1st Edition
The Bantu Noun Phrase Issues and Perspectives
This collection of original essays addresses salient issues in a range of empirical and conceptual analyses, providing detailed case studies of phenomena in Bantu languages and robust and interesting discussions on the structure of the noun phrase. This volume speaks to contemporary debates on the Bantu noun phrase, seeking to stimulate a greater understanding of the true nature of adnominal modification, definiteness, and anaphoric relations associated with it, with respect to various segmental and supra-segmental, noun formation, and noun classification phenomena. The ten chapters take the reader through the Grassfields, North-Western, North-Eastern and Southern present-day Bantu homeland, making important contributions to the documentation and analysis of Bantu languages.
The Bantu Noun Phrase: Issues and Perspectives is unique in its inclusion of so many North-Eastern Bantu languages in its discourse on Bantu linguistics and this important collection will be of particular interest to those researching, teaching, and studying African languages and linguistics.
Chapter 1. Introduction: Conceptualizing the Bantu Noun Phrase
Blasius Achiri-Taboh
Part 1: Phrase structure
Chapter 2. On the size and category of Bantu nominal expressions
Vicki Carstens
Chapter 3. Adjectives in the Ngamambo noun phrase: Issues of pre- and post-modification
Blasius Achiri-Taboh
Chapter 4. Nominal morphology and syntax of Rwa-Meru
Amani Lusekelo, Samson Sarakikya and Blasius Achiri-Taboh
Chapter 5. Nominal structure and the internal organization of the noun phrase in Nugunu
Théophile Ambadiang
Part 2: Tone in the internal structure of the NP
Chapter 6. Tonology of the Luganda Noun Phrase
Larry M. Hyman and Francis X. Katamba
Chapter 7. Morphology and Tonology of the Vocative in Basaa
Emmanuel-Moselly Makasso
Chapter 8. The augment in Shingazidja
Cédric Patin
Part 3: Anaphoric relations
Chapter 9. Content words and contextual meaning: Lexical NPs as discourse anaphora in Makhuwa and Cuwabo
Lutz Marten, Hannah Gibson, Rozenn Guérois and Teresa Poeta
Chapter 10. Aspects of referent tracking in Northern Sotho
Mampaka Lydia Mojapelo
Biography
Blasius Achiri-Taboh is Associate Professor of Linguistics in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Buea, Cameroon.
‘This volume is an invaluable guide to the issues surrounding the structure and interpretation of nominal phrases in Bantu languages, but also provides an excellent source and testing ground for theories of nominal structure beyond Bantu. The empirical range of these studies in Bantu linguistics is broad, though most of the chapters address in detail the structure of nominals in a single Bantu language. Excellent chapters investigate tone, case, the structures that determine word order in nominals, relativization, definiteness and indefiniteness, anaphoricity and referentiality, all using clear criteria for classification and analysis. It is an outstanding contribution to our understanding of both Bantu syntax and semantics and nominal structure more generally.’
Ken Safir, Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at Rutgers University, USA.
'This collection of papers on the structure of the Bantu noun phrase will be of interest to all Bantuists, and to syntacticians more generally who are interested in the exploration of contemporary syntactic accounts of the NP or DP that have developed in the context of minimalism and of government and binding theory. It will also be of interest to linguists interested in the range of ways found in Bantu languages to establish and retain reference in discourse, and to phonologists interested in learning more about the complex processes that govern the realization in noun phrase tone patterns in the Bantu languages.'
John Goldsmith, Professor of Linguistics at the University of Chicago, USA.
