Nese is a dying Oceanic language spoken on the island of Malekula, in northern Vanuatu. This book, based on first-hand fieldwork data, and without adhering to any particular syntactic framework, presents a synchronic grammatical description of Nese's phonology and syntax. Despite being on the verge of extinction, wi…
Japhug is a vulnerable Gyalrongic language, which belongs to the Trans-Himalayan (Sino-Tibetan) family. It is spoken by several thousand speakers in Mbarkham county, Rngaba district, Sichuan province, China. This grammar is the result of nearly 20 years of fieldwork on one variety of Japhug, based on a corpus of narratives and conversations, a large part of which is available from the Pangloss …
This grammar offers a grammatical description of the Ngo?lo? variety of Gyeli, an endangered Bantu (A80) language spoken by 4,000-5,000 "Pygmy" hunter-gatherers in southern Cameroon. It represents one of the most comprehensive descriptions of a northwestern Bantu language. The grammatical description, which is couched in a form-to-function approach, covers all levels of language, ranging from G…
This book provides a first-ever comprehensive overview of the grammatical structure of Fwe. Fwe is a Bantu language spoken on the border between Zambia and Namibia, by some 20,000 people. Very little previous documentation exists on the language, and the current description of Fwe is based exclusively on newly collected field data. It includes an analysis of the grammatical structure of Fwe, fo…
Over a half century after the death of the great Genevese linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure, Mr. Godel provides an external frame of reference for what has been called the "Saussurian School" of Geneva. He presents a succinct biography and bibliography of the leading figures of the School in chronological order according to their date of birth. Except for those linguists no longer alive (de Sauss…
This book is a dictionary and grammar sketch of Ruruuli-Lunyala, a Great Lakes Bantu language spoken by over 200,000 people in central Uganda. The dictionary part includes about 10,000 entries. Each lexical entry provides translations into English, example sentences, and basic grammatical information. The dictionary part is supplemented with an outline of the Ruruuli-Lunyala grammar, which trea…
This book presents an extensive dictionary of the Dagaare language (Niger-Congo; Gur (Mabia)), focussing on the dialect of Central Dagaare, spoken in the Upper West region of Ghana. The dictionary provides comprehensive definitions, example sentences and the English translations, phonetic forms, inflected forms, etymological notes as well as information dialectal variation. This work is intende…
Easy-to-Understand (E2U) text practices enable and facilitate accessible communication. E2U refers both to Plain and to Easy Language. These two powerful methods of language and content comprehension enhancement are illustrated through several examples in English, starting from the seminal role of the Anglophone world in promoting plain and lucid style. Originally implemented in written texts, …
Since the hiring of its first Africanist linguist Carleton Hodge in 1964, Indiana University’s Department of Linguistics has had a strong and continuing presence in the study of African languages and linguistics through the work of its faculty and of its graduates on the faculties of many other universities. Research on African linguistics at IU has covered some of the major language groups s…