African Linguistics Research Articles

Review of Wolff (2019): A history of African linguistics

Review of Wolff (2019): A history of African linguistics

Islamic Literacy and Scholarship in African Languages: The Case of Hausa in West Africa

Language is the main instrument in the wider spread and documentation of Islam and Islamic history in Africa and beyond. Historical development and rapid spread of Islam in African societies were historically accredited to African languages. The historic contact of the first Muslim generations with the Ethiopian emperor opens up the gate for the socio-linguistic development of translating Islamic dogma and messages into African languages. The Hausa factor in West African Islam is well noted in the writings of the early Muslim scholars. African linguistics contributions enhance the converts' literacy and develop a strong community of scholars of the highest historical relevance in the history of Islam in the African context. Africa is the home of about 2000 languages, Nigeria is with more than 556 languages, having Hausa leading the race with about 150 million speakers was rated as number 11 out of 7500 languages in the modern world as of 2022. Interestingly, about 85% of the Hausa native speakers are Muslims and about 69 percent of the Nigerian Muslim scholars are either Hausa natives or hausanized through Islamic activities in Hausaland. Thus, the spread of Islam in Africa was the handwork of African languages and not by the sword as alleged by the observers. My contact with Muslim scholars of various regions in Hausaland justified that, the technique of identification and naming Arabic alphabets are the same across the regions. In addition, the Ajami writing styles are the same. Hundreds of books and manuscripts are of the same orthography. These gave me the courage to investigate how it helps Islamic scholarship in the West African regions. This paper aims to study the role of Hausa Muslim scholars in the translation, naming, and adaptation of the 28 Arabic alphabets into the Hausa language which led to the innovation of Hausa Ajami writing and subsequent development of scholarship in the Hausaland. The paper would critically look into the Hausa-Arabic battle of alphabets treatment and the role of mother tongue in Islamic scholarship activities in West Africa Islam, with special emphasis on Hausa-speaking communities of West Africa.

Beauty of construction, richness of expression

Abstract A History of the Hausa Language is the first book-length historical study of any language of the Chadic branch of Afro-Asiatic. It synthesizes and updates the scholarly output on the topic by Paul Newman, for many decades Hausa’s most productive and influential scholar. In this review article we discuss Newman’s most striking findings on the history of Hausa’s phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexicon, adding questions and critiques where called for. We find the book to be a contribution without parallel to Hausa and to African linguistics.

Displacing the PStem

Abstract Much debate in prosodic phonology has centered on the question of recursive prosodic layers versus independent constituents. Recently, Downing and Kadenge (Downing, Laura & Maxwell Kadenge. 2015. Prosodic stems in Zezuru Shona. Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 33(3). 291–305, Downing, Laura & Maxwell Kadenge. 2020. Re-placing the PStem in the prosodic hierarchy. The Linguistic Review 37(3). 433–461) have advocated for a unique prosodic constituent, the PStem, to match stem-level phonology. They argue that the stem level should not be sensitive to canonically word-level phenomena such as minimality and culminativity. Alternatively, Itô and Mester (Itô, Junko & Armin Mester. 2007. Prosodic adjunction in Japanese compounds. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics. 97–111 et seq.) propose that the PStem/PrWd division can be collapsed into recursive PrWd levels, in which any recursive layer can have any given set of properties. In this paper, I hope to add to this debate by showing that Downing and Kadenge’s idea of specifically stem-level processes is falsifiable in light of new empirical evidence from a number of unrelated languages. In terms of the recursion question, I show that there are two types of language behavior with respect to stem- versus word-level phonology: one in which stem and word are the loci of the distinct processes, and one in which stem and word show the same behavior (“recursive identity”). I conclude by showing that arguments intending to reduce recursive identity to cyclicity encounter their own suite of problems.

Current Trends in African Linguistics

Current Trends in African Linguistics

A Jurilinguistic Analysis of Proverbs as a Concept of Justice Among the Yoruba

Polemical surveys of the rich cultural heritage of the peoples of Africa, especially before their contact, and eventual subjugation to the western imperialists have continued to reverberate across Africa and beyond. The surveys bemoan the abysmal disconnect between the African societies and their indigenous socio-cultural and institutional values. It has been pointed out, more than three decades ago, by Nkosi (1981) that indigenous languages formed part of a living organism forever changing to accommodate concepts and ideas which, over time, became the common heritage of all those who speak the same language. This paper examines the jurisprudential concept of justice among the Yoruba of South West Nigeria, with examples drawn from Yoruba proverbs. What linguistic instruments were available to canonize the justice systems and how were they deployed? The plethora of examples, it is found, have become etched on people’s consciousness and sensibilities, such that they become canonized into unwritten laws in many of the societies. In strict consideration of jurisprudence as the science of law, the study investigates how Yoruba proverbs constitute a corpus of linguistic materials used in informal administration of law among the Yoruba. Although lacking established benchmarks, many of the proverbs have become the codes in the process of administration of justice, which in many cases is conciliatory and not adversarial. In effect, therefore, the study is a contribution to the growing research on African linguistics and jurisprudential analysis. This viewpoint is ensconced in a metaproverb: “a re ma ja kan o si”. (Disagreements are inevitable amongst folks).

Recent publications in African linguistics

Recent publications in African linguistics

THE USE OF ISIZULU MORPHEMES E- OR O- AND -INI IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF LOCATIVES AND LOCATIVISED INFINITIVES

Ponte Academic JournalApr 2021, Volume 77, Issue 4 THE USE OF ISIZULU MORPHEMES E- OR O- AND -INI IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF LOCATIVES AND LOCATIVISED INFINITIVESAuthor(s): Isaac MndaweJ. Ponte - Apr 2021 - Volume 77 - Issue 4 doi: 10.21506/j.ponte.2021.4.2 Abstract:Abstract: The IsiZulu morphemes e-/o- … -ini are known as locative prefixes and suffixes, and have generated interest among researchers and African linguistics scholars. This article attempts to show that not all isiZulu words that use the morphemes e-/o- … -ini are locatives, as some isiZulu teachers mistakenly do. It concludes by indicating that these morphemes, although they are generally called locative morphemes, that is, locative prefixes and suffixes, can also be used as prepositions, especially when used with infinitives and abstract nouns. Many contributions, on the morphemes e- or o- … -ini, from early Bantu languages scholars have ranged from their origin to their function in the construction of locatives. That could be why they are known as locative formatives. The researcher has used document analysis with respect to the morphological and phonological processes of the construction of locatives in isiZulu. The article gives a brief background to the contributions made by early African languages scholars. The morphemes e-/o- … -ini are discussed and analysed with a view to greater understanding of these morphemes. The concluding remarks will be given towards the end of the article. Download full text:Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution Username Password

The hunter, the crocodile, and the hare: Five days of Antonina Ivanovna Koval’s field work in 1993

This paper is a commented publication of several sessions of field work conducted by the leading African linguist Antonina Ivanovna Koval back in 1993. This work was associated with preparing polylingual tales in different dialects and varieties of Pulaar-Fulfulde. In the course of that work Antonina I. Koval obtained two versions of the tale in the Dalaba variety of the Fuuta-Jaloo dialect, along with a large amount of concomitant linguistic, sociolinguistic and other information. The character of that work, refl ected in the document published herein, is of substantial methodological interest.

As far as the eye can see

Urban bias remains a debated topic in South Africa in many spheres of society. Due to the logic of apartheid, ‘rural’ came to mean ‘black’; or in post-apartheid-speak ‘previously disadvantaged’. Up to today, the effects of long-term structural and systematic disadvantaging are quite tangible in the country. Though in parts also applicable to urban settings, poverty, insufficient infrastructure and lack of access are largely foremost still a problem of the rural – and mostly black – population. These structural imbalances are purported through a number of social fields including academia. Often, studies are conducted where access and conveniences are close and risks impeding the successful completion of research projects are low. While the tendency to consider feasibility in research is not per se questionable, the total body of research projects and results might foreground a distorted reflection of South Africa’s sociolinguistic landscape. Binary categories of urban/rural, however, carry a certain bias within themselves and are thus not comfortably fitting in a South African context but call for deconstruction. On this background, the chapter presents a critical review of 135 scholarly articles (2010–2017) from the eminent linguistic journal Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies examined for traces of urban bias in the research set up and weighs the results in the light of the current socio-political situation in South Africa.

Recent Publications in African linguistics

Recent Publications in African linguistics

Missionary descriptions of Mande languages: verbal morphology in 19th century grammars

Abstract In spite of the prominent role of missionary linguists in shaping the field of modern African linguistics, the approaches adopted in their early grammar descriptions remain virtually unstudied, just as the descriptions themselves are largely ignored by modern linguists. This study explores the ways two 19th century missionary grammarians, R. Maxwell MacBrair and John Kemp, approached the task of describing verbal morphology of two languages from the Mande family, Mandinka and Susu. I discuss important differences between their approach and the one that has become prevalent in modern descriptive studies; these differences reflect to a large extent the different interests and goals of missionary and academic linguists. I also use the example of the two early grammars to illustrate the diversity of attitudes and approaches to language description concealed behind the label “missionary linguistics”. Even in the narrow domain of verbal morphology – which is far from prominent in the isolating Mande languages – the two grammarians resort to very different strategies for coping with the otherness of the material they describe. The diversity gives us a glimpse of the early stages of the development of a typology-sensitive descriptive tradition that informed the study of African languages as we presently know it.

From African languages to an African perspective on language: The work and research of Prof. Marianna W. Visser

This paper discusses the contribution of Prof. Marianna W. Visser to African linguistics. I present the academic and professional trajectory of Prof. Visser and her research achievements, focusing on publications in three branches of language science: formal linguistics (morpho-syntax and semantics), applied linguistics (language policy and multilingual education), and text-linguistics (appraisal theory and discourse analysis). These three areas and their respective themes are subsequently reflected in the selection of articles included in the volume, which this article also introduces.

Recent publications in African Linguistics

Recent publications in African Linguistics

AFRICAN VOICES FROM THE CONGO COAST: LANGUAGES AND THE POLITICS OF IDENTIFICATION IN THE SLAVE SHIPJOVEM MARIA (1850)

AbstractBetween 1845 and 1850, the Congo coast became the most important source of slaves for the coffee growing areas in the Brazilian Empire. This essay develops a new methodology to understand the making of the ‘nations’ of 290 Africans found on the slave shipJovem Maria, which boarded slaves in the Congo river and was captured by the Brazilian Navy near Rio de Janeiro in 1850. A close reading of such ‘nations’ reveals a complex overlapping between languages and forms of identification that alters the historian's use of concepts such as ‘ethnolinguistic group’ and ‘Bantu-basedlingua franca’ in the Atlantic world. Building on recent developments in Central African linguistics, the article develops a social history of African languages in the Atlantic that foregrounds how recaptives negotiated commonalities and boundaries in the diaspora by drawing on a political vocabulary indigenous to their nineteenth-century homes in Central Africa.

African Testimony in the Movement for Congo Reform: The burden of proof by Robert Burroughs

Reviewed by: African Testimony in the Movement for Congo Reform: The burden of proof by Robert Burroughs Angus Mitchell African Testimony in the Movement for Congo Reform: The burden of proof By Robert Burroughs. Oxford: Routledge, 2019. Who has the right to speak? It is a question posed in different ways by some of the great postcolonial theorists, notably Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in Can the Subaltern Speak?, Edward Said in Permission to Narrate and in the eponymous I, Rigoberto Menchú. History has been slow to interrogate the complexities of witnessing and the politics and dynamics of evidence. With this volume, literary historian Robert Burroughs dissects the intricacies of atrocity testimony in the movement for Congo reform. He strips away much of the imperial and racist mystification in search of African voices speaking out against savage colonial capitalism. Part of the impetus for this book extends from a reaction to the endlessly recycled and misrepresentational Heart-of-Darkness narratives and the popular history authored by Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost (1998), that revived public interest in the unfathomable tragedy committed in the name of European civilization. Hochschild claimed the Congo Reform Association (C.R.A.) as "the first great international human rights movement of the twentieth century." He replicated a tale "in which progressively-minded westerners, acting on behalf of oppressed others, intervene against the retrograde methods of a debased colonialism" (159). Burroughs reads this as a deeply Eurocentric perspective and weighted down by imperialist presumptions. Where is the African witness in all such claims to humanitarian triumphalism, he wonders? The meaning of testimony lies not in the testimony itself but in the relationship between the narration, transcription, textual production, dissemination and archiving. In this process, words are exposed to often severe acts of mediation, manipulation and interpretative mutilation. Even when African testimony was recorded, it was still confined within the culture of colonialism and the very interrogative paradigm that is being challenged. As Burroughs recognises, the representation of atrocities is hewn from a dialogue in which "those invested with imperial power asked questions, solicited responses, set the terms of debate, acquired, amended, discarded interlocutors' words" (10) without any explanation. Editorial control was always wielded by western mediators. Generally, the language structuring understanding is still infused with nineteenth-century racist logic. In retrieving an African perspective, the asymmetrical relations in power, the variances in knowledge systems and those clear instances of epistemological repression must be considered. Burroughs looks initially at the period from 1890 to 1903 when violence started to escalate as rubber was extracted under increasingly oppressive conditions. Here he has measured criticism for E.D. Morel, the indefatigable campaigner, whose energy and determination organized understanding of Congo reform first in Britain and then in Europe. Morel wrote a precocious number of pamphlets and books in between editing a weekly newspaper (The West African Mail) exposing the criminality of King Leopold II's regime. He did as much as anyone to shape public understanding and he came to exert considerable influence over the British Foreign Office. But Morel was also remarkably sparing in his use of African testimony. Much of Morel's knowledge on the spot was provided by Roger Casement, Britain's consular representative. Burroughs recognises that Casement's investigation into the upper Congo in 1903 initiated a new approach to humanitarian reporting. It was informed with empathy and a self-reflexive criticism, both innovative to the methodology of investigation. However, Casement's gaze was still confined within the paradigm of the reasoning of a consular official. Burroughs provides an incisive interrogation of the evidence from witnesses who told Casement stories. He gives real context to Frank Teva Clark and other African missionaries, guides, interpreters and interviewees who underpinned the consul's denunciation of the violence of the Congo Free State. He shows how the evidence collected allowed Casement to construct a convincing "communal voice" that spoke for an entire community. At Ikoko, on the banks of Lake Mantumba, Casement interviewed five young females who told deeply harrowing stories of their witnessing of murder. Their words were translated by Lena Clark, a young and a very able African linguist. What Burroughs draws out is the complex layering of...

Valency-decreasing derivations and quasi-middles in Bantu: A typological perspective

(2018). Valency-decreasing derivations and quasi-middles in Bantu: A typological perspective. Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies: Vol. 36, Valency-decreasing derivations and (quasi-)middles in Bantu, pp. 165-173.

Recent publications in African linguistics

Recent publications in African linguistics

Redrawing the margins of language: Lessons from research on ideophones

Ideophones (also known as expressives, mimetics or onomatopoeia) have been systematically studied in linguistics since the 1850s, when they were first described as a lexical class of vivid sensory words in West-African languages. This paper surveys the research history of ideophones, from its roots in African linguistics to its fruits in language description and linguistic theory around the globe. It shows that despite a recurrent narrative of marginalization, scholars working on ideophones have made important advances in our understanding of sensory language, iconicity, lexical typology, and morphosyntax. Due to their dual nature as vocal gestures that grow roots in linguistic systems, ideophones provide opportunities to reframe typological questions, reconsider the role of language ideology in linguistic scholarship, and rethink the margins of language. With ideophones increasingly being brought into the fold of the language sciences, this review synthesizes past theoretical insights and empirical findings in order to enable future work to build on them.

Africa's endangered languages: Documentary and theoretical approaches eds. by Jason Kandybowicz and Harold Torrence

Reviewed by: Africa's endangered languages: Documentary and theoretical approaches eds. by Jason Kandybowicz and Harold Torrence Christopher R. Green Africa's endangered languages: Documentary and theoretical approaches. Ed. Jason Kandybowicz and Harold Torrence. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. x, 503. ISBN 9780190256357. $99 (Hb). Africa's endangered languages: Documentary and theoretical approaches brings together contributions from scholars who presented at the 45th Annual Conference on African Linguistics. The editors, Jason Kandybowicz and Harold Torrence, co-organized the conference, whose theme was focused on raising awareness of the interconnectedness between language documentation and linguistic theory, casting aside long-standing views holding the two as largely separate and unrelated ventures. This volume offers perspectives on these approaches and how research programs that combine them ultimately yield stronger and more robust outcomes. Several of the chapters in the volume have been written with this interconnectedness clearly in mind, while a few others appear to have focused on theory first, with only a brief subsection related to documentation added as more of an afterthought. There are nineteen chapters, all of which, either directly or indirectly, address combined documentary/theoretical approaches to African language research. One is immediately struck by the array of issues covered, from methodological approaches to case studies ranging from phonetics to formal syntax. The contributor list contains many seasoned African linguistics scholars, but also junior faculty, postdoctoral fellows, independent researchers, and students. In Ch. 1, Jason Kandybowicz and Harold Torrence provide background on the state of research on endangered African languages compared to analogous work in other world regions. They argue that work on African languages lags behind partly due to a misconception that these languages are not as threatened as others because the linguistic threats against them are 'internal' rather than from nonindigenous colonial languages. The editors discuss 'symbiosis' between documentary and theoretical approaches, which resurfaces in subsequent chapters. The rest of the volume is separated into thematic sections, though this is not indicated nor necessarily clear from the table of contents. Ch. 2 is a survey of endangered languages in Africa. Chs. 3–6 stem from one documentation project, and Chs. 7–8 describe community-based approaches to documentation. Chs. 9–12 cover topics more aligned with morphology and syntax, while Chs. 15–19 concern themselves primarily with phonetics and phonology. Chs. 13–14 bridge the gap between the two broader topic areas in focusing on morphophonology. An overview of often conflicting perspectives on African language endangerment is given by Bonny Sands (Ch. 2); she illustrates how complexities/conflicts stem from incompatible, in [End Page 717] complete, or outdated assumptions and terminologies used in categorizing and quantifying a cline of endangerment. Sands's high-level view shows that agencies/surveys may appeal to a single criterion in making designations of endangerment, while ignoring pressing factors like population marginalization. The topic and related terminology are inherently complex, though the details become more so due to how certain facts are presented. The chapter is informative but requires side-bar searching and clarification to fully understand the terminology and how it relates to the issue at hand. The following four chapters present research on Nata that grew out of a field methods course at the University of British Columbia. The work of the Nata Working Group centers upon the role of graduate student Joash J. Gambarage as a speaker-linguist. There is significant redundancy between the first of these chapters and those that follow; in my view, the initial overview chapter (Ch. 3) is not necessary. In Ch. 4, Gambarage and Douglas Pulleyblank then discuss alternations arising from competing pressures between root-internal, root-controlled, and suffix-controlled tongue-root harmony, which they tackle within an 'emergent allomorph' framework (Archangeli & Pulleyblank 2012). Andrei Anghelescu, Gambarage, Zoe Wai-Man Lam, and Pulleyblank illustrate the close parallels between the morphological structures and tonal behaviors of Nata nouns and verbs in Ch. 5. The data and analysis are clearly and systematically presented, though I found myself curious about how the behavior of Nata's reflexive prefix might align with that of other...