Zulu

G. Poulos and S. Bosch
University of South Africa
Zulu is a language spoken in the Republic of South Africa by approximately 8,34 million people (according to the 1991 census). Zulu belongs to the South-Eastern zone of the Bantu language family, a family of languages that occupies an area south of an ill-defined boundary that stretches from the Cameroon area on the west coast to more or less the lake Victoria area and Kenya on the east coast. Languages of this family are found as far south as the Cape area of the Republic of South Africa.

Zulu is now recognized as one of the 11 official languages of the Republic of South Africa, with its major concentration of speakers found in KwaZulu/Natal province. It has traditionally been recognized as one of the languages of the so-called Nguni group, others being languages such as Xhosa, Swati and Ndebele. In the grammatical sketch on Zulu an overview is given of the following linguistic aspects:

The morphological structure of the Zulu language is provided with reference to the various word categories/parts of speech, e.g. attention is given to basic morphological characteristics such as noun class categorization and the ensuing system of concordial agreement, phenomena that permeate through all the languages of this family. Other important areas of linguistic research are also given attention, e.g. aspects relating to the phenomenom of grammaticalization, discourse pragmatics and typological issues. An outline of the sound system of the language is also provided with reference to the phonetic qualities of the different consonants and vowels. Specific attention is given to the production of "unusual" sounds such as clicks. Reference is also made to basic tonal issues in the language. In addition a phonemic inventory of the language is provided.

ISBN 9783895860164. Languages of the World/Materials 50. 55pp. 1997.

Tokelauan

Robin Hooper
University of Auckland

Tokelau comprises three atolls, Atafu, Nukunono and Fakaofo, situated 750 miles northwest of Samoa. Tokelauan belongs to the Polynesian sub-group of Austronesian. It is spoken by about approximately 5000 people, of whom about 1600 live in the atolls, about 3000 in New Zealand, and several hundred elsewhere in the Pacific region. The phonology and morphology are typical of Polynesian languages. The main morphological processes are reduplication, compounding and derivation. Number, tense and aspect are indicated by particles, and there is little in the way of inflectional morphology. The pronoun system is complex, and an inclusive-exclusive distinction is made in dual and plural pronouns. Two types if possession marking encode a semantic distinction betweeen (loosely) inalienable and alienable possession.

In most studies of Polynesian languages, the smallest convenient unit of analysis is taken to be the phrase, and this convention is followed here. Sections on the structure of the noun phrase and the verb phrase are followed by a description of clause structure. All clauses contain a predicate, of which there are several different types: verbal, locative, existential, possessive, and nominal. Noun phrase relations in the clause are indicated by prepositions, and verbal clauses have the ergative case-marking typical of Western Polynesian languages. Nominalisation, complementation, and kinds of clause combination are briefly described. Although Tokelauan is typologically verb initial, noun phrase initial clauses are common owing to pragmatic and discourse factors such as topicalization and focussing.

Robin Hooper is Lecturer in English Linguistics at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. The author's work on Tokelauan is based on two years' fieldwork in Fakaofo in the 1970s and continuing research among Tokelauan and comparative Polynesian or Oceanic syntax, and assistance in the production of a Tokelauan dictionary.

ISBN 9783929075410. Languages of the World/Materials 58. 48pp.1996.

Kunama

Lionel M. Bender
Southern Illinois University

Kunama is spoken by about 100,000 people in Eritrea. Once thought to be a "language isolate", Kunama is now classified as a rather divergent Nilo-Saharan language. Ethnographers have seen Chushitic-like cultural traits among the Kunama and linguistically Kunama shares the SOV-type syntax of the Ethiopian (Afrasian) language area and has lexical influence from Semitic and Cushitic. The rich suprasegmental phonology of vowel and consonant length, stress, and tone remains to be fully worked out. The pronominal system has dual as well as sg./pl. and inclusive/exclusive distinctions, but no grammatical gender. There are both prefixal and suffixal verbal conjugations, but these are lexically distributed and quite unlike the Afrasian aspectual use of the prefixes and suffixes.

The volume contains phonological and morphological sketches, overall syntax and some selected topics (notably nonverbal predication and relative constructions), two sample text with morphemic and free translations, references, and a language map of the Kunama area.

ISBN 9783895860720. Languages of the World/Materials 59. 60pp. 1996.

Divehi (Maldivian)

Bruce D. Cain and James W. Gair
Cornell University

Dhivehi (Maldivian) is the national language of the Republic of Maldives, an island nation located in the Indian Ocean south of India and to the west of Sri Lanka. Dhivehi is an Indo-Aryan language closely related to Sinhala, and with it forms the southernmost branch. Dhivehi has more than 240,000 speakers in the Maldives, and an additional 5,000 in Minicoy of India where the language is known as Mahal. As the national language of the Maldives, Dhivehi is fully developed and thriving. It has a literary history that spans at least nine centuries, and employs its own unique right-to-left script called Thaana. Dhivehi printed materials are abundant, and it is the language of radio and television. Dhivehi is the medium of education, and literacy in the Maldives exceeds 95%.

While enjoying a privileged status within the Maldives, very little is known about Dhivehi in the outside world. The inventory of published works on Dhivehi is sparse. In more recent years, the Maldives has become more accessible to researchers, and interest in Dhivehi has grown. This sketch describes standard Dhivehi, the dialect spoken in the capital Male' and surrounding atolls, and is based on a corpus of published materials and elicited information gathered on site. Some of the more notable phonological features of Dhivehi include development of prenasalized stops, compensatory lengthening of consonants from vowel loss, and alternations of several consonants with the glottal stop. Morphologically, Dhivehi has a system of volitivity marking for verbal forms. Dhivehi syntax features a cleft-like construction in which the focused item is generally post-verbal, and a predicate nominal construction with an equative marker on the subject.

ISBN 9783929075168. Languages of the World/Materials 63. 60 pp. 2000.

Dogon

Vladimir Plungian
University of Moscow

Dogon is reputed for its extremely high dialectal diversity: there are more than 15 dialects attested, most of them being mutually unintelligible. The sketch is based on one of the central dialects, tommo­so, very important sociolinguistically but not well described yet (more or less like all the other Dogon dialects).

Typologically, Dogon is characterized by a quite unusual combination of "agglutinating" verb (with a variety of aspectual and temporal markers within the word­form) and "isolating" noun (without any affixal markers at all, even number and case markers being clitical). The sketch provides a short phonological and morphological description, a concise account of grammatical categories and derivational system and an overview of main syntactic properties of Dogon (special emphasis is laid on converbs/participles and "serialization" in clause combining). [written in French].

ISBN 9783929075465. Languages of the World/Materials 64. 47 pp. 1995.

Corse

Mathée Giacomo-Marcellesi
Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris III

Le Corse est parlé en Corse par environ 150,000 personnes. Sa spécifité a été longtemps occultée par sa parenté avec les autres idiomes italiques. Il a commencé à bénéficier dans la 2è moitié du XIXè siècle d'une littérature d'expression corse. Il est officiellment reconnu aujourd'hui comme langue régionale (enseignement, cursus, concours de recrutement d'enseignants). Langue "polynomique", le corse connait une variation importante au plan phonologique et phonétique et au plan lexical, plus réduite au plan morphosyntaxique. Le système phonologique est caratérisé par un faible nombre d'unités (7 Voyelles réduites jusqu'à 3 voyelles du triangle primitif en syllable atone final, 15 Consonnes dont 2 occlusives palatlaes /C/ et /J/ et 4 affriquées organisées en corrélations occlusives/fricatives, fricatives/spirantes, non voisées/voisées, tendues/lâches, etc... La structure syllabique correspond le plus souvent au schéma (C)V. La variation shandhi affecte les voyelles initiales et surtout finales et les consonnes initiales dont l'alternance entre formes fortes et formes faibles (incluses/non incluses) recoupe les oppositions corrélatives. Dans le syntagme nominal on observe pour l'article une seule forme au pluriel et une absence de différenciation entre défini et indéfini. Les noms propres présentent un vocatif avec apocope et particule prépositionelle o. Le syntagme verbal présente une remarquable ténacité du subjonctif et les temps du futur et de l'imparfait ont d'importantes valeurs aspectuelles et modales.

La forme a est omnipresente: a1 morphème prépositionel de haute fréquence, a2 morphème préfixal (nominal et verbal), a3 morphème du genre et du nombre, etc...

Il y a des suffixes verbaux et deverbaux à valeur itérative. La phrase est caracterisée par une haute fréquence de la constructions SVSN et un marquer spécifique en -i pour les connecteurs introduisant exclamatives et conjonctives, différent du marqueur en -u pour les interrogatives. Importance des phénomènes e focalisation, de topicalisation et de reprise.

ISBN 9783895860119. Languages of the World/Materials 65. 62 pp. 1997.

Bulgare

Jack Feuillet
INALCO/Paris

Le bulgare, langue officielle de la République de Bulgarie, appartient au groupe slave (méridional) de la famille indo­européenne. Par rapport aux autres langues slaves (sauf le macédonien, qui appartient à la même aire), il présente d'intéressantes particularités typologiques qui le rattachent à la communauté balkanique: article postposé, formation du futur à l'aide de "vouloir", disparition de l'infinitif et remplacement par une subordonée à verbum finitum, formation analytique du comparatif et du superlatif, confusion du génitif et du datif, "redoublement" de l'object, etc. Le bulgare a perdu les cas (sauf le vocatif), mais il a bien conservé le système verbal ancien et la même développé en créant un mode non­testimonial.

Sommaire: Système phonologique (vocalique, consonantique, accentuel); morphologie nominale, adjectivale, pronominale; morphologie verbale; système verbal; syntaxe du groupe nominal; syntaxe de la phrase; particules; subordination; coordination; textes commentés.

ISBN 9783895860102. Languages of the World/Materials 66. 78 pp. 1995.

Sumerian

John Hayes
University of California, Berkeley

Sumerian has the distinction of being the oldest attested language in the world. Spoken in the southern part of ancient Mesopotamia, the Iraq of today, its first texts date to about 3100 BCE. Sumerian died out as a spoken language about 2000 BCE, but it was studied in the Mesopotamian school system as a language of high culture for almost two thousand more years. A language­isolate, Sumerian has no obvious relatives.

Typologically, Sumerian is quite different from the Semitic languages which followed it in Mesopotamia. It is basically SOV, with core grammatical relationships marked by affixes on the verb, and with adverbial relationships marked by postpositions, which are cross­referenced by prefixes on the verb. It is split ergative; the perfect functions on an ergative basis, but the imperfect on a nominative­accusative basis.

Because Sumerian is an isolate, and has been dead for thousands of years, special problems arise in trying to elucidate its grammar. There are still major challenges in understanding its morphosyntax, and very little is known about Sumerian at the discourse level. This volume will describe some of the major questions still to be resolved.

ISBN 9783929075397. Languages of the World/Materials 68. 48 pp. 1999.

Basilicatese

Rainer Bigalke
Universität Osnabrück

Il nome antico della Basilicata è Lucania. Il Basilicatese (o Lucano) è stato parlato como 'ipersistema' dialettale da circa 600.000 individui nel 1976. La lingua ufficiale in Basilicata è l'Italiano. La regione è divisa in due province, quella di Potenza e quella di Matera con 132 comuni. Dal punto di vista diatopico l'ipersistema dialettale basilicatese può essere diviso in due parti. Da un lato si trova nel nord e nella parte centrale un ipersistema che mostra parecchie innovazioni che ci sono arrivate dal periodo della Repubblica Romana in poi, per esempio l'armonizzazione delle vocali toniche ­é­ ed ­ó­ davanti a una ­u oppure una ­i finale. Dall'altro si sentono in alcune zona remote nel sud della regione parecchi relitti fonologici, morfologici, sintattici e lessicali che ci sopravvivono dal periodo del latino classico. L'antica colonizzazione greca nella parte meridionale della regione sarà presa in considerazione nel nostro schizzo.

Le varietà basilicatesi hanno in comune alcune particolarità con gli ipersistemi calabrese, apulo e campano. Evidenti sono le convergenze linguistiche del Basilicatese con la Sardegna e la Romanía.

L'importanza particolare del Basilicatese fra le altre lingue romanze viene messa in rilievo quando si costata che alcune particolarità basilicatesi si ritrovano nel Portogallo, in Spagna, in Romania e nei dialetti dell'Istria. Lo schizzo prenderà in considerazione: fonologia (vocalismo e consonantismo), morfologia, sintassi e alcuni aspetti caratteristici del lessico basilicatese. I fatti descritti troveranno una spiegazione storica. Alla fine il lettore troverà due testi basilicatesi con la relativa traduzione italiana, due carte che illustrano i fatti descritti e una bibliografia.

ISBN9783929075328. Languages of the World/Materials 69. 54 pp. 1994.

El Gallego

José A. Pérez Bouza
University of Barcelona

La lengua gallega es una de las cinco lenguas que se hablan en la Península Ibérica: cuatro de ellas románicas (portugués, gallego, castellano o español y catalán), la quinta, de origen todavia no bien conocido (el vasco, vascuence o euskera). Se localiza en una franja de terreno de 29 434 Km2 de extensión, comprendida entre la prolongación de la frontera oriental portuguesa hasta el mar Cantábrico y el océano Atlántico. Constituye el medio normalizado de communicación de 2 735 836 hablantes, además de otros 1 500 000 gallegos que habitan en diversas lugares del mundo, y otros habitantes castellanos y portugueses de las zonas limítrofes.

Contenido: 1. Fonología y ortografía. 2. Morfología. 3. Sintaxis. 4. Texto.

ISBN 9783895860126. Languages of the World/Materials 70. 100 pp. 1996.