Anne Storch

A grammar of Luwo : an anthropological approach

This book is a description of Luwo, a Western Nilotic language of South Sudan. Luwo is used by multilingual, dynamic communities of practice as one language among others that form individual and flexible repertoires. It is a language that serves as a means of expressing the Self, as a medium of art and self-actualization, and sometimes as a medium of writing. It is spoken in the home and in public spaces, by fairly large numbers of people who identify themselves as Luwo and as members of all kinds of other groups. In order to provide insights into these dynamic and diverse realities of Luwo, this book contains both a concise description and analysis of the linguistic features and structures of Luwo, and an approach to the anthropological linguistics of this language. The latter is presented in the form of separate chapters on possession, number, experiencer constructions, spatial orientation, perception and cognition. In all sections of this study, sociolinguistic information is provided wherever this is useful and possible, detailed information on the semantics of grammatical features and constructions is given, and discussions of theory-oriented approaches to various linguistic features of Luwo are presented.

Where have all the noun classes gone? A case study of Jukun

Jukun is commonly regarded as a language cluster which has lost its noun class prefixes almost completely, to the extent of building up new suffixes in some lects like Jukun of Takum (Welmers 1968). This paper aims at showing that there are some languages on the Northern periphery of the old Kororofa kingdom of the Jukun which have preserved various noun class prefixes and a more complex, more conservative morphology in general, so that the present make-up of the more central Jukun lects like Jukun of Wukari and Jukun of Takum can be understood as the result of a clear and straightforward tendency towards word stem apocope and morphological reduction

Semantics of number marking in Maaka

Abstract Maaka is a West Chadic language which exhibits a rich system of verbal number marking, which in part resembles those of its close relatives. But apart from the more ‘typical’ pluractionals also found elsewhere in Chadic, Maaka has verbal number markers that differ by expressing number values and meanings that are otherwise characteristic for nouns in languages where number marking correlates with nominal aspect. In Maaka, not only nouns can be differentiated according to countability and membership in semantic categories, but verbs as well: Events are framed as either multiple and similar or multiple and diverse, as happening at one single place or involving several locations and different groups of agents and patients. This chapter illustrates in which ways lexical aspect plays an important role in the selection of a specific pluractional form of a given verb.

Typology of secret languages and linguistic taboos

[Extract] Australia is a fascinating linguistic area. At the time of the European invasion, which began in 1788, there were around 250 distinct languages. Many more than half of them are no longer actively spoken or remembered. No more than a dozen could be said to be in a healthy state, being fully learned by children. From about 120,000 until about 7,000 BP, Australia and New Guinea were one land mass. Archaeologists tell us that the first settlers arrived at least 40,000 years and probably 50,000 years ago. There would have been an initial expansion of people - during which tribes and languages split - until they filled all habitable parts of the land mass. At the end of this period of expansion (which is likely to have taken just a few thousand years), a family tree diagram would have appropriately modelled the relationships between languages.Linguistic typology identifies both how languages vary and what they all have in common. This Handbook provides a state-of-the art survey of the aims and methods of linguistic typology, and the conclusions we can draw from them. Part I covers phonological typology, morphological typology, sociolinguistic typology and the relationships between typology, historical linguistics and grammaticalization. It also addresses typological features of mixed languages, creole languages, sign languages and secret languages. Part II features contributions on the typology of morphological processes, noun categorization devices, negation, frustrative modality, logophoricity, switch reference and motion events. Finally, Part III focuses on typological profiles of the mainland South Asia area, Australia, Quechuan and Aymaran, Eskimo-Aleut, Iroquoian, the Kampa subgroup of Arawak, Omotic, Semitic, Dravidian, the Oceanic subgroup of Austronesian and the Awuyu-Ndumut family (in West Papua). Uniting the expertise of a stellar selection of scholars, this Handbook highlights linguistic typology as a major discipline within the field of linguistics.Linguistic typology identifies both how languages vary and what they all have in common. This Handbook provides a state-of-the art survey of the aims and methods of linguistic typology, and the conclusions we can draw from them. Part I covers phonological typology, morphological typology, sociolinguistic typology and the relationships between typology, historical linguistics and grammaticalization. It also addresses typological features of mixed languages, creole languages, sign languages and secret languages. Part II features contributions on the typology of morphological processes, noun categorization devices, negation, frustrative modality, logophoricity, switch reference and motion events. Finally, Part III focuses on typological profiles of the mainland South Asia area, Australia, Quechuan and Aymaran, Eskimo-Aleut, Iroquoian, the Kampa subgroup of Arawak, Omotic, Semitic, Dravidian, the Oceanic subgroup of Austronesian and the Awuyu-Ndumut family (in West Papua). Uniting the expertise of a stellar selection of scholars, this Handbook highlights linguistic typology as a major discipline within the field of linguistics.Grammatical means for the linguistic categorization of noun referents are found in just about every language of the world. Noun categorization devices range from large sets of numeral classifiers of Southeast Asia to highly grammaticalized closed sets of noun classes and genders in African and Indo-European languages. Further devices include noun classifiers, classifiers in possessive constructions, verbal classifiers and two less known types: locative and deictic classifiers. Classifiers share semantic features of animacy, humanness, shape and function. One language can combine several types of noun categorization devices. In ‘multiple classifier’ languages, the same morphemes occur in several grammatical contexts. Historically, categorization devices of one type can develop from another.

Consensus and Dissent: Negotiating Emotion in the Public Space

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