This book provides a grammatical description of Noon, an Atlantic language spoken by fewer than 32,000 people in 33 villages and neighborhoods in the outskirts of Thiès. The study, based primarily... Show moreThis book provides a grammatical description of Noon, an Atlantic language spoken by fewer than 32,000 people in 33 villages and neighborhoods in the outskirts of Thiès. The study, based primarily on new data collected by the author, provides an analysis on phonology, morphology, nominal classification, verbal system, ideophones, interjections and linguistic routines, syntax and divination systems. This work constitutes an important step forward in the nominal classification system. There are two nominal class systems in Noon: a Niger-Congo agreement system for modifiers that are attached to the head noun and another system for independent modifiers. The second nominal class system, based on human and diminutive semantic features, has an additional agreement singular/plural class pair for human nouns. The author also describes the divination practices in Noon by presenting an overview of divination systems in Senegal based on audio/video recordings collected in a natural setting. This empirical work, carried out in a linguistic and multimodal perspective, allows to focus first on the forms of divination of Noon, then on their meanings and expressions, and finally on some characteristic features in divination practices. Show less
This dissertation is a comprehensive description of Tafi, one of the fourteen Ghana-Togo Mountain (GTM) languages, spoken by approximately 4,400 people in the southeastern Ghana. The description... Show moreThis dissertation is a comprehensive description of Tafi, one of the fourteen Ghana-Togo Mountain (GTM) languages, spoken by approximately 4,400 people in the southeastern Ghana. The description consists of thirteen chapters and is based on a corpus gathered during two fieldwork periods totalling fifteen months in the Tafi area.. The language has a nine-vowel system with root controlled Advanced Tongue Root (ATR) harmony and a complex tonology. The noun class and agreement systems display change in progress. This study also accounts for several distinctive features of the language__a small class of underived adjectives; two adpositional classes and their grammaticalization histories, and a rare split possessor system where singular possessors of kin are marked differently from other possessors; utterance particles; conversational routines; interjections, and ideophones. The form, function and meaning of serial verb constructions, split predicate constructions for some modal-aspectual meanings and a medio-passive construction for predicating properties of undergoers and topic and focus constructions are also covered. The influence of Ewe, the dominant lingua franca, on the structures in Tafi and the distinctions between Tafi and its closest neighbour Nyagbo are highlighted. A selection of glossed and translated texts__ folktales, proverbs, riddles and procedural genres__is also included. The thesis is of interest to Africanists, typologists and contact linguists. Show less
This dissertation presents a comprehensive description of the grammar of Logba, one of the fourteen Ghana-Togo Mountain (GTM) languages spoken by approximately 7,500 speakers on the Southeastern... Show moreThis dissertation presents a comprehensive description of the grammar of Logba, one of the fourteen Ghana-Togo Mountain (GTM) languages spoken by approximately 7,500 speakers on the Southeastern frontier of the Ghana-Togo border. It is the outcome of fifteen months research in Logba speaking communities. The grammar covers phonology, morphology, syntax and aspects of pragmatics such as routine expressions, particles and interjections. The language displays three interconnected systems of nominal classification –prefix classes, singular plural pairings and agreement system. The interaction of external verb agreement and noun phrase internal agreement results in nine different agreement patterns. Other typologically interesting features of Logba accounted for include its two adpositional classes, verb serialisation with features marked only on the first verb, and the coding of topological relations in verbs. The influence of Ewe, the dominant lingua franca, on the grammar and lexicon as well as Logba’s differentiation from its presumed genetic relatives like Likpe and Lelemi are touched upon. A corpus of glossed and translated texts that was used as data sources as well as a trilingual wordlist are also included. The descriptor is of interest to specialists in African linguistics, linguistic typology as well as contact linguistics. Show less
