bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Chadic
Authors: Caron Bernard 
Published: May 2020

AbstractThe Chadic family is best known by Hausa and its 45 million speakers, while the other 170 or so languages count between 500,000 and a few thousand. Given their common genetic origin, what does it mean to be a Chadic language, not only in terms of retentions and innovations from their common Afro-Asiatic origin, but also from a typological point of view? The chapter begins by listing and locating the Chadic languages, while making an attempt at estimating their number of speakers. It then characterizes the typical Chadic language, describing its phonology, morphology, sentence structure, and function marking. The next section studies the relationship between Chadic and Afro-Asiatic in terms of retention and innovation. The section after that explores the typology of the Chadic family and its relationship with the Macro-Sudan belt and Africa as a linguistic area. The conclusion presents a brief assessment of the development of Chadic linguistics.
Sidaama
Authors: Kawachi Kazuhiro 
Published: May 2020

AbstractThis chapter describes the grammatical structure of Sidaama (Sidamo), a Highland East Cushitic language spoken in the south-central part of Ethiopia. Although more than three million people speak Sidaama, there has been relatively little research on the language. The introduction gives background information on the Sidaama language and the Sidaama people. The phonology section lists phonemes, consonant clusters, and geminates, and describes the suprasegmentals; it also presents morphophonemic rules. The section on parts of speech deals with types of nouns and verbs, similarities and differences between adjectives and nouns as well as between adjectives and verbs, various pronominal forms, and clitics. The morphology section discusses reduplication of verb roots, suprafixes on nouns and adjectives, and suffixes on nouns, adjectives, and verbs. Finally, the syntax section discusses grammatical relations, word order issues, external possessor constructions, and relative clauses.
Adamawa
Authors: Kleinewillinghöfer Ulrich 
Published: May 2020

AbstractThe so-called “Adamawa” languages are spoken in the sub-Saharan savannah belt, along the Upper Benue and its tributaries and in isolated pockets in southern Chad. Insufficient documentation and the marked linguistic diversity of the numerous language groups and isolates subsumed under “Adamawa” largely contributed to its contested status. So far, no convincing evidence was presented that “Adamawa” is indeed a distinct genetic unit, as proposed in earlier classifications. Within “Adamawa” only a minority of languages have preserved the heritage of a noun class system. Yet the remarkable morphological resemblances—supported by lexical correlates and typological analogies—found in class languages in two distinct “Adamawa” groups, as well as in various class languages of Central Gur, provide the strongest evidence contesting the validity of “Adamawa”. A larger Adamawa-Gur continuum which apparently occupied a contiguous area in the savannah belt before it became broken up appears to be more feasible.
Omotic
Authors: Köhler Bernhard 
Published: May 2020

AbstractThe Omotic language family belongs to those entities within the Afro-Asiatic phylum which are controversially debated. With regard to external classification some authors maintain that Omotic should be subsumed under the western branch of Cushitic, whereas others place it directly under Afro-Asiatic—besides Cushitic, Chadic, Semitic, Egyptian, and Berber. There are even hypotheses that at least parts of Omotic, if not the whole family, are not Afro-Asiatic at all. The present chapter reviews the various approaches and arguments which have emerged during the history of research. In the course of the discussion, some of the most salient features of Omotic languages will be outlined. It will become clear that Omotic can indeed be established as a relatively independent branch of Afro-Asiatic.
Dialectology and Linguistic Geography
Authors: Lafkioui Mena B. 
Published: May 2020

AbstractThis chapter discusses linguistic divergence and convergence processes from a dialectological and areal viewpoint so as to better understand the challenges that defining Africa’s linguistic macro- and micro-profile presents. The dialectology part focuses on a case study of dialectometry classification founded on Berber geolinguistic data, whereas the part on linguistic geography contrasts the different current approaches to the African territory. The chapter emphasizes that the study of language variation, change, and diffusion in Africa is in need of research which is more objective, integrating without intermingling genetic and non-genetic concepts and results, and also takes into account both the linguistic (system-internal) and the extralinguistic (social, geographical, ecological, historical) context.
Niger-congo, with a Special Focus on Benue-congo
Authors: Good Jeff 
Published: May 2020

AbstractNiger-Congo is the largest referential language group in Africa. The extent to which it represents a true genealogical grouping is not established, though there is a large core set of members of the family that all specialists currently accept as related. These languages spread across sub-Saharan Africa, and their most significant common feature from a comparative perspective is a distinctive type of noun class system. The largest subgroup of Niger-Congo is Benue-Congo, which includes the Bantu languages that dominate the southern part of the continent. From a typological perspective, Niger-Congo languages are quite varied, especially with respect to their degree of morphological elaboration. This is also true of Benue-Congo, with some of its languages having an isolating morphological character and others showing extensive agglutinating morphology. Future comparative work on the family would likely benefit from greater integration of the results of sociolinguistic investigations into models of its historical development.
Gur
Authors: Miehe Gudrun 
Published: May 2020

AbstractWithin Niger-Congo, Gur is one of the families with the most highly developed agglutination systems in both the nominal and the verbal phrase. At the same time, the morphology of the Gur languages is characterized by a high rate of reduction and restructuring processes which can be best studied in the context of the nominal class systems, which reveal almost all evolutionary stages. Besides some lexical items, the reconstruction of a relatively high number of nominal class markers confirms the family’s strong relationship with Adamawa and Benue-Congo languages. The modern verbal systems are characterized by different aspect systems (marked by different verbal stems or suffixes) and by preverbal tense markers; post-verbal clitics denote assertion. Serial verb constructions are found in all languages, but more or less complementary to verbal derivations. Diathesis is expressed by moving patients to the subject position. Word order change is another prominent evolutionary phenomenon within the family.
Iraqw
Authors: Mous Maarten 
Published: May 2020

AbstractIraqw is spoken in northern Tanzania and is the largest South Cushitic language, with roughly half a million speakers. The phonological inventory is characterizedby, inter alia, the opposition of short vs. long vowels, the occurrence of lateral consonants—ejective affricate /tl/ and fricative /hl/—and a two-tone system which is grammatically (but not lexically) significant. Nominals are subject to a three-way gender distinction, which includes an interesting feature “plural” besides masculine and feminine. The gender of a noun is defined by agreement. The complexity of the Iraqw language lies in the rich inflectional element that forms a separate word independent of the verb, the so-called “selector”. Selectors are present in every sentence except for imperatives and are used with nominal and verbal complements and, for that reason, are to be seen as the root for inflectional forms.
Sign Languages
Authors: Nyst Victoria 
Published: May 2020

AbstractAfrican sign languages present a rich field for linguistic research. Locally evolved sign languages include an old village sign language like Adamorobe sign language (Ghana), and the very young village sign language of Bouakako (Côte d’Ivoire). They also include the emerging national sign language of Guinea-Bissau, following the establishment of the first deaf school in 2004, and the young family sign language of Berbey in Mali. Studies on locally evolved sign languages find structure and characteristics that seem to be typologically rare, based on the current set of (mainly Western) sign languages studied. In many countries, the sign language situation is highly multilingual, with deaf schools using a sign language that either originated in a Western country or was heavily influenced by one or more Western sign languages. More sign language research is badly needed to establish, improve, and expand facilities to provide deaf citizens with access to society.
Poetry
Authors: Vierke Clarissa 
Published: May 2020

AbstractThis chapter offers an overview of poetry in African languages from all over the continent, which is, on the one hand, the most universal and the most specific literary form. Most African cultures did not have a specific term for literature before colonialism, but have long traditions of rhythmically bound speech reserved for special occasions and used to promote the most important ideals and aspirations of society which have proved flexible to newly emerging styles. Given the beauty, vitality, and long history of poetry and its diversity rooted in its intimate connection with respective cultural contexts, concepts of aesthetics, and language form, the chapter starts by making heuristic use of generic categories, like epic and praise poetry, to be able to both draw comparisons and highlight cultural specifics. It pays attention to poetry’s changing media across time while also going beyond the typical dichotomy of “traditional” and “modern” poetry.
Tone
Authors: Odden David 
Published: May 2020

AbstractThe vast majority of African languages are tonal, and they have played a major role in the formation of theories of tone, especially since the advent of autosegmental tonology. Spread and shift of tone, floating tones and tone melodies, and downstep are well-documented properties of African tone, manifesting the fact that tones owe little allegiance to the segments realizing them. There is considerable diversity in the typology of African tone systems, with some languages attesting six distinctive pitch levels or having three-element contours on a syllable-by-syllable basis, and others sparsely specified for tone, resembling so-called pitch-accent systems. Numerous languages employ abstract tone patterns in meaningful ways, often marking tense with particular arrangements of the basic tone levels in the language. This chapter surveys the main features of tone in the languages of Africa.
Ubangi
Authors: Pasch Helma 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
Since Greenberg (1963) the languages of the Adamawa-Ubangi family of Niger-Congo have been classified as forming a genetic unit. Before they were considered isolate languages or isolate dialect clusters. Greenberg’s classification has been a matter of debate from the beginning, since most of the languages concerned are not well known and the evidence does not hold. Boyd claims that the internal classification of Ubangi cannot be proved, nor its relation to Adamawa, and Dimmendaal (2011) classifies Ubangi as a phylum out of Niger-Congo. Blench considers the group a geographic unit, not a genetic one. At the same time many linguists see the Adamawa and the Gur languages on a continuum.
Color Term Systems
Authors: Payne Doris L. 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
A study of over seventy African languages suggests that Africa displays a strongly areal distribution of different “basic color term” (BCT) systems, and there is obvious impact of salient cultural activities, language contact, urbanization, and education on the evolution of color term systems. The smallest systems, containing BCTs for ‘red’, ‘black’, and white’, are predominantly in western Africa, though some East African Nilo-Saharan languages also appear to have this system. Most West African languages fall into Greenberg’s Niger-Congo phylum, but there is strong debate about whether these are a single genetic group. Southern African “Khoisan” and southern Narrow Bantu often have moderately elaborated systems with around five probable BCTs. The greatest elaboration and variation occur in Afro-Asiatic and some Nilo-Saharan languages of north and eastern Africa, with up to seven or eight BCTs plus salient “color+pattern” vocabulary.
Kordofanian
Authors: Quint Nicolas 
Published: May 2020

AbstractThe two dozen or so Kordofanian langages are all endemic to the Sudanese province of South Kordofan (also termed the “Nuba Mountains”). Together they make up the Kordofanian branch, i.e. one of the primary subdivisions of the Niger-Congo phylum. This chapter summarizes the available information about these languages. First, it lists all known Kordofanian languages and the five families or sub-branches (namely Heibanian, Talodian, Lafofa, Rashadian, and Katloid) into which they are distributed. Second, it provides an overview of the field of Kordofanian studies. Third, it examines the most salient linguistic characteristics of Kordofanian languages in the domain of phonology, morphology (noun classes, verb extensions), and the lexicon. Building upon systematic comparisons between the diverse Kordofanian families and languages, it also proposes reconstructed Proto-Kordofanian roots for dozens of items. The conclusion recapitulates the main scientific challenges and questions that Kordofanian studies are expected to address in the future.
Pragmatics and Communication
Authors: Bearth Thomas 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
While pragmatics is committed to viewing language as goal-driven human activity in specified interactional settings, its application to African contexts, besides offering a means of evaluating the universality of its concepts in predominantly oral settings (negative face, Gricean maxims), reveals areal properties of language use and design. Straightforward correspondence between use and specific features of design is rare apart from speech routines (e.g. greetings), but discourse/grammar interfaces generate structured fields of pragmatic inquiry (information structure, deixis). Culture-driven constraints bear on usage (e.g. taboos) and on negotiation of inferential meaning, while lexically coded metapragmatics opens a little-explored field of hermeneutical reflection indigenous to African communities (speech act vocabulary, proverbs focusing on verbal behavior, repair mechanisms). Broadening the scope of inquiry to the societal dimension of communication while reducing its verbal component to zero level, the chapter concludes with some observations on silence as a pragmatic strategy in African public discourse.
Cara
Authors: Vossen Rainer 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
Cara is a highly endangered, little-documented Central Khoisan (Khoe) language of the East Kalahari branch, spoken by a small number of persons in Botswana’s Central District. The chapter begins with a brief description of phonological inventories on the segmental (consonant and vowel phonemes) as well as suprasegmental level (tones). Derivational and inflectional aspects are discussed, separately for nominals and verbals, under morphological headings such as gender-based noun class system, pronominal paradigms (personal, demonstrative, possessive, and interrogative), structure of finite verbs, verbal extensions, tense and aspect, modality, and negation. The syntactic characteristics dealt with are word order, coordination, subordination, declarative sentences, questions, and relative clauses.
African Language Types
Authors: Vossen Rainer 
Published: May 2020

AbstractThe goal of this chapter is to describe major salient features in the structures of African languages and their approximate distribution. A typological classification is not aimed at. The chapter begins with a sketch and discussion of typological subject areas generally, followed by a review of previous studies in African comparative typology that highlights the broad spectrum of objectives and methodological operations, as well as the basic principles of typological classification. The presentation of salient typological features of African languages is divided into phonological and morphosyntactic characteristics. Special emphasis is laid on noun class systems, which are widely found in Africa, case marking, verbal extensions, and serial verb constructions.
Afro-Asiatic Overview
Authors: Porkhomovsky Victor 
Published: May 2020

AbstractThe chapter presents a short sketch of the history of the Afro-Asiatic language family (often labeled a macro-family or language phylum), beginning with the history of the names Semitic and Hamitic. Changes in the composition of Afro-Asiatic are examined with a special focus on the correlation between Semitic and Hamitic. The place of Hamitic theory in Hamito-Semitic studies and its theoretical premises are discussed, as well as the reasons to reject the concept of original binary composition of the family and the very notion of Hamitic. All this led to changing the name of the family from Hamito-Semitic to Afro-Asiatic, which comprises five or six independent branches: Semitic, Ancient Egyptian, Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, and Omotic (as an independent branch or part of Cushitic). The present state of the art in comparative Afro-Asiatic and possible external links of Afro-Asiatic are also discussed.
Eastern Sudanic
Authors: Dimmendaal Gerrit J. , Jakobi Angelika 
Published: May 2020

AbstractEastern Sudanic, the largest Nilo-Saharan subgroup in terms of number of languages, is spread over a vast area from Chad towards Eritrea and southwards towards central Tanzania. In spite of considerable phonological variation (for example concerning vowel harmony) and morphosyntactic typological variation (for example concerning the tripartite number marking, differential object marking, and differential subject marking, or the presence versus absence of coverbs, light verbs, converbs, or pluractionality) within this branch, a range of diagnostic features provide clues to the genetic coherence as well as to the divergence of Eastern Sudanic, thereby supporting its classification as a valid subgroup of Nilo-Saharan.
Yukuben
Authors: Anyanwu Rose-Juliet 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
Yukuben is a Benue-Congo (Niger-Congo phylum) language spoken by some 20,000 persons along the foot of the mountains separating Cameroon and Nigeria. The vowel system is based on [ATR] harmony, and the consonant inventory is complex and fairly symmetric. Nouns are arranged in classes with an agreement system. In the verbal structure aspect and mood are more relevant than tense, whereby the aspect system is considered under two main broad sub-systems, precisely perfective and imperfective. The basic word order is SVO. The chapter gives a neat overview of the phonological system, of word categories, derivational and inflectional processes, and syntactic patterns such as subordination and coordination.
Conversation Analysis
Authors: Rüsch Maren 
Published: May 2020

AbstractConversation analysis, which began to evolve in the 1960s, studies the structure of talk, and how speakers organize a mostly fluent talk without many gaps or overlaps in order to guarantee maximal mutual understanding. It is based on the analysis of natural speech in a culturally natural environment. In this chapter, basic concepts of conversation analysis as well as the methods used by scholars are explained. A collection of examples from several African languages illustrates terminologies such as turn-taking strategies, sequence organization, and repair of trouble-sources in talk and provides an insight into new linguistic approaches to conversation analysis, especially in African settings.
Modified Chester Step Test in a Healthy Adult Population: Measurement Properties and Development of a Regression Equation to Estimate Test Duration
Authors: Coll Fiona , Hill Kylie , Burrows Sally , Watson Carol , Edgar Dale 
Published: May 2020

AbstractObjectiveHealthy working-aged adults performed the modified Chester Step Test (mCST) to (1) determine the effect of repetition on test duration, (2) report cardiorespiratory and symptom responses, (3) establish a regression equation to estimate duration, and (4) calculate the minimal detectable change of the test.MethodsIn this observational study conducted in a hospital physical therapy, adult participants aged 25 to 65 years who were healthy performed the mCST twice. This submaximal test required participants to step on and off a 20-cm step at a standardized cadence that increased every 2 minutes. The criteria for test completion were either a heart rate equal to 80% of age-predicted maximum or the onset of intolerable symptoms. The primary measure was time to test completion during the mCST (seconds). Cardiorespiratory and symptom responses were also collected during the mCST.ResultsA total of 83 participants (40 men, mean [SD] age = 44 [12] years) completed data collection. There was no systematic effect of test repetition with median test duration of the first test (522 seconds, range = 400–631 seconds) and second test (501 seconds, range = 403–631 seconds). The test elicited moderate symptoms of breathlessness and leg fatigue. In the multivariable model, age, sex, weight, and height were retained as significant predictors of test duration (R2 = 0.48). The minimal detectable change was 119 seconds.ConclusionsThe mCST is a reliable and valid clinically applicable test of aerobic capacity in working-aged adults. Independent pretest predictors can be used to estimate the clinical time required to complete the test.ImpactThe mCST was stable between test repetitions, suggesting no learning effect. For any given individual, a test duration change of 2 minutes represents change was beyond the natural variability. The mCST has good applicability to clinical settings.