The Khoesan Languages


Book Description

Essential reference for this particular linguistic community, as well as for linguists working on typology and syntax.




The Khoesan Languages


Book Description

The Routledge Language Family series is aimed at undergraduates and postgraduates of linguistics and language, and those with an interest in historical linguistics, linguistic anthropology and language development. According to a widely accepted hypothesis, the Khoesan languages represent the smallest of the four language phyla in Africa, geographically distributed mainly in Botswana and Namibia. Today, only 30 or so Khoesan languages may still exist, with about 300,000 native speakers. In other words, most Khoesan languages were already extinct before a sound scholarly interest in them could begin to develop. Drawing together a distinguished group of international experts, with much of the material taken from data collected by the authors’ own field work, this volume presents descriptive, typological, historical-comparative and sociolinguistic material on Khoesan. The Khoesan Languages contains eight sections: an introduction, an overview of genetic relationships, a typological survey and profile of Khoesan, four chapters covering core linguistic areas of Khoesan phonetics and phonology, tonology, morphology and syntax, and a final chapter tackling major issues in Khoesan sociolinguistics, as well as discussions of language contact. Comprehensive and scholarly, yet also lucid in its coverage of a broad range of languages, dialects and sub-groups, this unprecedented and original work represents the current state of Khoesan linguistics.




Language in South Africa


Book Description

A wide-ranging guide to language and society in South Africa. The book surveys the most important language groupings in the region in terms of wider socio-historical processes; contact between the different language varieties; language and public policy issues associated with post-apartheid society and its eleven official languages.




Language and Social History


Book Description




Archaeology, Language, and the African Past


Book Description

Scholarly work that attempts to match linguistic and archaeological evidence in precolonial Africa




The Oxford Handbook of African Languages


Book Description

Une source inconnue indique : "This book provides a comprehensive overview of current research in African languages, drawing on insights from anthropological linguistics, typology, historical and comparative linguistics, and sociolinguistics. It covers a wide range of topics, from grammatical sketches of individual languages to sociocultural and extralinguistic issues."




Handbook of the Changing World Language Map


Book Description

This reference work delivers an interdisciplinary, applied spatial and geographical approach to the study of languages and linguistics. This work includes chapters and sections related to language origins, diffusion, conflicts, policies, education/instruction, representation, technology, regions, and mapping. Also addressed is the mapping of languages and linguistic diversity, on language in the context of politics, on the relevance of language to cultural identity, on language minorities and endangered languages, and also on language and the arts and non-human language and communication. This reference work looks at the subject matter and contributors to the disciplines and programs in the social sciences and humanities, and the dearth of materials on languages and linguistics. The topics covered are not only discipline-centered, but in the cutting-edge fields that intersect several disciplines and also cut across the social sciences and humanities. These include gender studies, sustainability and development, technology and social media impacts, law and human rights, climate change, public health and epidemiology, architecture, religion, visual representation and mapping. These new and emerging research directions and other intersecting fields are not traditionally discipline-bounded, but cut across numerous fields. The volumes will appeal to those within existing fields and disciplines and those working the intersections at local, regional and global scales.




Language Decline and Death in Africa


Book Description

The aim of this book is to inform both scholars and the public about the nature and extent of the problem of language decline and death in Africa. It resourcefully traces the main causes and circumstances of language endangerment, the processes and extent of language shift and death, and the consequences of language loss to the continent's rich linguistic and cultural heritage. The book outlines some of the challenges that have emerged out of the situation.




Geographical Typology and Linguistic Areas


Book Description

Is Africa a linguistic area (Heine & Leyew 2008)? The present volume consists of sixteen papers highlighting the linguistic geography of Africa, covering, in particular, southern Africa with its Khoisan languages. A wide range of phenomena are discussed to give an overview of the pattern of social, cultural, and linguistic interaction that characterizes Africa's linguistic geography. Most contributors to the volume discuss language contact and areal diffusion in Africa, although some demonstrate, with examples from non-African linguistic data, including Amazonian and European languages, how language contact may lead to structural convergence. Others investigate contact phenomena in social-cultural behavior. The volume makes a large contribution toward bringing generalized theory to data-oriented discussions. It is intended to stimulate further research on contact phenomena in Africa. For sale in all countries except Japan. For customers in Japan: please contact Yushodo Co.




Kora


Book Description

Chapter 1. The linguistic classification of Kora. 1.1 Divisions and distributions of the Khoisan languages - a general overview - 1.2. General characteristics of the JU and TUU families - 1.3. General characteristics of the KHOE family. 1.3.1. The Kalahari and Khoekhoe branches of the KHOE - 13.2. The Khoekhoe branches of the KHOE - 1.4. Hypotheses concerning relationships between languages of the KHOE family and various other languages of Africa. 1.4.1. Mooted relations between the KHOE languages and languages of northern or eastern Africa - 1.4.2. Relations between the KHOE languages and other Khoisan languages - 1.4.3. Relations between the KHOE languages and local languages of the BANTU family - 1.4.4. Relations between the KHOE languages and varieties of Afrikaans. Chapter 2. Sources of the Cape Khoekhoe and Kora records: vocabularies, language data and texts. 2.1 Records of the Cape Khoekhoe: from the period prior to and after Dutch settlement (17th to late 18th centuries) - 2.2 Records of the Kora. 2.2.1. From the end of the Dutch period - 2.2.2. From the early period of British colonization in the first half of the 19th century - 2.2.3. From the later part of the 19th century - 2.2.4. From the 20th century - 2.2.5. Kora speakers in the 21st century. Chapter 3. The sounds of Kora. 3.1. Vowels and diphthongs. 3.1.1. Vowels - 3.1.2. Diphthongs - 3.2. The ordinary (or egressive) consonants of Kora. 3.2.1. Stops - 3.2.2. Nasals - 3.2.3. Fricatives - 3.2.4. Affricates - 3.2.5. Approximants - 3.2.6. Trill - 3.3. The clicks, or ingressive consonants of Kora. 3.3.1. The four basic (or 'radical') clicks of the Kora, identified by place - 3.3.2. The accompaniments of the Kora clicks - 3.4. The Kora system of tone melodies. 3.4.1. The citation melodies of Kora - 3.4.2. The two classes of alternative tone melodies used in particular contexts - 3.4.3. The theory of tonogenesis in Khoekhoe. Chapter 4. The structures of Kora. 4.1. The noun phrase. 4.1.1. Nominal expressions - 4.1.2. Qualifying expressions - 4.2. The adpositional phrase - 4.3. The verb phrase. 4.3.1. Verbs - 4.3.2. Adverbs - 4.4 The Kora sentence, part 1. 4.4.1. Action verbs in Kora, and the expression of tense, aspect and mood - 4.4.2. Process verbs - 4.4.3. Non-verbal predictions in Kora - 4.5. The Kora sentence, part 2. 4.5.1. Negatives - 4.5.2. Interrogatives - 4.5.3. Commands and polite requests - 4.5.4. Coordination - 4.5.5. Discourse connectives - 4.5.6. Phrasal adjectives, phrasal nominals, and phrasal adverbs - 4.6. Miscellaneous. Chapter 5. The heritage texts of the Korana people. 5.1. Collective and personal histories, and private commentaries - 5.2. Social and economic histories, and accounts of crafts and manufactures in earlier times - 5.3. Oratory, lyrics and folktales (or language-based arts). 5.3.1. The praise - 5.3.2. The funeral lament - 5.3.3. Lyrics - 5.3.4. Word games - 5.3.5. Animal stories. Chapter 6. A Kora-English dictionary, with Kora-English index - Kora-English - English-Kora index - Specialist list 1: Names of the Korana clans - Specialist list 2. Korana names 2: Korana names for animals, birds and smaller creatures - Specialist list 3: Korana names for plants and plant products.