bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Introduction
Authors: Dimmendaal Gerrit J. , Vossen Rainer 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
This chapter explains the goals and describes the overall structure of the book. It gives reasons for the range of eight major subject areas (Parts II through IX) into which the work is divided, and which are considered to be of particular relevance in African linguistics today. These involve the usual domains of grammar in synchronic linguistics (Part II), with the exception of semantics; linguistic typology and language comparison from a genetic point of view are central to Part III; a detailed investigation of all major language families with special focus on lower-level genetic groupings (Part IV) is followed by case studies of eighteen languages from different language families (Part V); language, cognition, and culture are discussed in Part VI; sociolinguistics is central to Part VII, whereas the role of language in historical studies is discussed in Part VIII; the final chapters (in Part IX) investigate the link between language and orature.
Linguistic Isolates
Authors: Dimmendaal Gerrit J. 
Published: May 2020

AbstractNext to three major phyla and a range of smaller language families, one finds several linguistic isolates on the African continent. The fact that many isolates are found at the periphery of expansion zones, where they are part of accretion zones, suggests that they represent the last representatives of language families which have become extinct. Climate change, social innovations, and technological innovations probably forced groups to adapt to new situations, which often involved language shift. The genetic classification of these isolates is often problematic because it is difficult to differentiate between borrowing and genetic inheritance, as no closely related languages apparently survived.
Sandawe
Authors: Eaton Helen 
Published: May 2020

AbstractSandawe (Khoisan, Tanzania) is a highly suffixal language with an intricate system of marking grammatical relations and number. The language makes extensive use of derivation between word classes and uses tone to create genitive noun phrases and distinguish certain clause types. The realis/irrealis distinction is key to understanding the different means of subject marking in Sandawe. Realis verbs allow multiple pronominal subject clitics and a subject focus marker, whereas in the irrealis, the subject is marked only on the verb itself. Aspect marking is achieved by coordinating verbs or through object marking. Conjunctions which are marked for the subject of the clause are used to express consecutive events in narratives. Constituent order is SOV, but preposing and postposing of constituents may take place, according to information structure considerations.
Ethio-Semitic
Authors: Porkhomovsky Victor 
Published: May 2020

AbstractEthio-Semitic languages form a group within the Semitic family of the Afro-Asiatic language phylum. In all the surveys of languages and language families of the world this group of languages in Ethiopia and Eritrea is always present and is by default treated as a genetic unit within Semitic. Its traditional status is supported by a long history of population medley, language contacts, and interference within the framework of areal linguistics, comparative linguistics, and sociocultural, geographical, and ecological paradigms. The internal classification of Ethio-Semitic provokes many controversies on all levels, including the language ~ dialect level. This chapter describes and explains this problematic nature, taking into account morphological isoglosses such as prefix conjugation and suffix conjugation.
ǁX’egwi
Authors: Honken Henry 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
ǁXegwi is an extinct member of the !Ui family (Khoisan) that was originally spoken near Lake Chrissie in South Africa. Unlike the majority of !Ui languages, ǁXegwi has been the subject of several field studies. This chapter draws on both published and archival materials to sketch ǁXegwi phonology and grammatical structure. ǁXegwi is unique in several respects: it is the only southern African language lacking a palatal click and unusual in the degree to which it has borrowed from Bantu. It is also a typical !Ui language and important for the reconstruction of nominal number and the Proto-!Ui verbal system.
Language Birth
Authors: Hurst Ellen 
Published: May 2020

Abstract“Youth” or “town” languages are developing in contemporary African urban centers amongst conditions of multilingualism, globalization, and superdiversity. A number of these languages have been described by researchers, notably Nouchi (Ivory Coast), Town Bemba (Zambia), Tsotsitaal (South Africa), Camfranglais (Cameroon), and Sheng (Kenya). This chapter seeks to outline the current understanding of scholars working on the topic and to use examples from the varieties above to consider the following questions: are there common linguistic strategies or characteristics that can be described for these varieties? What differences between the examples arise as a result of national contextual factors? Can these examples of language variation be explained by the concept of language “birth”, or are the varieties merely “slang” registers? The chapter makes the argument that overly simplistic categorization may obscure the diverse and creative strategies and styles that are being employed in these complex contexts.
Phonology and Phonetics
Authors: Kenstowicz Michael J. 
Published: May 2020

AbstractThis chapter focuses on the contributions African languages have made to phonological theory. The first section reviews some of the highlights in the development of autosegmental representations, concentrating on the interface of sound segments with prosodic structure. It is shown how one–many and many–one relations between phonemes and syllable positions elucidate the behavior of geminate consonants and the compensatory lengthening that accompanies processes of devocalization and prenasalization. The sections that follow consider the African contribution to studies concerning the scope and limits of phonological variation. Typologies of vowel harmony, vowel hiatus resolution and nasal-consonant coalescence, syllabification, reduplication, and phonological phrasing are surveyed.
Waja
Authors: Kleinewillinghöfer Ulrich 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
Waja is spoken in Southern Gombe State, NE Nigeria. It is the largest language of the Tula-Waja group. Waja is one of the few “Adamawa” noun class languages and also one of the key languages validating the notion of an “Adamawa-Gur” genetic unit. In Waja, noun class markers are suffixed to the nouns, while the basic pattern of concord marking is bilateral affixation/cliticization. Verbs have three basic forms: two contrasting aspectual verb forms, “definite” and “indefinite”, and verbal nouns. Productive verb extensions are pluractional, altrilocal-ventive, passive/intransitive, applicative, directional, and benefactive. Basic motion and posture verbs form their own verb class, and they require copy pronouns. The basic word order in clauses is SVO; the head noun generally precedes modifiers. Notable phonological features of Waja are ATR vowel harmony with twelve phonetic and nine phonemic vowels, and prenasalized and labialized stops.
African Languages in Information and Communications Technology
Authors: Lexander Kristin Vold 
Published: May 2020

AbstractAfrica is experiencing immense growth in the use of information technology (IT). Studies of this “Digital Revolution” have tended to focus on social and economic development issues, while lately also studies on the use of African languages on the Internet and in mobile telephony have emerged. Of particular interest is the use of African languages in written electronic communication: does IT increase the marginalization of African languages or does it create a space for their blossoming? This question will be examined in the chapter, considering the extension and the nature of the use of African languages in communication mediated by IT, like websites and electronic discussion forums, emails, instant messaging, social networking sites, and text messages. The technological dimensions related to writing systems, different efforts aiming at the standardization of keyboards, and the translation of software will also be discussed.
Central Cushitic
Authors: Leyew Zelealem 
Published: May 2020

AbstractThis chapter describes the Central Cushitic (hereafter CC) language family, one of four branches of Cushitic. CC, traditionally known as Agäw, contains four languages: Awŋi, Bilin, Kemantney, and Xamt’aŋa. Apart from Bilin, which is spoken in Eritrea, the CC languages are spoken in the central highlands of Ethiopia. The name CC was evidently given to Agäw on account of the geographical distribution of the North, South, East and the then West Cushitic (later Omotic) subgroups. The morphology, especially the verb morphology, identifies the CC languages as Cushitic, but they are classified as a separate branch of Cushitic on the basis of salient features exhibited in them. CC languages exhibit striking similarities in the lexicon, and due to longstanding language contact there exists much inter-influence with the Ethio-Semitic languages. These and other linguistic properties of CC are discussed in this chapter.
Kolisi
Authors: Leyew Zelealem 
Published: May 2020

AbstractKolisi is one of the least-known Ethiopian languages classified under the Central Cushitic (Agäw) language family. It has seven vowels and twenty-five consonants. As a typical Agäw language, the velar nasal /ŋ/, the alveolar affricate /ts/, and the velar fricative /x/ are among the archaic phonemes. Vowel length is not phonemic. Ejective sounds are absent. There are relics of prefix conjugation, but the language chiefly exhibits suffix conjugation. Verbs consist of a stem and agreeing suffixes of person, number, and gender as well as tense and mood. No gender distinction is shown in personal pronouns. Most nouns end in vowels where /-i/ indicates masculine and /-a/ feminine. Plural is marked heterogeneously but the morpheme /-ka/ appears most frequently. Accusative case is marked by the morpheme /-wa/. Kolisi is an SOV language and predominantly head-final. In complex sentences, subordinate clause precedes main clause.
Mixed Languages
Authors: Mous Maarten 
Published: May 2020

AbstractMa’á/Mbugu is a famous and classic case of a mixed language spoken in Tanzania. The mixed language is in fact a parallel lexicon to a Bantu language, one that is very close to Pare. Both are widely spoken by the community, and existence of the mixed version is a strong marker of their identity and sets them apart from the other populations in the Usambara mountains. The parallel lexicon contains words from a South Cushitic source, Maasai, an earlier East Cushitic source, and manipulated words from the regular lexicon. The language evolved out of a parallel lexicon after language shift from a Cushitic language.
Zande
Authors: Pasch Helma 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
The morphology of Zande (Ubangi) has been known since the earliest descriptions of the 1920s by Gore and Lagae. This chapter focuses on recently discovered syntactic features. The first are the functions of three copulas, the functions of the two series of personal pronouns in possessive constructions, and the functions of secondary predicates. There are also intransitive copy pronouns which mark substantivized adjectives, floating quantifiers and numerals which follow the entire noun phrase, and the functions of the preposition be ‘from, because of’ which is derived from the denotation for ‘hand’. The verb ya ‘say’ has undergone multiple grammaticalizations and functions as a complementizer, and in serial verb constructions it marks immediate anteriority or ineffective attempt.
Experiencer Constructions
Authors: Zoch Ulrike 
Published: May 2020

AbstractCross-linguistically, experiencer constructions tend to show certain peculiarities which have been studied extensively for South Asian and some Indo-European languages. Due to the ambiguity of the experiencer role—semantically right between a prototypical agent and a patient—many languages make use of different kinds of constructions that encode experiential situations, highlighting or downplaying certain semantic aspects of the experiencer role, and thereby specifying the exertion of volition, initiation, causation, and control on the part of the experiencer, or of the stimulus. The aim of this chapter is to give an overview of some lexico-grammatical means which African languages use to codify experiential situations, especially with regard to modulation of certain semantic aspects of the experiencer role.
Mande
Authors: Schreiber Henning 
Published: May 2020

AbstractThe chapter surveys the history of classification of Mande languages from the first attempts in 1849 to the most recent ones on the basis of quantitative approaches to language classification, linguistic reconstruction, and theories on language stability. It discusses various proposals for the internal genealogical relationship of Mande languages and examines their advances and differences in the light of methodological aspects and availability of reliable linguistic data. Special emphasis is laid on the historical tan/fu dichotomy and its revision. Typological issues are treated in the discussion of Mande-specific typological obstacles for lexicostatistic classification. The problem of internal convergence for the linguistic classification of Mande is exemplified in particular in accounting the impact of Greater Manding. The effect of changes in classification methodology by the introduction of phylogenetic methods and theoretical assumptions about language stability are addressed in the final discussion of a revised classification of Mande.
East Cushitic
Authors: Tosco Mauro 
Published: May 2020

AbstractThis chapter discusses the internal classification of East Cushitic, alongside a brief history of the debate, and different classificatory proposals. The aim being genetic classification, typological and areal features are mentioned only in so far as they impinge on matters of genetic subgrouping. The chapter proposes a classification based upon shared innovations and successive binary splits. The soundness of the old and elusive concept of “Lowland East Cushitic” is discussed. In the end, an overarching opposition between a Lowland and Highland branch is proposed, with the latter being the result of specific innovations. Within Lowland, the development (not shared by Saho-Afar) of preverbal subject clitics gave rise to a majority group (Southern Lowland), which was in its turn split into a Nuclear subgroup made up of Oromoid and Omo-Tana (with Oromo and Somali as major representatives), with the Dullay cluster and Yaaku as residual peripheral languages (possibly a genetic subgroup of its own).
North Cushitic
Authors: Vanhove Martine 
Published: May 2020

AbstractThe North Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic phylum consists of only one language, Beja. Lexicostatistic studies show that only 20% of the basic vocabulary is shared with the two closest East Cushitic languages, Afar and Saho, and with Agaw, a Central Cushitic language. It is hardly half of that ratio for the geographically more distant East Cushitic languages, Sidamo and Oromo. Considering that Beja was too different from other Cushitic languages in too many respects, Hetzron proposed setting it apart from Cushitic as an independent branch of Afro-Asiatic. Since the pioneering works of Reinisch, Roper, and Hudson new fieldwork on Beja has been conducted by several scholars in Sudan, Egypt, and Eritrea, which provided new data and insights on the language and its dialectal diversification. Based on all the available studies, this chapter presents and discusses the state of the art for the classification of North Cushitic and reports on recent progress.
Dan
Authors: Vydrin Valentin 
Published: May 2020

AbstractThe Mande language Dan, which is spoken in the West African countries of Guinea, the Ivory Coast, and Liberia, is among the few African languages that distinguish between five tone registers. Metrical feet in this language play a role with respect to nasal harmony as well as tonal and vocalic combinations. This chapter also presents a general overview of simple and complex sentences, with a special focus on locative marking, which constitutes a prominent morphosyntactic feature of Dan nouns, as well as on lability, which is a typologically interesting feature of the other major category in the language, the verb.
Arabic in Africa
Authors: Owens Jonathan 
Published: May 2020

AbstractArabic, Africa’s largest language, has an outsized role among African languages. It is internally diverse, with interesting dialectal differences between, e.g., North African, Egyptian, and Sudanese dialects; in many regions it is a language of Islamic culture, leaving its imprint in its many loanwords and writing tradition; sociolinguistically and interactionally, e.g. in code-switching, it is represented by a diversity of configurations, each with its own specific outcomes. Arabic as a minority language (e.g. northeastern Nigeria) shows a different variationist profile than does Arabic-dominant Cairo and relatively monolingual Cairo again from Arabic-French-Berber North Africa. Historically unique events produced one of Africa’s few non-European-based creoles in the South Sudan and East Africa. However, apart from an interest in such cultural domains as script and loanwords, Arabic linguistics is hardly integrated into African linguistics, reflecting more the division of labor between orientalists and Africanists in the West than the language reality in Africa.
Egyptian
Authors: Irsay-Nagy Balázs J. 
Published: May 2020

AbstractAncient Egyptian constitutes one of the main branches of the Afro-Asiatic phylum. It was used as a written and spoken language in the Lower Nile Valley and the Nile Delta by the ancient Egyptians. Though its latest form, Coptic, was gradually replaced by Arabic as a spoken language from the tenth century ad onward, it remains the liturgical language of the Coptic Church in modern Egypt. With hieroglyphic and hieratic writing appearing in the late fourth millennium bc, it is the language with the longest documented history, more than four millennia, during which profound diachronic changes occurred. The decipherment of the hieroglyphic writing in 1822 led to the establishment of a new academic discipline—Egyptology—but also to the realization that Ancient Egyptian forms a distinct group together with other African languages, such as Berber and Cushitic, as well as Semitic.
Zenaga
Authors: Taine-Cheikh Catherine 
Published: May 2020

AbstractThis chapter describes Zenaga as the chief representative of Western Berber (Afro-Asiatic), spoken by a few thousand bilingual (Zenaga/Hassaniyya) people of over 45 years of age. Their homeland forms a linguistic island in southwest Mauritania. Zenaga is highly endangered. In spite of intensive and long-lasting contact with both dialectal and literary Arabic it has retained major characteristics of Berber languages such as emphatic phonemes and a rich and complex morphology. But it also exhibits numerous peculiar features whose emergence is likely to be explained by Zenaga’s very remote geographical position. Certain conservative features (e.g. a laryngeal stop, vocalic alternation in verbal morphology) occur side by side with others that are, or could be, innovations (e.g. diminutive derivation, future marker).
Distinctive Languages
Authors: Friedrich Patricia 
Published: May 2020

AbstractThis chapter deals with distinctive languages in Africa, i.e. varieties of language that differ from the standard variety. These varieties are spoken by different groups of people for different purposes, and they comprise, for example, guild languages, reverence languages, and urban youth languages. The main differences between standard variety and distinctive language can be found in the lexicon, and different linguistic strategies are used by speakers to derive new words. The chapter first presents the main functions of distinctive languages and then proposes a categorization based on these functions. It then examines the linguistic forms of distinctive languages. In looking at both the functions and the linguistic forms, the chapter gives a comprehensive overview of distinctive languages in Africa.
Orthography Standardization
Authors: Karan Elke , Roberts David 
Published: May 2020

AbstractThis chapter discusses the historical background to orthographies in African languages based on the Roman script, which poses challenges in particular with respect to the representation of vowels and tone. The development of such orthographies may be initiated as part of the intangible cultural heritage endeavor, more specifically the documentation of endangered languages or language diversity as part of human rights, but also for primary education or Bible translation purposes. In terms of language planning, three contrasting social models of orthography standardization are distinguished below: the laissez-faire model, the top-down model, and the community-based model. As further shown, common character inventories play a role at the intra-language as well as the language family level as well as on a national and international level. These practices are illustrated with two case studies, that of Ik in Uganda and that of Aja in Benin and Togo.
Dynamics of logarithmic negativity and mutual information in smooth quenches
Authors: Fujita Hiroyuki , Nishida Mitsuhiro , Nozaki Masahiro , Sugimoto Yuji 
Published: May 2020

Abstract
We study the time evolution of mutual information (MI) and logarithmic negativity (LN) in two-dimensional free scalar theory with two kinds of time-dependent masses: one time evolves continuously from non-zero mass to zero; the other time evolves continuously from finite mass to finite mass, but becomes massless once during the time evolution. We call the former protocol ECP, and the latter protocol CCP. Through numerical computation, we find that the time evolution of MI and LN in ECP follows a quasi-particle picture except for their late-time evolution, whereas that in CCP oscillates. Moreover, we find a qualitative difference between MI and LN which has not been known so far: MI in ECP depends on the slowly moving modes, but LN does not.