African Language StructuresWm. E. Welmers surveys a wide range of structural characteristics, both phonological and grammatical, of the languages of sub-Saharan Africa. Drawing on thirty years of experience in the analysis and teaching of African languages, and on work done on some seventy spoken languages, Welmers has organized the volume by linguistic topic. Thus there are extensive discussions of tonal systems in languages from all over sub-Saharan Africa, of noun classes and concord in the Bantu and other Niger-Kordofanian languages, and of the varieties of verbal constructions found in representative languages. African Language Structures emphasizes the organization of language data rather than the technicalities of theoretical linguistics. The material is presented in such a way that students working on the analysis of other languages can be guided in their procedures; Welmers suggests not only what types of structures may be expected, but also how they may be discovered and described. This work is unique in the depth of its linguistic insight over the entire spectrum of language structure and in the breadth of its language coverage. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1973. |
Contents
| 1 | |
2 Vowel Systems | 20 |
3 Consonant Systems | 46 |
4 Tonal Systems | 77 |
5 Functions of Tone | 116 |
An Introduction | 159 |
7 Functional and Vestigial Noun Class Systems | 184 |
8 Nonclass Noun Systems | 211 |
10 Other Noun Modifiers Conjunction | 275 |
11 Being Having and Verbs | 308 |
12 Verbal Constructions in NigerCongo | 343 |
13 Verbal Systems | 384 |
14 Questions Relatives Subordination | 416 |
15 Adverbials Ideophones Semantic Ranges | 446 |
References | 478 |
Index of Language Names | 485 |
Other editions - View all
African Language Structures William E. Welmers,Wm. E. Welmers,William Everett Welmers Limited preview - 1974 |
Common terms and phrases
adjectives adverbial African languages Akan allomorph allophones analysis appear associative construction associative morpheme Bantu languages Bariba ɓé cited concord conditioned consonant construction marker contrast derived Dho-Luo dialects distinction downstep Efik English examples expressed Fante final vowel forms grammatical guages high tone high-low hortative ideophones Igbo initial interpreted Jukun káa knife Kpelle lexical linguistic locative low tone Mande languages meaning mid tone monosyllabic morpheme morphotonemic alternation nasal negative Niger-Congo languages nominal nonlow noun class noun class system noun prefixes occur person singular pheme phonemic phonological phrase pitch position preceding present question words reduplicated reference relational noun relative clause semantic Senari sentence sequences similar speakers stative stem tone structure subject pronoun suffix Suppire Swahili syllable tonal tone language tone replacing tonemes verb verb base verb root verb stem verbal constructions vowel harmony Wàpã Welmers Yoruba