A linguistic geography of Africa / / edited by Bernd Heine and Derek Nurse

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910824170903321
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Cambridge, UK ; ; New York, : Cambridge University Press, 2008
• ISBN: 1-107-18242-5; 0-511-36911-5; 1-281-15611-6; 9786611156114; 0-511-37066-0; 0-511-37013-X; 0-511-48627-8; 0-511-36961-1; 0-511-37113-6
• Edizione: [1st ed.]
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (xviii, 371 pages) : digital, PDF file(s)
• Collana: Cambridge approaches to language contact
• Altri autori (Persone): HeineBernd <1939->; NurseDerek
• Disciplina: 496.09
• Soggetti: African languages; Languages in contact - Africa; Linguistic geography
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references (p. 309-353) and index.
• Nota di contenuto: Is Africa a linguistic area? / Bernd Heine & Zelealem Leyew -- Africa as a phonological area / G.N. Clements & Annie Rialland -- Africa as a morphosyntactic area / Denis Creissels ... [et al.] -- The macro-Sudan belt : towards identifying a linguistic area in northern sub-Saharan Africa / Tom Guldemann -- The Tanzanian Rift Valley area / Roland Kie ling, Maarten Mous & Derek Nurse -- Ethiopia / Joachim Crass & Ronny Meyer -- The marked-nominative languages of eastern Africa / Christa Konig -- Africa's verb-final languages / Gerrit J. Dimmendaal.
• Sommario/riassunto: More than forty years ago it was demonstrated that the African continent can be divided into four distinct language families. Research on African languages has accordingly been preoccupied with ; reconstructing and understanding similarities across these families. This has meant that an interest in other kinds of linguistic relationship, such as whether structural similarities and dissimilarities among African languages are the result of contact between these languages, has never been the subject of major research. This book shows that such similarities across African languages are more common than is widely believed. It provides a broad perspective on Africa as a linguistic area, as well as an analysis of specific linguistic regions. In order to have a better understanding of African languages, their structures, and their history, more information on these contact-induced relationships is essential to understanding Africa's linguistic geography, and to reconstructing its history and prehistory.