The Expression of Phasal Polarity in African Languages


Book Description

The series is a platform for contributions of all kinds to this rapidly developing field. General problems are studied from the perspective of individual languages, language families, language groups, or language samples. Conclusions are the result of a deepened study of empirical data. Special emphasis is given to little-known languages, whose analysis may shed new light on long-standing problems in general linguistics.




Language and Interaction in the Chinese Community in Cameroon


Book Description

"This book is the first in-depth treatment from a linguistic perspective of the Chinese presence in Africa. It is essentially a detailed study on communication in various domains between Chinese immigrants in Cameroon and the local community with whom they interact. In eight chapters this well-organized book is able to give a relatively detailed sociolinguistic description of the host country, Cameroon, provide a good theoretical background of the study, outline the methodology used for the study which involved mainly a questionnaire survey, semi-structured interviews, and field observations before drawing conclusions to the study. This is a brilliant contribution to a growing literature on the global Chinese diaspora." - Adams Bodomo, Professor of African Studies (Chair of Linguistics and Literatures) at the University of Vienna, Austria




Fula spoken in the City of Maroua (Northern Cameroon)


Book Description

Zusammenfassung This book investigates the speech of non-ethnic Fulfulde speakers in Maroua, Northern Cameroon, focussed on the Christian community, where the language is adopted as evangelistic instrument beside French. Three key reasons motivate our investigation. First: Context - Fulfulde is embedded in a multilingual contact situation with Indo-European languages (French, English) and many other local languages belonging to Afro-Asiatic, Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Congo phyla. Second: Fulfulde as lingua franca in the region. This status is unique compared to the situation in other countries such as Senegal, Chad or Sudan where it is mainly an intraethnic medium of communication. Third: In contrast to the common perception of Fulfulde as the language of a Muslim community - here we are targeting the Christian Fulfulde speakers who share the language as well as the Bible (translated into Fulfulde) as common goods for interethnic communication in their religious activities.




Reproduction in an African city today


Book Description

Sub-Saharan Africa is considered the last region in the world where women still give birth to presumably too many children. However, within large cities such as Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, the average number of children per woman varies greatly. What is extraordinary, as this book shows, is that childbearing is a social action. Parenting allows one to consider different action alternatives, or rather, opportunities to act. These actions are not the same for everyone in different contexts. The book highlights that macro level socio- demographic changes, namely intraurban reproductive disparities are brought up by micro level (individual) actions. Rogers J. M. Hansine is lecturer and researcher in the Geography department of the Eduardo Mondlane University in the city of Maputo, Mozambique.




Capturing Culture


Book Description

The book identifies and critically analyses Hausa contemporary films known as Kannywood. The focus is on video films with particular emphasis on sources in oral literature. How traditional theatres are re-enacted and re-framed during filmmaking, and how far are traditional traits captured, changed, or enriched in video film are some issues the book negotiates on. The harmony between orature and technology, as generated by means of the transported film medium is expressed in the book. The new medium is integrated into the ongoing traditional and cultural surroundings, where native narrative traditions have been adopted into the global film medium, which is in alignment with contemporary medial culture. Yusuf Baba Gar is the lecturer for Hausa at the Department of African Studies, Humboldt University, Berlin.




Transnational Migration-Development Nexus


Book Description

With a tenfold increase in remittance flows over the last 25 years, the diaspora's role in the development efforts of the global South has gained broader interest. Besides financial remittances, flows of skills and social remittances have gained attention, particularly the relevance of diaspora associations as drivers of development. This book explores the engagement of Ethiopian diaspora associations in Germany for their home country's development. It investigates the policies of the Ethiopian and Germany governments, and the opportunities the policies generate for diaspora engagement efforts.




Power Relations of Development


Book Description

"This book provides wide-ranging theoretical perspectives and rich ethnographic material to analyze the state-society-development nexus in Sudan. Overall, it provides a rare insight into the planning phases of the Kajbar Dam, in the home areas of the Mahas Nubian people. The book's chapters provide convincing analysis of how relationships evolved throughout decades of planning between Sudanese state actors and local people - and among the locals - as they positioned themselves for or against the dam. Certainly, an important contribution to the proud tradition of Sudanese anthropology. " Prof. Leif Manger, Bergen University




The Oxford Guide to the Atlantic Languages of West Africa


Book Description

This volume presents the first book-length overview of the Atlantic languages, a small family of languages spoken mainly on the Atlantic coast of West Africa. Languages in this area have been used in diverse multilingual societies with intense language contact for the whole of their known history, and their genealogical relatedness and the impact of language contact on their lexicon and grammar have been widely debated. The book is divided into four parts. The first provides an introduction to language ecologies in the area and includes two accounts of the genealogical classification of Atlantic languages. Chapters in the second part offer grammatical overviews of individual languages, including the most important non-Atlantic contact languages (Casamance Creole and Mandinka), while the third part explores Atlantic languages from a typological perspective, with chapters that explore formal and semantic aspects of their nominal classification systems, nominalization strategies, their rich system of verbal extensions, and the stem-initial consonant mutation that is attested in a subset of languages. The final part of the book investigates Atlantic languages in their social environments, including the creation of creole identities, secret languages, Ajami writing practices, language acquisition, the spread and use of Fula as a lingua franca, digital language practices, and language ideologies. The volume is an essential tool for linguists interested in the languages of West Africa, language history and classification, patterns of language use in Atlantic societies, and typology and language contact more broadly.