Papers by Olasope Oyelaran
Africanisms in American Culture
International Journal of African Historical Studies, 1991
Anti-Focus in Yor•bß
John Benjamins Publishing Company, Oct 28, 1993
Aspects of Linguistic Theory in Firthian Linguistics
WORD, 1967
Èṣù and ethics in the Yorùbá world view
Africa, Feb 1, 2020
Èṣù of the Yorùbá tradition, the custodian of the primordialàṣẹ, embodies the principle of perspi... more Èṣù of the Yorùbá tradition, the custodian of the primordialàṣẹ, embodies the principle of perspicacity and pragmatism that is crucial for the exercise of responsibility by sentient and thinking beings. As such, Èṣù demands the ultimate in consciousness as a basis for just living and for a just measure of reward or sanction. Èṣù calls for painstaking commitment to rigorously distilled information and keen consciousness as preconditions for action of any sort, especially for the exercise of judgement, a compelling gesture of the human will. Scholarly and/or zealous traditions have, however, persistently alienated Èṣù from his native Yorùbá cosmology. This article argues for a need for rehabilitation.
Langage et nationalisme en Afrique noire
Revue française d'histoire d'outre-mer, 1981
After having studied the position of the States in West Africa concerning vernacular languages an... more After having studied the position of the States in West Africa concerning vernacular languages and the attitude of the ex-colonizers, in the past and now, in that field, the author concludes : African States and their minorities using both foreign language and culture may choose between two ways, either to continue to be subdued by foreign countries and their languages, or to follow their own culture and enrich it with their proper expérience. In the first case, the subjection of Africa will go to an end ; in the second one, a national language will grow up, an actual communication will exist between State and Society and a true nationalism will occur.
Anti-Focus in Yor•bß
Creole language library, 1993
Anti-Focus in Yor•bß
Yoruba as a medium of instruction
Nigeria magazine, 1969
The serial verb construction has been observed in many languages of the world, including Chinese ... more The serial verb construction has been observed in many languages of the world, including Chinese [Li and Thompson 1973, 1978], Malayalam [K.P. Monahan, personal communication], and pidgins and creole languages. Among the languages of Africa, it is accepted to be a characteristic of, though not limited to, the Kwa languages. Various proposals have been made to account for the phenomenon. Some speculate that its existence and productivity is in inverse relation to the functional yield of the inflectional categories in the verb and/or of prepositions in individual languages. The hypothesis on reanalysis of verbs is related to the explanation which takes cognisance of prepositions [Giv6n 1975J. Although this relatedness is not explicitly pursued in the present work, we present data to show that in Yoruba, and perhaps in other Kwa languages, reanalysis of verbs is ill-motivated as a working hypothesis depending, as it does, solely on cross-linguistic analogy and translation. But more crucially, no transformational account of the SVC finds justification in the data. The SVC is, therefore, not a surface structure phenomenon, at least not in the sense that can be accounted for by deletion transformations described on putative underlying coordinate and embedded sentences proposed to date. 'Olu said that you came' a. so ~ e wa Olu say ( ) You(pl. ) come
Aspects of Linguistic Theory in Firthian Linguistics
<i>WORD</i>, 1967
Africanisms in American Culture
The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 1991
Langage et nationalisme en Afrique noire
Revue française d'histoire d'outre-mer, 1981
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Papers by Olasope Oyelaran