This article is a contribution to the cross-linguistic discussion on causation. It proceeds on the note that causation is a significant notion, both cognitively and grammatically. I make a case that the Mabia (Gur) languages of West Africa are severely under-represented in the literature on causation. I then focus on causation in Likpakpaanl, an under-researched Mabia language spoken in Ghana and Togo in West Africa. I further present data from thirteen other related West African languages for comparative purposes. Broadly speaking, Likpakpaanl deploys all the traditional causation strategies- lexical, morphological, serialising and analytic. However, the use of nasals, especially vowel nasality as a causativisers is novel and uniquely places Likpakpaanl among its linguistic relatives. The Likpakpaanl analytic causative marker chà has a functional scope for both factitive and permissive causatives. In a sense, the source of the specialised analytic causative marker in Likpakpaanl diverges from the oft-cited cross-linguistic source of analytic causative markers. The Likpakpaanl biclausal causative is the balanced structure and, therefore, aligns well with the biclausal causative structure described for the West African linguistic area, contra the deraked structure of Indo-European languages. A thorough investigation of the constellation of causatives in Mabia promises new insights into causative typology.

The present article studies the structure of the resultative stream (a part of the verbal system that hosts grams diachronically evolving along and synchronically modelled by means of the resultative path: resultative > perfect > perfective/past and resultative > stative > present) in the Fanakalo pidgin as compared to the lexifier Nguni languages (Zulu/Xhosa). The evidence indicates that the organization of the resultative stream in Fanakalo is different from that found in Nguni, attesting to both simplification and complexification, as well as the acceleration of the movement along the resultative path and the cline of structural grammaticalization. This corroborates the views concerning the increase in complexity of stabilized and expanded pidgins and the observation suggesting the acceleration of grammaticalization processes in a situation of contact.

This paper provides a preliminary semantic description of the verbal category referred to in modern grammar books of Moroccan Arabic as the “medio-passive” (e.g. Harrell 1962). This category is distinguished by the medio-passive marker ‘t-’ that is prefixed to a verb stem to express a variety of grammatical meanings. The origin of this prefix can be traced back to a similar morpheme in Forms V, VI and VII of the verb in Classical Arabic associated with reflexive, reciprocal, resultative and similar meanings. Most of these meanings still survive in the MA medio-passive form, which is also used to express the passive. Following the classification suggested by Kemmer (1993), this paper discusses four major uses of the medio-passive in MA. These are the passive (e.g. t-hǝrrǝs ‘to be broken’), the reciprocal (e.g. t-fahǝm ‘to get to mutual understanding’), the reflexive (e.g. t-ʕǝllǝm ‘to learn/teach oneself), and the middle (e.g. t-ʕǝʒʒǝb ‘to be surprised’) uses. The description is intended to serve as a basis for future comparison of the medio-passive in MA with its counterparts in other languages and the role diachronic change plays in shaping this grammatical category.

Musical surrogate languages like talking drums remain understudied in the linguistics literature, despite their close connection with the phonetics and phonology of the spoken language. African surrogate languages tend to be based on tone, making them a unique angle for studying a language’s tonal system. This paper looks at the encoding of Akan tone in three instrumental surrogate languages: the atumpan drums, the seperewa harp, and the abɛntia horn trumpet. Each instrument presents different organological constraints that could shape how the tone system is transposed to musical form. Drawing on novel data elicited with musicians in Ghana, we show that all three systems are built on a two-tone foundation mirroring the Akan tone system, but with subtle differences in the treatment of downstep and intonational effects like phrase-final lowering and lax question intonation.

The present contribution bears on the documentation and description of a few unusual sounds, i.e. double labial-velar articulations, in a number of Bantu zone C varieties belonging to the so-called “Sakata cluster” in the southwestern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). These phonemes, often considered typical of a linguistic area known as the “Macro-Sudan Belt”, are considerably more common in southern Central Africa than previously thought. The case of the Sakata varieties at hand represents one of particular interest considering the wide array of labial-velar articulations they present. First, we provide a spectral analysis of the data available to us, discussing the question of whether some of the sounds documented here should be described as labial-velar fricatives. Second, we proceed to review well-established models of sound change to test them against our data, with special focus on kiNgingele. We conclude by proposing that the presence of labial-velars in Sakata is part of a broader set of “uncommon” linguistic features present in northwestern Bantu: this, in turn, might point to the fact that the languages of the region went through stages of greater phonological diversity than suggested by today’s relative homogeneity. Sakata labial-velars may just be one trace of this diversity. Keywords: phonetic documentation, articulatory phonology, Bantu languages, acoustics, sound change

Abstract This paper provides a descriptive analysis of some issues concerning the morphology of Yorùbá comparatives and superlatives. Data were obtained from the researcher who is a native speaker of the language as well as from two adults (A man and a woman) in their fifties who are also native speakers of the language. I was able to describe and translate the data using my intuition as a native speaker of the language. The data were grouped into three categories, monosyllabic, disyllabic and trisyllabic adjectives. The implication of the analysis shows that in Yoruba, tone is a distinct marker of the comparative and the superlative. Also, the comparative and the superlative suffix reflects inflectional morphology, and can attach to any tone pattern of base adjectives that are monosyllabic, disyllabic, or trisyllabic. In addition, within the framework of construction morphology, the study provides a word construction schema to account for the comparative and the superlative forms.

This article offers the first comprehensive study of relative constructions among the membersof the Western Serengeti (WS) group, a group of closely related Great Lakes Bantu languagevarieties spoken in the Mara region in northern Tanzania.The study has both a synchronic and a diachronic angle. First, we offer a systematicdescription of the various relativization types found in these varieties with regard to thephonological (prosodic) and (morpho-)syntactic traits of both subject and non-subjectrelativization. Next, we situate our findings within a historical-comparative framework, withparticular reference to Van de Velde’s (2021, forthcoming) Bantu Relative Agreement (BRA)Cycle. Linking the source of the main relative marker to the proximal demonstrative, we offera fine-grained reconstruction of its development into a relativizer.We propose that the WS relative constructions instantiate Stage 1b of the BRA cycle whilesimultaneously showing remnants of what is either the direct reflex of the relativeconstruction reconstructed for Proto-Bantu (Van de Velde forthcoming) or the final Stage 3bof an earlier cycle. In this endeavor we are able to zoom in to the processes at play at theturning point where an old and a new relative cycle intersect.

Silozi, a Bantu language spoken in Zambia, Botswana and Zimbabwe, exhibits an l~z alternation in multiple verbal suffixes. It is argued that this is not the result of a productive phonological process, but rather has a morphological motivation. We show, however, based on a large corpus of newly collected data, that the approach taken to account for similar facts in other Bantu languages cannot successfully be extended to Silozi. We conclude that the spirantization process which accounts for this allomorphy should be analyzed as the placement of multiple short causative suffixes (/-y/) within the verbal stem, even when in many cases the semantics of the verb do not reflect any causation. Finally, a residue of spirtantization cases not directly attributable to the short causative is accounted for by proposing that the perfect suffix has both a long as well as a short allomorph.

Abstract This paper has the primary objective of establishing the pragmatic basis for concluding on a present perfect sentence as currently or continuously relevant and the simple past sentence as currently not relevant. This is an attempt to make the concept current relevance as used in relation to present perfect and simple past sentences in Akan determinate for Akan. Three to four formal tests were conducted to reach the following conclusions: The one primary focus or motivation for making a simple past or present perfect sentence in Akan is to indicate the validity/persistence or non-validity/non-persistence of a past event context as at the moment of speech; context is defined here as non-temporal in the form of some evidence of a past event in some space, and/or as temporal such as the period of time within which an event remains/is valid. In summary, in Akan a past event is currently relevant when context(s) of it in focus is/are current (i.e. persists or is valid as at the moment of speech) - present perfect; and currently not relevant when context(s) of it in focus is/are non-current (i.e. not persistent or valid as at the moment of speech) – simple past.