1,127 research outputs found
Nsong B85d
No full textChapter 14 is a grammar sketch of the endangered West-Coastal or West-Western Bantu language Nsong [ɛ̀-nsɔ̀ŋ] (ISO 639-3 soo, B85d), which is spoken in the vicinity of Kikwit (5°2’S, 18°48’E), Kwilu Province, DRC. The sketch relies on data which Joseph Koni Muluwa collected as part of his MA and PhD research and a text corpus that he collected, transcribed and annotated in 2013 and 2014 within a DoBeS documentation project supervised by Koen Bostoen
Reconstructing proto-Bantu
No full textChapter 10 is about how to reconstuct Proto-Bantu, the putative most recent common ancestor of all Bantu languages, by using the Comparative Method. The chapter includes a short historical overview of previous attempts to reconstruct Proto-Bantu phonology, vocabulary and grammar. It further discusses how to proceed from phonological to lexical reconstruction, which issues are to be dealt with when doing grammatical reconstruction and what is the relationship between Bantu reconstruction and classification
An introduction to Reconstructing Proto-Bantu Grammar
No full textThis book is about reconstructing the grammar of Proto-Bantu, the ancestral
language at the origin of the African linguistic family commonly known as Bantu. It
is about how to retrieve the phonology, the morphology and the syntax the
earliest Bantu speakers used to communicate with each other. In §1, I explain how this
book came about. In §2, I offer a short presentation of its contents. In §3, I reflect
critically on a number of methodological issues. Finally, in §4, I attempt to assess
to what extent the new research presented in this volume requires a revision of
Meeussen (1967)
Foreword / Avant-propos
No full textBostoen Koen, Janssens Baudouin, Maniacky Jacky. Foreword / Avant-propos. In: Africana Linguistica 13, 2007. pp. 2-3
“To make book”: a conceptual historical approach to Kongo book cultures (sixteenth– nineteenth centuries)
No full textWord formation
No full textChapter 6 is about common Bantu word formation strategies. Bantu languages are rich in morphology, equally so when it comes to derivation. This chapter surveys the major derivational processes, such as verb-to-verb derivation, verb-to-noun derivation, noun-to-noun derivation and noun-to-verb derivation, as well as different other ways of forming words, such as the clitising of pre- and post-stem elements, compounding and reduplication
Reconstructing suffixal phrasemes in Bantu verbal derivation
No full textThis chapter introduces the notion of suffixal phrasemes to designate the
semantically non-compositional complexes of suffixes which emerged across time and
space in Bantu to renew morphology in several verbal derivation categories. It is
shown that such verb derivational phrasemes can be reconstructed to different
ancestral stages as far back as Proto-Bantu (PB) and possibly beyond. The oldest
instance of such a suffixal phraseme in Bantu is the causative *-ɪdi, which is
reconstructed to PB as the phraseologisation of applicative *-ɪd and the short causative
*-i, in addition to the previously reconstructed simplex PB causative suffixes *-i and
*-ic. The Bantu ancestral language that emerged after the North-Western Bantu
branches had split off created a new causative marker, i.e. *-ɪki, through the
non-compositional reanalysis of neuter *-ɪk and short causative *-i. Around the same
stage, the long passive suffix *-ɪbʊ rose as an aggregation of the middle suffix *-Vb,
well-attested in North-Western Bantu, and the short PB passive suffix *-ʊ. Much
younger but still of considerable time-depth are reciprocal phrasemes produced out
of a complex of PB associative/reciprocal *-an preceded by either causative *-ɪdi
(i.e. *-ɪzyan) or intensive *-ang/*-ag/*-ak (most often *-angan). These causative,
passive and reciprocal suffixes are all built on a final element that goes back to at
least PB and whose semantics and syntax it copied. Other suffixal phrasemes rather
adopted the role of their initial element, while stills others developed idiosyncratic
functions in which the input of their historical components can only be inferred
Introduction
No full textThis chapter presents portrait of the Bantu family, starting with its delimitation, number of speakers and geographical distribution, and some of its main typological characteristics. It finishes with a concise history of its scholarly study, including some early attempts at external classification. Bantu languages started to kindle the scholarly curiosity of Europeans as early as the late 15th century, when Portuguese sailors began their voyages along the coasts of Central, Southern and Eastern Africa. The chapter also provides an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book. The book provides an overview of the state of the art in the study of the sound systems and morphosyntactic structures of the Bantu languages and of their classification, reconstruction and different contact situations. It provides a thorough introduction to the grammatical structures of the Bantu languages and to the historical evolutions that have shaped them
- …
