1,720,994 research outputs found
Beck, Rose Marie & Frank Wittmann (eds.) 2004. African Media Cultures – Transdisciplinary Perspectives. Cultures de médias en Afrique. Perspectives transdisciplinaires - Topics in African Studies, Vol. 2, Köln: Köppe Verlag, 320 pages, 2 b/w photos, 17 tables, 15 graphs, €34,80
Get PDFBeck and Wittmann\u27s volume is a most welcome contribution about types and uses of traditional and modern media in Africa. Their volume is divided into fifteen chapters preceded by a comprehensive introduction and followed by some information about the author
13 Metapragmatics of mode-switching: Young people’s awareness of multimodal meaning making in digital interaction
No full textInternet comme outil de recherche pour les études africaines
No full textThe internet has become recognized quite generally as a valuable research tool. Even though
African languages are not well represented in the internet there are numerous pieces of valuable information for
African Studies to be discovered in virtual fieldwork: short vocabularies and descriptions of various African
languages published by individual authors, university departments or travel agencies, and texts in African languages
mostly written or translated by missionaries or NGOs. These data tend to reflect the standard variants of the
languages used. Contributions in forums provide, however, a type of speech that is close to oral communication.
Linguistic data can be found by using the name of the respective languages combined with terms such as “language”,
“grammar”, “course” or the name of an author as search items. Series of words (in double quotes) that are likely to
occur in oral and/or written language constitute good search items for finding texts and contributions to forums.L’internet est reconnue de manière générale comme un instrument de recherche valable. Bien
que les langues africaines ne soient pas bien représentées sur internet il y a assez d’informations qui peuvent être
découvertes dans la recherche sur terrain virtuel. Des petits vocabulaires et des descriptions de plusieurs langues
africaines sont écrits par des auteurs individuels, des départements d’universités et des agences de voyages. Des
textes en langues africaines sont en majorité publiés par des missionaries ou des ONGs. Ces données tendent à
refléter les variantes standards des langues utilisées. Ce sont des contributions dans des forums qui sont témoins
d’un langage proche de la langue parlée. On recherche les données linguistiques en utilisant les noms des langues
respectives combinés avec des termes tels que “langue”, “grammaire”, “cours” ou le nom d’un auteur comme terme de
recherche. Des chaînes de mots (en guillemets) qui sont très courantes dans le langage parlé et/ou écrit peuvent
constituer de bons termes de recherche pour trouver des textes ou des contributions dans des forums.The internet has become recognized quite generally as a valuable research tool. Even though African languages are not well represented in the internet there are numerous pieces of valuable information for African Studies to be discovered in virtual fieldwork: short vocabularies and descriptions of various African languages published by individual authors, university departments or travel agencies, and texts in African languages mostly written or translated by missionaries or NGOs. These data tend to reflect the standard variants of the languages used. Contributions in forums provide, however, a type of speech that is close to oral communication. Linguistic data can be found by using the name of the respective languages combined with terms such as “language”, “grammar”, “course” or the name of an author as search items. Series of words (in double quotes) that are likely to occur in oral and/or written language constitute good search items for finding texts and contributions to forums
The Internet as a Research Tool for African Studies
No full textL’internet est reconnue de manière générale comme un instrument de recherche valable. Bien
que les langues africaines ne soient pas bien représentées sur internet il y a assez d’informations qui peuvent être
découvertes dans la recherche sur terrain virtuel. Des petits vocabulaires et des descriptions de plusieurs langues
africaines sont écrits par des auteurs individuels, des départements d’universités et des agences de voyages. Des
textes en langues africaines sont en majorité publiés par des missionaries ou des ONGs. Ces données tendent à
refléter les variantes standards des langues utilisées. Ce sont des contributions dans des forums qui sont témoins
d’un langage proche de la langue parlée. On recherche les données linguistiques en utilisant les noms des langues
respectives combinés avec des termes tels que “langue”, “grammaire”, “cours” ou le nom d’un auteur comme terme de
recherche. Des chaînes de mots (en guillemets) qui sont très courantes dans le langage parlé et/ou écrit peuvent
constituer de bons termes de recherche pour trouver des textes ou des contributions dans des forums.The internet has become recognized quite generally as a valuable research tool. Even though
African languages are not well represented in the internet there are numerous pieces of valuable information for
African Studies to be discovered in virtual fieldwork: short vocabularies and descriptions of various African
languages published by individual authors, university departments or travel agencies, and texts in African languages
mostly written or translated by missionaries or NGOs. These data tend to reflect the standard variants of the
languages used. Contributions in forums provide, however, a type of speech that is close to oral communication.
Linguistic data can be found by using the name of the respective languages combined with terms such as “language”,
“grammar”, “course” or the name of an author as search items. Series of words (in double quotes) that are likely to
occur in oral and/or written language constitute good search items for finding texts and contributions to forums
Breaking taboos in doing fieldwork: You never know whether cannibalism and homicide are appropriate topics
Get PDFTwo Zande stories recorded by Evans-Pritchard should be used as a basis for questions. These stories in which homicide and cannibalism play a role were highly appreciated by Zande language consultants in Central African Republic, where I had used the subjects in preceding years in order to analyse complex grammatical constructions. While I expected that speakers of Zande in Kisangani would also love these stories, one of them was fairly unhappy with the topics, homicide and cannibalism. Furthermore, I realized that I had not chosen the right language consultants for interviews on the university campus. Both the topics of the stories and the choice of language consultants meant breaking taboos.
In the present paper I want to discuss how I broke some taboos and why there were no ways to avoid this. Taboos were broken because I did not know about them, and when I learned about them, I had no chance to modify my research and make it appropriate
Grammar of Location and Motion in Zande
No full textIn Zande expressions of position and motion are arranged on a gamut in correlation with increasing syntactic complexity. Topological relations, expressed by basic locative construction are at the left end, directed motion at the right end. Directed translational motion is marked by the preposition ku, which also marks angular location. Topological relations, in situ motion and undirected translational motion do not get a specific marking. This indicates the interrelatedness of stasis and motion on the one hand and undirected and directed motion on the other hand
Beck, Rose Marie & Frank Wittmann (eds.) 2004. African Media Cultures – Transdisciplinary Perspectives. Cultures de médias en Afrique. Perspectives transdisciplinaires - Topics in African Studies, Vol. 2, Köln: Köppe Verlag, 320 pages, 2 b/w photos, 17 tables, 15 graphs, €34,80
No full textEmbodiment in Zande
Get PDFA number of body part terms of Zande have a wide range of metaphorical meanings. Most of these are purely lexical, only a few result from grammaticalization. Specific subsets of usages are linked to restricted sets of body part terms.
Specific types of usages are carried out by restricted sets of bodypart terms. Purely lexical metaphors of the denotations for ‘heart’, ‘head’ and ‘eye’, are used for the expression of emotions, the term for ‘eye’ being by far the most frequent. Compound of the terms for ‘side’ and ‘belly’ plus a numeral indicate the number of sides or corners respectively that designate geometrical shapes such as rectangles and cuboids. Animal bodies or their body parts are found in two compounds used as allegoric designations for certain architectural shapes.
Some of the uses of the term for ‘hand’, be are quite exceptional among the languages of the world. While it is not uncommon to express possession of an item as holding it in the hand, the term be has acquired additional specific functions in Zande by further grammaticalization. The first one is that of marking origin from a powerful, often dangerous animate source, and the second is the marking of the (usually negative) effect of an action or from an inanimate object.
The use of body part terms to denote the five spatial concepts of Heine’s scale is also important. Eight body part terms are used with this function, next to five terms that have landmarks as their conceptual sources. This means that each landmark based term is used for only one specific concept, and – in addition – all concepts, with the exception of DOWN, are expressed by several body part terms, of which bangiri ‘eye’ can even express three concepts, Four body part terms are extremely frequent: bangiri, 'eye' having the widest range of spatial notions (‘in the middle’, ‘in front’, ‘on top’), ri 'head' gi 'back' and sa 'tail'. Another four are less frequent: rumburu 'buttocks', ngba 'mouth', ngbadu 'in' and vuru 'in'. Graph 2 shows the distribution of highly frequent and not frequent terms with respect to the different spatial concepts. The former are represented in large-size bold letters, the latter in small-size narrow letters. Body part terms are written in TNR-italics, landmark terms in ARIAL regular
Norbert Cyffer, Erwin Ebermann and Georg Ziegelmeyer (eds.) 2009. Negation Patterns in West African languages
Get PDFThe present volume is a most welcome contribution to the investigation of negation in African languages of non-Bantu language groups. It aims at filling a gap in the study of African languages, since – as several of the authors state - negation has so far only been given little attention: "the structural and conceptual function of negation was often given little consideration in the grammatical description of African languages, though in many African languages we are confronted with a remarkable complexity of negation patterns" (Cyffer, p.72). Negation is a highly complex matter and interacts with other grammatical categories
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