Description
Book SynopsisResearch on African languages has been preoccupied with understanding similarities across the four distinct language families. This book discusses whether structural similarities and dissimilarities among African languages are the result of contact between these languages, and demonstrates that such similarities are more common than is widely believed.
Trade ReviewReview of the hardback: '… it is a data-driven volume written by experienced Africanists with expertise spanning the continent. … the volume as a whole has the potential to encourage linguists working with apparent genetic units in Africa to consider how areal features contribute to our conceptualisation of 'relatedness' and to re-assess the importance of genetic units in accounting for similarities across languages within a particular geographical area where contact is attested or historically likely.' Journal of Linguistics
Table of Contents1. Introduction Bernd Heine and Derek Nurse; 2. Is Africa a linguistic area? Bernd Heine and Zelealem Leyew; 3. Africa as a phonological area Nick Clements and Annie Rialland; 4. Africa as a morphosyntactic area Denis Creissels, Gerrit J. Dimmendaal, Zygmunt Frajzyngier and Christa König; 5. The Macro-Sudan belt Tom Güldemann; 6. The Tanzanian Rift Valley area Roland Kießling, Maarten Mous and Derek Nurse; 7. Ethiopia Joachim Crass and Ronny Meyer; 8. The marked-nominative languages of eastern Africa Christa König; 9. Africa's verb-final languages Gerrit J. Dimmendaal.
