinctions were the primary purpose of teaching spoken English, we would have to teach speakers of General American and RP to keep the distinctions that they do not maintain. Realisational differences are equally unimportant. Thus, Tay (1983) points out that the diphthong /ei/ is realised as [e:] in Singaporean English. However, this is true for most North American varieties as well, and there is no special reason why the speakers of Singaporean English alone should change their habits.
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Hyman, Larry M. "Issues in the Phonology-morphology Interface in African Languages." UC Berkeley Phonology Lab Annual Reports 8 (2012). http://dx.doi.org/10.5070/p76nn8m9hv.
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Nkamigbo, Linda Chinelo. "Phonology in Teacher Education in Nigeria: The Igbo Language Example." African Journal of Teacher Education 1, no. 1 (October 14, 2011). http://dx.doi.org/10.21083/ajote.v1i1.1593.
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The goals of education cannot be achieved without language. Language is actively involved in the production of qualified teachers who will teach at various levels of the educational system. Furthermore, linguistics is the area of study that is concerned with objective and empirical study of language, and phonology undoubtedly is a crucial aspect of this set up. This paper addresses the issues of phonological facilitation and interference in both teacher training and general education in sub-Saharan Africa. These phonological phenomena are critically examined as they feature in Igbo, one of the major African languages, spoken predominantly in South-Eastern Nigeria. The sound system of Igbo influences that of the English of the native Igbo speakers. Therefore, this paper recommends that the language instructor should focus on the variations in the English of the native Igbo speakers in order to achieve a near Standard English by the Igbo speakers of English.
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Magara, Dorothy Kwamboka, George Anyona, and George Aberi. "Phonological Adaptation of Dholuo Verbs and Nouns Borrowed into Ekegusii." Journal of Research Innovation and Implications in Education, February 2, 2024, 151–58. http://dx.doi.org/10.59765/vri938fsb.
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This study evaluates how Dholuo lexical items (nouns and verbs) that got their way into EkeGusii language are integrated and nativised to fit within EkeGusii phonological inventory. Languages tend to borrow words from other languages when they get into contact with each other. EkeGusii, for instance, has borrowed many words from Dholuo as a result of assimilation and their regular interaction. The study targeted two types of populations: the population of participants and that of the borrowed words. Purposive sampling techniques were used to pick respondents for the study. Using Hooper’s (1976) Generative phonology theory that seeks to explain the mental processes underlying language production and perception, the study identified and described the phonological changes that loan words from Dholuo undergo to fit into EkeGusii phonological system. The study confirmed that borrowed Dholuo words are integrated into EkeGusii phonological system through stop weakening, devoicing of Dholuo consonants, consonant substitution, vowel epenthesis, and vowel substitution. The findings from this study will contribute to the existing literature on African languages in relation to borrowing within generative phonology. Based on the findings of the study, more studies are recommended on other African languages to give a clear picture on how EkeGusii language adapts words borrowed from other Nilotic groups, considering that the Gusii people are bordered with Nilotic speakers.
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Agostinho, Ana Lívia. "Word prosody of African versus European-origin words in Afro-European creoles." Linguistic Typology, March 20, 2023. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/lingty-2022-0043.
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Abstract This paper is concerned with word-prosodic systems of Afro-European creole languages that show a correlation between the lexical origin (African vs. European) and prosodic pattern. The discussion is based on the evidence from four languages: Saramaccan, Nigerian Pidgin English, Pichi, and Lung’Ie. I examine how the study of word-prosodic systems of creoles can contribute to phonological typology and to the debate of whether creoles are different from non-creoles. I hypothesize that such systems are the result of extreme language contact and can only be found in creole languages. The existence of these systems further confirms that sociohistorical processes – such as historic contact – can shape phonological systems. Finally, I conclude that the analysis of African-origin words is crucial to further our understanding of creole phonology.
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Aor, Terfa, and Pilah Godwin Anyam. "Nature of English and Tiv Metatheses." Indian Journal of Language and Linguistics, June 30, 2021, 27–37. http://dx.doi.org/10.34256/ijll2124.
Full textAbstract:
Metathesis, the transposition of letters and syllables, is a minor phonological process that is found in both English and Tiv languages. This phonological process has not received much attention it deserves because most scholars considered it as a figure of misspelling which is not worthy of researching. This paper investigates the nature of English and Tiv metatheses. The objectives of this paper are to classify English and Tiv metatheses, discuss the formation of metatheses in English and Tiv and state the functions of metatheses in English and Tiv languages. This paper used comparative linguistic theory which compares the nature of English and Tiv metatheses. The researcher used participant observation tool for elicitation of data for this study. Secondary materials such as journal articles, textbooks, dictionaries and encyclopaedias and Internet sources were used. This study links phonology, historical linguistics, onomastics and language pathology (speech disorder). The study has established that metathesis has phonological, orthographic, metrical and onomastic relevance. This paper provides an in-depth material for teaching and learning of English and Tiv languages. It has been recommended that lecturers in the National Institute for Nigerian Languages, Departments of Linguistics and Nigerian Languages should write books and critical works on Nigerian or African languages.