Now online: Bibliography of Chadic and Hausa Linguistics, 5th edition (2022)

The 5th edition of Paul Newman‘s Comprehensive Bibliography of Chadic and Hausa Linguistics has been posted and is now available online:

Newman, Paul. 2022. Comprehensive Bibliography of Chadic and Hausa Linguistics, 5th edition. Bloomington: IUScholarWorks. 

URL:   https://hdl.handle.net/2022/27402

DOI:    https://doi.org/10.5967/5q3g-t220

It includes approximately 3,500 linguistic works written on Chadic languages, of which about 2,000 are on Hausa, by far the largest and most widely spoken member of the family. The entries date from 1790 to the present. The bibliography contains published books and articles as well as unpublished Ph.D. dissertations and master’s theses.

Advertisement

New publication: Linguistique et Langues Africaines (LLA) no. 7/2021

Yvonne Treis has sent the following notice:

The most recent issue of our journal contains one research article and two book reviews on Chadic languages. All contributions are available for free download here: https://llacan.cnrs.fr/lla/index2.html

Le dernier numéro de notre revue contient un article et deux comptes rendus de livres sur les langues tchadiques. Toutes les contributions peuvent être téléchargées gratuitement ici : https://llacan.cnrs.fr/lla/index.html

Table of contents / Table des matières

Articles
– Keith L. Snider, Floating tone noun class prefixes in Mada (Nigeria), p. 11-41.
[CHADIC]- Henry Tourneux, Le nom du souverain dans les parlers « kotoko » du Cameroun, p. 43-62.

Book Reviews / Comptes rendus
– David Jowitt, Nigerian English, 2019 (by Bernard Caron), p. 65-67.
– James Essegbey, Tutrugbu (Nyangbo) language and culture, 2019 (by Matthew Harley), p. 69-73.
[CHADIC] – Erin Shay, en collab. avec Lazare Wambadang, A grammar of Pévé, 2020 (by Joseph Lovestrand), p. 75-79.
– Marlene Guss-Kosicka, Die Verbalsysteme des Amharischen und Tigrinischen: Eine vergleichende Analyse, 2019 (by Ronny Meyer), p. 81-87.
– Gerrit J. Dimmendaal & Rainer Vossen (éd.), The Oxford handbook of African languages, 2020 (by Aurore Montébran & Neige Rochant), p. 89-95.
– Heleen Smits, A grammar of Lumun, a Kordofanian language of Sudan, 2017 (by Nicolas Quint), p. 97-102.
– Mari C. Jones & Damien Mooney (éd.), Creating orthographies for endangered languages, 2017 (by David Roberts), p. 103-110.
– Michel Lafon & Mongezi Bolofo, Manuel de conversation français-zoulou et zoulou-français, 2021 (by Paulette Roulon-Doko), p. 111-113.
[CHADIC] – Sean Allison, A Grammar of Makary Kotoko, 2020 (by Henry Tourneux), p. 115-123.

New Paper on South Bauchi languages

Roger Blench has uploaded a new paper titled “The South Bauchi languages: Nigeria’s largest group of (almost) unknown languages” on Academia.edu.

The South Bauchi languages are West Chadic languages spoken around Bauchi town. Although there are some forty languages, few have been studied by linguists and even fewer have any language development. The best-known languages are Zaar, Boghom, Geri and Zul. The talk reviews what is known and presents the results of fresh fieldwork undertaken in 2019. We found that some languages are down to the last few speakers and urgent research is required to document these languages before they disappear. South Bauchi languages are known for their complex phonologies, and as a consequence, there are many problems in developing effective writing systems. The presentation offers some suggestions for the priority research agenda.

Read the paper at Academia.edu

Skype talk on “Sentence-final particles in Barayin”

Joseph Lovestrand has sent the following invitation to another Skype Talk:

The Chadic Languages & Cultures group, run by Cameroonian linguists, is meeting online Saturday 28 August, 9 AM, Cameroon time (UTC+1). All are welcome to join the discussion (in French and English)!

Chadic Languages & Cultures
Saturday, 28 August, 2021
9 AM (Cameroon time, UTC+1)
Join via Skype: https://join.skype.com/YTdz8ale1BIF

Sentence-final particles in Barayin
Joseph Lovestrand
SOAS University of London

This presentation is a first exploration of the distribution and functions of seven sentence-final particles in Barayin based on the analysis of a 25,000-word corpus, primarily of transcribed monologues (Lovestrand 2017). The first two types of particles are widespread in Chadic languages: the negation marker /do/ and the interrogative marker /saŋ/. These markers only occur in a sentence-final position and appear to be monofunctional. These markers are closely related to the next two. The conjunction /sane/ ‘or’ can act as a conjunction presenting alternatives, but in a sentence-final position it is an interrogative marker with essentially the same function as /saŋ/. The sentence-final particle /kudi/ always follows the negation marker /do/. Its precise function is not clear, but it is assumed to intensify the negator in a similar sense to the expression “not at all” in English or “pas du tout” in French. The particle /atti/ seems to have a general affirmative function. It is used on its own to express agreement in dialogues. As a sentence-final particle in monologues, its function is less clear, but it could be interpreted as an intensifier analogous to “really” in English.

The other two sentence-final particles in the corpus are words from Chadian Arabic. The word /kalas/ or /halas/ is from Chadian Arabic ‘finished’. It is the 11th most frequent word in the corpus. In addition to occurring at the end of sentences, it is sometimes found transcribed in a sentence-initial position or on its own, suggesting it can appear as an interjection without being part of an adjacent clause. There are cases where /kalas/ or /halas/ is followed by the background marker /ná/ (Lovestrand 2018) thus verifying its integration in the syntax. The other Arabic-origin sentence-final particle is /bas/ ‘only’. This word is sometimes used to simply mean ‘only’, and in this function it can also occur in a non-final position. As a sentence-final particle, /bas/ can take on pragmatic functions of emphasis and downplaying in a manner analogous to some uses of “just” in English. Note that /bas/ in Chadian Arabic is not a sentence-final particle.

Lovestrand, Joseph. 2012. The linguistic structure of Baraïn (Chadic). Dallas, TX: Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics MA thesis. https://www.diu.edu/documents/theses/Lovestrand_Joseph-thesis.pdf (2 December, 2020).

Lovestrand, Joseph. 2017. Recording and archiving Barayin (Jalkiya) language data. London, SOAS: Endangered Languages Archive. https://elar.soas.ac.uk/Collection/MPI1035101 (2 December, 2012).

Lovestrand, Joseph. 2018. The background marker na in Barayin. Journal of African Languages and Linguistics 39(1). 1–39.

New Publication: Topics in Chadic Linguistics X

Topics in Chadic Linguistics X – Papers from the 9th Biennial International Colloquium on the Chadic Languages, Villejuif, September 7-8, 2017, edited by Henry Tourneux and Yvonne Treis, has just appeared at Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

The following papers are contained:

Paul Newman:
Russell G. Schuh – An overview of his Chadic scholarship

Umma Aliyu Musa / Esther Morgenthal / Henning Schreiber:
Less commonly documented literacy practices – Secular Hausa Ajami as situated social literacy

Sergio Baldi / Rudolf Leger:
Animal names in Hausa and Kupto – Their specific characteristics mirrored in proverbs, epithets and sayings

Gian Claudio Batic:
Verb classes and TAM system in Kushi (Nigeria)

Roger Blench:
Current research on the A3 West Chadic languages

Philippe Cassuto / Victor Porkhomovsky:
Les stratégies de traduction de l’Ancien Testament dans les trois versions haoussa de la Bible – Un problème d’interprétation ?

Emma Kuipers:
Verb classification in Mogum (Eastern Chadic)

Joseph Lovestrand:
Ideophones in Barayin

Joseph McIntyre:
Patterns of organisation in the Hausa grade system

Nina Pawlak / Joseph McIntyre:
Semantic and pragmatic motivations of gender assignment in Hausa

James Roberts / Albert Camus Soulokadi:
On ideophones in Musey

Olga Stolbova:
Lexical links between Chadic, Cushitic and Omotic languages

Henry Tourneux:
Le syntagme nominal dans le parler « kotoko » de Kousseri

Melanie Viljoen:
Gavar verb morphology

Biblio Update in Progress

Our colleague Paul Newman has sent us the following notice:

The Comprehensive Chadic/Hausa Bibliography (version 3 [2015]) is available open access at IUScholarWorks http://hdl.handle.net/2022/20576.  I am currently working on a new, updated and corrected version, hopefully to appear in early 2018.  If any of you have new items that you would like to include, or if you notice errors in the current version, I would be grateful if you could provide me with the appropriate information. I am particularly interested in book reviews you have written or reviews of your works that have been reviewed by others since this information often slips by unnoticed. My email address is pnxxpn at indiana.edu.

Don’t worry about formatting: however you do things is fine with me as long as the information is full and accurate. I would, however, like to make two requests:

(1) In citing names of authors or editors, please spell out the first names rather than using initials.

(2) If titles are in languages other than English, French, or German (e.g., Polish, Italian, or Hausa) please provide an English translation.

Finally, I should mention that this is the final version of the biblio that I shall be doing. Once this version is out, I shall be putting this work aside. Whether future updates appear or not depends on whether anyone else is willing to step up and take on the task. The work is not onerous, but it is not trivial: it does require a serious commitment on someone’s part. Essential qualifications include proficiency in English, good reading knowledge of French and German, access to a good library and internet resources, familiarity with (or willingness to learn) biblio database management, and a real interest in bibliography work. If any individuals (or teams) wish to discuss the possibility of assuming this task, please drop me a note.

Paul Newman
pnxxpn at indiana.edu

New publications in Central Chadic

Two important publications in Central Chadic have appeared at Rüdiger Köppe Verlag:

• A Dictionary of Hdi by Zygmunt Frajzyngier et al. (195 pp., € 34,80)
• A large book containing two volumes: The Lamang Language and Dictionary by H. Ekkehard Wolff (1110 pp., € 128,00). It can also be ordered as two separate volumes: Lamang Language (501 pp., € 68,00 ) and Lamang Dictionary (609 pp, € 78,00)

Follow the above links to find out more about these publications.

More bibliographic references

In the past, the printed version of Chadic Newsletter (which was discontinued in 1998) contained a section “New publications”. This section contained references to all the books and articles related to Chadic languages the editor was aware of.  In the present form of Chadic Newsletter Online, where news is spread in form of blog posts, this information could be spread much faster. The problem is: We are not always aware of everything that is published in our field. That is why we need your help!

Please don’t hesitate to send us details about your research, conference papers, publications, word lists, recordings, reviews, websites or anything else on Chadic you find interesting and want to share. On our contact page you can find more details about how to reach us.

More bibliographic references related to Chadic languages can be found in the collections of the Mega-Chad Association and also in Paul Newman’s Online Bibliography of Chadic and Hausa Linguistics.

 

New publication on Mubi

Book Cover: Reimer

A new volume (in French) on Mubi has been published at Reimer Verlag:

Herrmann Jungraithmayr. La langue mubi (République du Tchad). Précis de Grammaire – Textes – Lexique (Sprache und Oralität in Afrika, Volume 27).  226 p. + 1 Ill.; 17 × 24 cm, ISBN 978-3-496-02852-9, Price: 69,00 € [D] | 88,80 SFR [CH]

The book comprises a  sketch of the grammar (80 pages), a text collection (50 pages) and a lexicon (60 pages).

The following short description can be found at the website of Reimer Verlag:

“Le mubi (moubi) ou Monjul est une langue tchadique parlée par environ 35000 locuteurs dans l’est de la République Tchad. Il s’agit d’un membre particulièrement innovateur de la famille tchadique et qui représente la branche tchadique la plus éloignée du sud-ouest du phylum hamito-sémitique. Parmi ses traits caractéristiques, il y a l’apophonie allant dans le lexique et la morphologie, surtout dans la formation du système aspectuel binaire. En ce qui concerne le lexique, l’influence de l’arabe est forte. Ceci n’est pas surprenant dans le sens où l’islam et les dialectes arabes jouent un grand rôle dans la société mubi. Cependant, cette expansion de l’arabe pourrait mettre en danger les langues locales.”

A table of contents can also be downloaded at the website of Reimer Verlag.

North American Conference on Afroasiatic Linguistics (NACAL) 36

The following invitation for NACAL 36 was published on Linguist List Issue 18.2557:

The 36th annual meeting of the North American Conference on Afroasiatic Linguistics (NACAL 36) will be held in Chicago, IL, USA from March 14-16, 2008 (Friday-Sunday). Papers are solicited for the 36th annual meeting of the North American Conference on Afroasiatic Linguistics (NACAL 36), which will be held in Chicago, IL, USA from March 14-16, 2008 (Friday-Sunday).

Papers on linguistic topics relevant to the languages of the Afroasiatic phylum (Chadic, Berber, Cushitic, Omotic, Egyptian, Semitic) are requested. Topics relating to all aspects of Afroasiatic languages will be considered, particularly including phonology, morphology, syntax, comparative linguistics, sociolinguistics, and epigraphy. These topics should be considered as general guidelines and are not intended to be exclusive. No original paper will be rejected on account of its subject, as long as it relates to the languages of the Afroasiatic phylum and meets the scholarly standards established by previous conferences.

In addition to the general sessions, there will be a special panel on Comparative Afrasian, dedicated to Alan S. Kaye. Participants who wish to contribute to this panel should indicate their preference when submitting the abstract or contact Lionel Bender (eswgsiu.edu).

Abstracts describing the precise topic treated with a length of approximately 200-300 words can be sent as an electronic version (pdf or word document) or as a paper copy to the addresses specified on the registration page on the website(www.nacal.org). The deadline for submission is December 1st, 2007. For more information, please visit our website at www.nacal.org.