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AUTHOR: Childs, Tucker G. TITLE: An Introduction to African Languages YEAR: 2004 PUBLISHER: John Benjamins Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/15/15-313.html Pius N. Tamanji, African Studies Centre, University of Cologne and Department of African languages and Linguistics, University of Yaounde I, Cameroon. An Introduction to African Languages is an introductory book in which the author introduces the reader to some of the fascination and controversy involved in African linguistics. The book handles the major sub-domains of the study of African languages and for each domain, the author enters the fray and introduces the reader to a variety of features of African languages from the simple and common to the unusual, complex, typologically distinctive and/or widespread linguistic phenomena on the African continent. The author usually does not enter into much detail. He provides an overview of the relevant phenomenon and presents a subset of what is out there to be uncovered. Given this orientation, the book might therefore not be very useful to researchers in search of in-depth discussions on particular aspects of African languages. It rather serves as a starting point introducing the simplicity versus complexity of the phenomena and leading the reader to primary sources and to the (family of) languages that exhibit the phenomenon in question. Researchers such as language typologists will find the book very useful in tracking down primary sources and to students and teachers; the book could also serve as a valuable reference for a field methods course. The first chapter of the book presents an interesting array of reasons for studying African languages. Among many other reasons, studying African languages leads one to a better understanding of (i) the incredible diversity in Africa, (ii) how language arose and spread and how it has changed over time (Africa is the continent where the human species first appeared), and (iii) the richness and resilience of many African cultures. In studying African languages, non-Africans get an appeal of a different culture and help to validate and legitimise Africa, its people and its cultures view the devastating impact of colonialism. The chapter further presents various contributions to the study of African languages, on-going and potential co-operation between researchers of various orientations and socio-political organisations. The chapter concludes with a brief presentation of early scholars on African languages and their contributions to present day studies. The second chapter focuses on the classification of African languages. First the author considers the linguistic background of researchers, the choice of an informant and the scarcity of reliable data to be some of the major causes of classification problems. Interestingly, the author does not mention the fact that some languages show genetic relatedness to more than one family as one of the causes of classification problems. An example is the Mbugu/Ma'a language, which the author points out later in chapter seven as belonging both to Bantu and Cushitic. Following these problems, the current classification of the four phyla of African languages is presented along with the major language groups of each phylum. The three approaches that have been used for the classification (genetic relatedness, typological and areal/geographic) are presented and briefly commented upon. Finally, the author discusses the constituency of the Nilo- Saharan phylum focusing on the relationship between member languages and on the relatedness to the other phyla particularly Niger-Congo which Gregersen (1972) proposed to merge with Nilo-Saharan. The third chapter of the book presents a variety of speech sounds (their pronunciation and areal distribution) peculiar to African languages along with some phonological processes that have interested linguists and influenced linguistic theories especially those dealing with formal representations. The sounds treated are clicks, nasals and doubly articulated consonants. This chapter is particularly interesting to those with an interest in phonetics/phonology especially as illustrations are drawn from a wide range of languages. The phonological processes covered include nasalization, prenasalisation, vowel harmony (height and ATR harmony), consonant mutation, tonogenesis, Meeussen's law, tone spreading, dissimilation, downdrift and downstep. Illustrations are drawn from a wide range of languages including Zulu, Swahili, Igbo, Fula, Biafada, Bambara, Mandinka, Bamilike Dschang, Mijikenda, Tsonga, Ruciga and Asian languages. Chapter 4 is devoted to morphology. An overview of the non-concatenative morphology of the Afro-Asiatic family is provided with ample illustrations from classical Arabic in the first section of the chapter. The next section focuses on the gender systems of Niger-Congo. The noun class systems are characterised semantically, morphologically and syntactically with examples drawn from Swahili. In section 3 we turn to verb morphology discussing in turn the verbal complex, tense distinctions and the person- aspect complex with illustrations from Swahili, Chichewa, Grebo, Wolof and Kisi. The chapter concludes with a discussion of verb extensions and argument structure. Worthy of note in this section is a list of six problems which researchers try to solve when addressing the issue of verb extensions in Niger-Congo. Chapter 5 is devoted to syntax and semantics. The author discusses ideophones identifying their unusual phonetic characteristics as one of the reasons why this class of words has often frustrated and fascinated linguists. Then he returns to the argument structure of verbs pointing out that while verbs in some languages allow a very limited number of objects, this number can soar to five in other languages (e.g. Chaga) especially when the applicative extension is involved. Other aspects of syntax such as marking negation, predicate clefting, serial verb constructions and agreement are also discussed. The discussion on agreement touches on the difficulties in assigning Bantu nouns to specific classes and highlights the influence of humanness and animacy in morphological class assignment and in determining agreement. In this, animacy is considered more important than discourse factors such as focus/topic. The chapter concludes with a discussion of consecutive tense, switch reference and logophoricity. Important to note is the author's clear distinction between switch reference and logophoricity both of which are divided by a rather fine line. In chapter 6, the author addresses the question of how and for what purposes African languages have been compared to each other and to other languages. Greenberg's dynamic paradigm, which was used for comparison and reconstruction, is presented first. This is followed by Heine's grammaticalisation process, which complements Greenberg's processural comparison. The rest of the discussion in this section focuses on the role that cross-linguistic comparison; reconstruction and grammaticalisation can play in resolving the problem of Niger-Congo word order (SVO/SOV). In the 4th part of the chapter, the author demonstrates that linguistic evidence can be used to reconstruct the movements and histories of people and historical facts can be exploited to understand the structure of a language. The last part of the chapter is a kind of review in which the author comments on a proposal by Blench and Spriggs (1999a) to use DNA evidence to provide new information on language classification. The last chapter of the book focuses on how social factors such as contacts with speakers of other languages, prescribed gender roles, caste systems, socio-ethnic divisions, etc. change the forms of African languages. Social factors cause the restructuring of African languages, including speakers abandoning the language and/or the language completely disappearing. Words of respect and address forms among the Fula for example are fast disappearing due to the decline in the social institutions that supported this usage. Social hierarchy in the traditional kingdom of Burundi gives rise to norms governing the use of speech explicitly differentiated as to caste, sex and age. In Zulu and Xhosa, a newly married woman is not allowed to pronounce any syllable in her husband's name or in the name of any male closely related to her husband as a sign of respect to the family into which she is married. In a practice called Hlonipha, women employ ingenious ways of avoiding these syllables while continuing to communicate. This avoidance of certain syllables leads to sound substitutions, sound change or deletion, word substitution, neologisms, borrowings, etc. Contact situations also lead to restructuring. Clicks have entered Bantu languages through contact with Khoisan languages. The Mande expansion had considerable effects on the languages of the conquered people, which were subjected to phonetic, semantic, morphological and syntactic restructuring. Syntactically, it is interesting to note Heine's (1976b:62) proposal that the Manding SOV word order spread to Gur and Kwa languages. Childs notes that the picture is similar with regard to Kru word order. According to Marchese (1989), basic Kru word order is SVO in unmarked utterances. When an auxiliary is present, the order changes to S-Aux-O-V. It is interesting to note that this same word order is characteristic of Grassfields Bantu languages spoken in Cameroon. Consider this example from Bafut, which is similar to Child's (2003: 202) Kru example (in this example, o is used for the mid-low back rounded vowel and tones are not marked): Bafut Kru a ke wa'a nda boo o se gbu po he Tns Neg house build he Neg house build 'he did not build a house' 'he did not build a house' This similarity in the structures of Bafut and Kru suggest one of two things: (i) Manding influence extended well beyond the recognised geographical area (into the grasslands of Cameroon), (ii) the SVO word order in Gur, Senufo, Bariba and Kru is probably not be a borrowing from Manding. It might be a more general characteristic of some sub-branches of Niger-Congo. Chapter 7 concludes with a brief discussion on some pidgins and Creoles of Africa. First the author debunks the myth that Swahili is a pidgin. Then he presents the different varieties of Liberian English, the self-consciously created Fanagalo pidgin, the origin and affiliation of Afrikaans and other township varieties of South Africa including Tsotsitaal and Isicamtho. Other varieties of urban vernaculars listed are Sango, Lingala, Nairobi Sheng, Indoubil in Zairian cities, Bemba in Zambia and Juba Arabic. Overall, the book is excellently structured, clearly written and reader oriented. The author does a great job in pointing out the wealth of issues that characterise the study of African languages. However, although it is clear from the general orientation of the book that the discussions only give an overview of each phenomenon, the reader cannot help feeling frustrated at the lack of depth in the discussion of the issues. This lack of depth is however compensated for by the wide range of references and languages from which illustrations are drawn. Linguists will find this valuable in tracking down primary sources and in keeping their research focused. The absence of strongly biased theoretical approaches to language study and the presence of many examples make the book suitable for non-linguists as well. REFERENCES Blench, Roger and Mathew Spriggs. 1999a. ''General Introduction'' in Archaeology and Language, 4 vols., eds. Roger M. Blench and Mathew Spriggs, 1-20. London and New York: Routledge. Childs, G. Tucker. 2003. An Introduction to African Languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. (this volume) Gregersen, A. Edgar. 1972. ''Kongo-Saharan.'' in Journal of African Languages and Linguistics 4:46-56. Heine, Bend. 1976b. A Typology of African Languages Based on the Order of Meaningful Elements. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag. Marchese, Lynell. 1989. ''Kru'' in The Niger-Congo Languages, ed. John Bendor-Samuel, 119-139. Lanham, MD and London: University Press of America. ABOUT THE REVIEWER Pius Tamanji is a senior lecturer of linguistics in the University of Yaounde I, Cameroon. He did his Ph.D. studies in the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Then his main interest was generative syntax; thus his dissertation: Agreement and the Internal Syntax of Bafut DPs. Back in Cameroon, he focused his research activities on the description of Cameroonian languages and the use of these languages in education. He is currently on a Humboldt research stay at the African Studies Center, University of Cologne-Germany, working on a descriptive grammar of Bafut. For more mailinglists re African languages, see: *Bisharat! A language, technology & development initiative http://www.bisharat.net/links2.htm#11
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