Africa's Endangered Languages Documentary and Theoretical Approaches

by Kandybowicz, Jason; Torrence, Harold

• ISBN13: 9780190256364
• ISBN10: 0190256362
• Format: eBook
• Copyright: 2017-08-07
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• More Book Details
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Summary

Relatively little is known about Africa's endangered languages. Unlike indigenous languages in Australia, North Asia, and the Americas, which are predominantly threatened by colonizers, African languages are threatened most immediately by other local languages. As a result, the threat of language extinction is perceived as lower in Africa than in other parts of the globe, and a disproportionate amount of research is devoted to the study of endangered African languages when compared to any other linguistically threatened region in the world. There are approximately 308 highly endangered languages spoken in Africa (roughly 12% of all African languages) and at least 201 extinct African languages. This volume hopes to illuminate and challenge this trend.
Chapters offer both documentary and theoretical perspectives, emphasizing the symbiotic relationship between the two approaches and its implications for the preservation of endangered languages, both in the African context and more broadly. Documentary-oriented chapters deal with key issues in African language documentation including language preservation and revitalization, community activism, and data collection and dissemination methodologies, among others. Theoretically-oriented chapters provide detailed descriptions and analyses of phonetic, phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic phenomena, and connect these to current theoretical issues and debates. Africa's Endangered Languages provides thorough coverage of a continent's neglected languages that will spur linguists and Africanists alike to work to protect them.

Author Biography

Jason Kandybowicz is Associate Professor of Linguistics at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. He is the author of The Grammar of Repetition: Nupe Grammar at the Syntax-Phonology Interface, and specializes in syntactic theory, field linguistics, and African linguistics (particularly, the languages of West Africa).

Harold Torrence is Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of The Clause Structure of Wolof: Insights into the Left Periphery (John Benjamins) and specializes in syntactic theory, morphology, field linguistics, African linguistics (languages of West Africa, in particular), and Meso-American linguistics.

Table of Contents

List of contributors

Chapter 1 - Africa's Endangered Languages: An Overview
Jason Kandybowicz and Harold Torrence

Chapter 2 - The Challenge of Documenting Africa's Least Known Languages
Bonny Sands

Chapter 3 - The Nata Documentation Project: An Overview
Joash J. Gambarage, Andrei Anghelescu, Strang Burton, Joel Dunham, Erin Guntly, Hermann Keupdjio, Zoe Wai-Man Lam, Adriana Osa-Gomez, Douglas Pulleyblank, Dayanqi Si, Yoshiko Yoshino and Rose-Marie D?chaine

Chapter 4 - Tongue Root Harmony in Nata: An Allomorphy-based Account
Joash J. Gambarage and Douglas Pulleyblank

Chapter 5 - Nominal and Verbal Tone in Nata: An Allomorphy-based Account
Andrei Anghelescu, Joash J. Gambarage, Zoe Wai-Man Lam and Douglas Pulleyblank

Chapter 6 - Nata Deverbal Nominalizations
Rose-Marie D?chaine, Dayanqi Si and Joash J. Gambarage

Chapter 7 - Busy Intersections: A Framework for Revitalization
G. Tucker Childs

Chapter 8 - Documenting Ekegusii: How 'Empowering' Research Fulfills Community and Academic Goals
Carlos M Nash

Chapter 9 - The Role of Theory in Documentation: Intervention Effects and Missing Gaps in the Krachi Documentary Record
Jason Kandybowicz and Harold Torrence

Chapter 10 - Documenting Raising and Control in Moro
Peter Jenks and Sharon Rose

Chapter 11 - The Linker in the Khoisan Languages
Chris Collins

Chapter 12 - Theory and Description: Understanding the Syntax of Eegimaa Verb Stem Morphology
Mamadou Bassene and Ken Safir

Chapter 13 - On (Ir)realis in Seenku (Mande, Burkina Faso)
Laura McPherson

Chapter 14 - Contributions of Micro-comparative Research to Language Documentation: Two Bantu Case Studies
Michael R. Marlo

Chapter 15 - Sebirwa in Contact with Setswana: A Natural Experiment in Learning an
Unnatural Alternation
Elizabeth C. Zsiga and One Tlale Boyer

Chapter 16 - Three Analyses of Underlying Plosives in Caning, A Nilo Saharan Language of Sudan
Timothy M. Stirtz

Chapter 17 - Exceptions to Hiatus Resolution in Mushunguli (Somali Chizigula)
Katherine Hout

Chapter 18 - Acoustic and Aerodynamic Data on Somali Chizigula Stops
Michal Temkin Martinez and Vanessa Rosenbaum

Chapter 19 - Unmasking the Bantu Orthographic Vowels: The Challenge for Language Documentation and Description
Joash J. Gambarage