Predicative possession in Mande languages

This is the first comprehensive treatment of the strategies employed in the world's languages to express predicative possession, as in "the boy has a bat". It presents the results of the author's fifteen-year research project on the subject. Predicative possession is the source of many grammaticalization paths - as in the English perfect tense formed from to have - and its typology is an important key to understanding the structural variety of the world's languages and how they change. Drawing on data from some 400 languages representing all the world's language families, most of which lack a close equivalent to the verb to have, Professor Stassen aims (a) to establish a typology of four basic types of predicative possession, (b) to discover and describe the processes by which standard constructions can be modified, and (c) to explore links between the typology of predicative possession and other typologies in order to reveal patterns of interdependence. He shows, for example, that the parameter of simultaneous sequencing - the way a language formally encodes a sequence like "John sang and Mary danced" - correlates with the way it encodes predicative possession. By means of this and other links the author sets up a single universal model in order to account for all morphosyntactic variation in predicative possession found in the languages of the world, including patterns of variation over time. Predicative Possession will interest scholars and advanced students of language typology, diachronic linguistics, morphology and syntax.

Transitive NEED Does Not Imply Transitive HAVE: Response to Harves and Kayne 2012

After a typological overview of the nominal predication constructions found in the Mande languages, this article describes and analyzes in more detail a phenomenon found in the nominal predication constructions of Mandinka and some other Mande languages that does not seem to have been signaled outside of the Mande language family. In the Mande languages in question, the argument and predicate NPs in inclusion statements involving a non-verbal copula can exchange their coding characteristics in terms of flagging and position with regard to the copula. A functive or comitative adposition flags the predicate NP in the variant in which the term following the copula is the predicate, and the same adposition flags the argument NP in the variant in which the term following the copula is the argument. The status of the focus marker in nominal predication constructions that obligatorily include a focus marker attached to the predicate NP is also discussed.

REVIEWS367 Kiparsky, Paul. 1968. How abstract is phonology? Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club. Sagey, Elisabeth. 1986. The representation of features and relations in non-linear phonology . Cambridge, MA: MIT dissertation. Department of Linguistics[Received 5 September 1990.] 204 Cunz Hall Ohio State University Columbus, OH 43210 The Null Subject Parameter. Edited by Osvaldo Jaegglit and Kenneth J. Safir. (Studies in natural language and linguistic theory, 15.) Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989. Pp. 320. Cloth $89.00. Reviewed by Raffaella Zanuttini, University of Pennsylvania The subject-predicate relation has long been assumed by grammarians to be a basic structural feature of all languages. From the point of view of comparative syntax, however, it is a striking fact that in some languages every sentence must have a subject, while in others it is systematically possible for subjects not to occur. Moreover, this dichotomy is not the result of genetic developments , as closely-related languages differ on this point (e.g. Bani-Hassan Arabic and Levantine Arabic), while members of clearly unrelated families (e.g. Italian and Chinese) behave alike with respect to the obligatoriness of subjects. Given the linguistic importance of subjects, their possible absence is interesting on many levels, and one might expect a variety of perspectives to be relevant, perhaps including pragmatics, discourse processing or parsing concerns , phonological deletion, and even free variation. The present volume represents a body of work in the syntactic framework of Government and Binding (GB) theory which convincingly employs a strictly syntactic approach to determine what sort of grammar allows, or does not allow, null subjects. The problem of licensing null subjects within a Chomskyan framework is at least as old as GB itself, and is still current in the more recent parametric approach; both theories have developed and changed considerably since the early 1980s. The Null Subject Parameter (NSP) is the canonical example of a parameter, and its development—as presented in this book—reflects to a large extent the development of both parametric theory and GB. The original idea of parameters was simple, strong and attractive: (i) the apparent complexity of syntactic variation across languages can be reduced to a necessarily limited set of universal parameters, each of which has (at least) two options, or settings (e.g. 'subjects obligatory' versus 'subjects optional'), (ii) The consequences of a particular setting are a cluster of related properties; it is thus no accident, according to parametric theory, that Italian allows both null subjects and postverbal subjects, while English allows neither, (iii) The simplicity and universality of the parameters facilitates learning: positive data from a single 368LANGUAGE. VOLUME 67. NUMBER 2 (1991) construction trigger a parameter setting; the choice of alternatives in related constructions (i.e. those relevant to the parameter's cluster of properties) then follows automatically. (For further discussion of parametric theory, see Jaeggli & Safir's introductory discussion.) Because it distinguishes minimal differences between grammars and proceeds by identifying properties that correlate both within and across languages, parametric theory has encouraged a comparative approach to syntax, and has begun to bring together dialectologists and theoretical syntacticians. The contributions collected in this volume reflect this positive change, considering seriously a wide range of data from different dialects, languages, and language families, among them Trentino, Walloon, Chamorro, Chinese, Germanic, and Semitic. Most solutions to the problem rely on an old intuition correlating the richness of inflectional morphology (primarily subject-verb agreement) with the possibility of null subjects, which appears to be confirmed—and, in fact, made more precise—for a number of languages. It is clear, though, that agreement inflection cannot be the only factor that accounts for the possibility of null subjects across languages; this possibility is variously sensitive to the thematic properties of the subject, the form of the verb, and the type of clause, among other factors. The majority of contributors to this volume implement some version of the agreement solution, but the partial nature of this solution is also demonstrated , and most authors appeal to other factors as well. The editors themselves offer a comprehensive and ambitious synthesis which attempts both to unite the various analyses and to reconcile the data. While one may legitimately conclude that there is no single straightforward account for the...

This paper focuses on the various encoding strategies and other relevant issues pertaining to affirmative and negative predicative possession in the two Amuric languages, Amur Nivkh and Sakhalin Nivkh (Nighvng). One of the goals is to demonstrate that possessive negation serves as a major strategy for expressing caritive semantics (= non-involvement). Constructions rendering possessive and caritive meanings represent one of the basic and rather frequent types of clauses in Nivkh, and they are also interconnected both semantically and grammatically with other clause types. Some of the constructions present in Nivkh have analogues in the neighboring languages, while others are specific to Nivkh. The present paper, based on the author’s field materials, represents the first specific study of this topic.

The matrilineal genetic composition of 372 samples from the Republic of Guiné-Bissau (West African coast) was studied using RFLPs and partial sequencing of the mtDNA control and coding region. The majority of the mtDNA lineages of Guineans (94%) belong to West African specific sub-clusters of L0-L3 haplogroups. A new L3 sub-cluster (L3h) that is found in both eastern and western Africa is present at moderately low frequencies in Guinean populations. A non-random distribution of haplogroups U5 in the Fula group, the U6 among the "Brame" linguistic family and M1 in the Balanta-Djola group, suggests a correlation between the genetic and linguistic affiliation of Guinean populations. The presence of M1 in Balanta populations supports the earlier suggestion of their Sudanese origin. Haplogroups U5 and U6, on the other hand, were found to be restricted to populations that are thought to represent the descendants of a southern expansion of Berbers. Particular haplotypes, found almost exclusively in East-African populations, were found in some ethnic groups with an oral tradition claiming Sudanese origin.

Bangime is a language isolate, which has not been proven to be genealogically related to any other language family, spoken in Central-Eastern Mali. Its speakers, the Bangande, claim affiliation with the Dogon languages and speakers that surround them throughout a cliff range known as the Bandiagara Escarpment. However, recent genetic research has shown that the Bangande are genetically distant from the Dogon and other groups. Furthermore, the Bangande people represent a genetic isolate. Despite the geographic isolation of the Bangande people, evidence of language contact is apparent in the Bangime language. We find a plethora of shared vocabulary with neighboring Atlantic, Dogon, Mande, and Songhai language groups. To address the problem of when and whence this vocabulary emerged in the language, we use a computer-assisted, multidisciplinary approach to investigate layers of contact and inheritance in Bangime. We start from an automated comparison of lexical data from languages belonging to different language families in order to obtain a first account on potential loanword candidates in our sample. In a second step, we use specific interfaces to refine and correct the computational findings. The revised sample is then investigated quantitatively and qualitatively by focusing on vocabularies shared exclusively between specific languages. We couch our results within archeological and historical research from Central-Eastern Mali more generally and propose a scenario in which the Bangande formed part of the expansive Mali Empire that encompassed most of West Africa from the 13th to the 16th centuries. We consider our methods to represent a novel approach to the investigation of a language and population isolate from multiple perspectives using innovative computer-assisted technologies.

The Kimberley region of Western Australia is one of the most linguistically diverse areas on the Australian continent, traditionally home to over 40 languages. This chapter introduces the history and sociolinguistic setting of the region and the body of linguistic research on Kimberley languages, which only dates back a little over a century. It surveys the five language families of the Kimberley region, viz. (from West to East) Nyulnyulan, Worrorran, Bunuban, Jarrakan, and Pama-Nyungan, and sketches the main aspects of their verbal, nominal, and morphosyntactic typology. This includes examples of complex verbs and inflection types, nominal classification and clause types. The chapter concludes with a discussion of speech styles and avoidance language in the Kimberley and highlights several questions for future research.

Surveys of skin disorders have previously provided information about the prevalence and incidence of psoriasis in sub-Saharan Africa; however, the geographic and ethnic trends which may be drawn from these surveys have not been fully described in previous studies, which considered only a fraction of the available data. A critical review of clinic-based surveys of psoriasis incidence and population-based studies of psoriasis prevalence is presented. The incidence of psoriasis is adjusted, wherever possible, to factor out the widely variable incidence of infectious skin conditions seen in African skin clinics. To distinguish between genetic and environmental factors that may be responsible for the variability of psoriasis incidence, attention is drawn to climate, human leukocyte antigen (HLA) frequencies, and language groups across the regions surveyed in sub-Saharan Africa. Higher psoriasis incidence rates are consistently observed in eastern Africa than in western Africa, consistent with more limited data on the prevalence of psoriasis in western Africa. Neither rainfall/humidity levels nor HLA frequencies can simply account for these differences; however, the ethnicities of sub-Saharan African peoples may be observed to parallel roughly the trend in psoriasis incidence. Western African countries, such as Nigeria, Mali, Senegal, and Sierra Leone, where lower rates of psoriasis incidence have been reported (less than 1.0% of skin disorders), are populated mainly by non-Bantu-speaking ethnic groups. Bantu-speaking peoples constitute a majority in the populations of most countries in eastern and southern sub-Saharan Africa, where the incidence of psoriasis varies widely. African Americans, whose largely non-Bantu-speaking African ancestry is shared with modern western Africans, also have relatively low psoriasis incidence rates by comparison with North American Caucasians. Ethnic correlations both within Africa and between North America and Africa suggest that unidentified genetic factors, which differ between eastern and western sub-Saharan Africans, may govern the differential incidence of psoriasis.

Nation-building is no simple process. History has demonstrated the difficult, complex, and varied developments needed to unite a people under a government and to create among them a stable cultural, economic, political, and social community. The process has been especially strenuous where the people to be united have included diverse, large groups distinguished by their own customs, language, or separate identity. In sub-Saharan Africa, for example, several of the nations that achieved independence during the decolonization of the 1950s and 1960s have continued to be beset by problems of integrating ethnic groups within the nation--as illustrated by the experience of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in West Africa. The colonial legacy of patently artificial borders drawn for the convenience of European conference tables bequeathed to many newly independent African nations a motley mix of people, each with their own separate ethnic loyalties and traditions. Nigeria's population well illustrates the diverse ethnicity encompassed within sub-Saharan nations that followed in the wake of Ghana's independence in 1957. Nigeria has a multitude of distinct ethnic and linguistic groups. The ethnic contentions among the largest of those groups--the Yoruba, Ibo, and Hausa-Fulani--have littered the pages of the new nation's history. (1) When Nigeria achieved independence from Great Britain in October 1960, like most other countries decolonized in Africa, it was a nation in name only. It existed as a political and legal entity, not as an effective and emotive identity. It was not a nation in the sense of community and common character. It was a state encompassing many ethnic nations, each claiming their own separate heritage, language, and culture. (2) At independence, Nigeria's peoples for the most part had not yet come to think of themselves as Nigerians. Ethnic loyalty took precedence over national identity. The nation's people identified themselves primarily as Hausa-Fulani, Ibo, or Yoruba, for example. Their identity as Nigerians lay in the shadow of their tribal and parochial allegiances. (3) Historical hostilities and rivalries among many of the peoples agglomerated within Nigeria accounted for some of the conflicted sense of common national identity. The colonial legacy contributed significantly, however, to furthering the collision of loyalties in the new nation. For instance, the structure of British colonial administration of the artificially drawn territory restricted development of a national consciousness within the broad expanse of Nigeria's borders. (4) Britain's practice of indirect rule in colonial Nigeria perpetuated separate ethnic and local identities. By using traditional native institutions and tractable tribal chieftains as their functionaries in exercising the doctrine of indirect rule that colonial administrator Frederick Lugard fashioned, the British sheltered the parochial political patterns of many ethnic groups. Particularly in the north, where Hausa-Fulani tribal leaders resisted European education, indirect rule contributed to the persistence of isolated tribal identity. (5) British regional government further compounded the persistence of separateness. Although united under a governor, colonial administration from 1906 to 1922 divided Nigeria into the Colony and Protectorate of Southern Nigeria, which included Lagos, and the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria. That administration was further fragmented into the Northern, Eastern, and Western Regions maintained from 1922 to 1957, with the Federal Territory of Lagos created in 1954. These regions became essentially self-governing in 1960 at the time of Nigeria's independence as a tenuous federation. (6) The colonial structure maintained ethnic isolation and reinforced it with regionalism--a situation inherited by the independent nation. With the larger ethnic groups dominating the separate political regions, the colonial experience provided little basis for fusing ethnic groups in any common sense of nationalism. …

Anatomically modern humans arose in Africa ∼300,000 years ago, but the demographic and adaptive histories of African populations are not well-characterized. Here, we have generated a genome-wide dataset from 840 Africans, residing in western, eastern, southern, and northern Africa, belonging to 50 ethnicities, and speaking languages belonging to four language families. In addition to agriculturalists and pastoralists, our study includes 16 populations that practice, or until recently have practiced, a hunting-gathering (HG) lifestyle. We observe that genetic structure in Africa is broadly correlated not only with geography, but to a lesser extent, with linguistic affiliation and subsistence strategy. Four East African HG (EHG) populations that are geographically distant from each other show evidence of common ancestry: the Hadza and Sandawe in Tanzania, who speak languages with clicks classified as Khoisan; the Dahalo in Kenya, whose language has remnant clicks; and the Sabue in Ethiopia, who speak an unclassified language. Additionally, we observed common ancestry between central African rainforest HGs and southern African San, the latter of whom speak languages with clicks classified as Khoisan. With the exception of the EHG, central African rainforest HGs, and San, other HG groups in Africa appear genetically similar to neighboring agriculturalist or pastoralist populations. We additionally demonstrate that infectious disease, immune response, and diet have played important roles in the adaptive landscape of African history. However, while the broad biological processes involved in recent human adaptation in Africa are often consistent across populations, the specific loci affected by selective pressures more often vary across populations.

This chapter investigates clause linkage in the Bantu language family group, paying particular attention to resultant dependency relations (both morphological and syntactic) in different types of linked clauses. The chapter notes that clause linkage in Bantu languages is of three types: a) coordination, b) subordination, and c) cosubordination. A survey of the literature determined that Bantu languages make use of two types of coordination strategies namely: using a coordinating conjunction and juxtaposing clauses. The chapter also identifies different types of subordinate clauses found within the Bantu family, including complement clauses, nominals, relative clauses, and adverbials noting that subordinate clauses usually have a subordinating conjunction used to link the clauses. With regards to cosubordination, the chapter demonstrates that this is a relation determined by operator sharing. The overarching finding is that while coordination structures hardly manifest any dependency, both subordinates and cosubordinates manifest structural as well as morphological dependencies.

Regular metathesis has been reported from a number of languages and language families, but appears to be particularly common in Austronesian. This paper focuses on a single close-knit subgroup of Philippine languages represented primarily by one of its members, and shows that regular metathesis may have occurred in its immediate common ancestor, Proto-Batanic. The particular interest of this case is in showing how difficult it can sometimes be to distinguish genuine metathesis from what has been called "pseudo-metathesis" (apparent segmental transposition resulting from syncope and epenthesis in either order). Arguments can be assembled supporting both positions for this group of languages—either they show a rare type of metathesis, or they underwent syncope and subsequent addition of an initial vowel. Since neither position is free from problems, the matter must be considered indeterminate at this point. Finally, the Batanic case is particularly puzzling, as it is paralleled by a strikingly similar change in Kapampangan that must have been historically independent.

West African manuscripts are numerous and varied in forms and contents. There are thousands of them across West Africa. A significant portion of them are documents written in Arabic and Ajami (African languages written in Arabic script). They deal with both religious and nonreligious subjects. The development of these manuscript traditions dates back to the early days of Islam in West Africa, in the 11th century. In addition to these Arabic and Ajami manuscripts, there have been others written in indigenous scripts. These include those in the Vai script invented in Liberia; Tifinagh, the traditional writing system of the Amazigh (Berber) people; and the N’KO script invented in Guinea for Mande languages. While the writings in indigenous scripts are rare less numerous and widespread, they nonetheless constitute an important component of West Africa’s written heritage. Though the efforts devoted to the preservation of West African manuscripts are limited compared to other world regions, interest in preserving them has increased. Some of the initial preservation efforts of West African manuscripts are the collections of colonial officers. Academics later supplemented these collections. These efforts resulted in important print and digital repositories of West African manuscripts in Africa, Europe, and America. Until recently, most of the cataloguing and digital preservation efforts of West African manuscripts have focused on those written in Arabic. However, there has been an increasing interest in West African manuscripts written in Ajami and indigenous scripts. Important West African manuscripts in Arabic, Ajami, and indigenous scripts have now been digitized and preserved, though the bulk remain uncatalogued and unknown beyond the communities of their owners.

Mandinka belongs to the Manding dialect cluster included in the western branch of the Mande language family. It is spoken by approximately 1.5 million speakers in Gambia, Senegal, and Guinea-Bissau. Mandinka is characterized by its long-standing contacts with Atlantic languages. Most ethnic Mandinka do not speak the languages of their Atlantic neighbours, but Mandinka is widely used as a lingua franca by speakers of the neighbouring Atlantic languages, and language shift from Atlantic languages to Mandinka has been a common process in the linguistic history of Casamance. The present chapter is a sketch of Mandinka phonology and grammar. A remarkable aspect of Mandinka phonology is the complexity of its tone sandhi rules. The inflectional morphology of Mandinka is very reduced, contrasting with the richness of its derivational morphology. Noun compounding is also very productive. As regards syntax, the main contrasts with Atlantic languages are the rigid SOVX constituent order, the total lack of a gender system, the use of postpositions rather than prepositions, the lack of multiple object constructions, the systematic use of in situ focalization, productive active–passive ambitransitivity, and the lack of morphologically coded valency alternations other than causative.