Papers by Klaudia Dombrowsky-Hahn
Linguistique et langues africaines, 2024
Dùgawu, petitionary or request prayers, are ubiquitous in the lives of Bambara speakers. Leave-ta... more Dùgawu, petitionary or request prayers, are ubiquitous in the lives of Bambara speakers. Leave-taking or good-night wishes, wishes of success, of quick recovery to a sick person, encouragement to accomplish a difficult task, the expressions of gratefulness, the call for divine protection or for a good fate for the dead are all uttered in the form of blessings. Even curses can be encoded as dùgawu. Imitating the pattern of request prayers in Arabic, dùgawu can be described as a genre of communicative exchanges including a request in a fixed syntactic structure, and a confirming response. This article provides a linguistic description of request prayers, focusing on two possible syntactic patterns of encoding that are perfectly equivalent to each other, as well as on their syntactic peculiarities in comparison to the syntax elsewhere in the language. Furthermore, we examine abbreviated request prayers. We suggest interpreting them as instances of a strong conventionalization that might also entail a secularization process . Finally, we discuss hypotheses of the origin of dùgawu, highlighting the role of traditional Islamic education as a probable source and illustrate request prayers used in different communicative situations
Dombrowsky-Hahn & Fanego Palat, 2024
Migration is one of the sources of individual multilingualism. Patterns of mobility are typically... more Migration is one of the sources of individual multilingualism. Patterns of mobility are typically more complex than a simple move from an original home to a new residence; they can involve trajectories including internal, rural-urban, south-south, south-north, and circular migration. An individual's experience of migration is reflected in their linguistic repertoire. Migrants commonly acquire new linguistic resources, expanding their repertoire throughout their itinerary. This is especially true of mobile people from West Africa, where urban and rural multilingualism is common in many regions.
Linguistique et langues africaines
Journal of Language Contact, 2010
West African languages. Linguistic theory and communication, 2020
West Africa as a sub-region of the African continent is defi ned mostly on geographic and politic... more West Africa as a sub-region of the African continent is defi ned mostly on geographic and political criteria which exclude Northern Africa and the Maghreb covering the Sub-Saharan countries from Senegal to Nigeria. As a region of linguistic studies, West Africa adheres to these limits, though genetic relationship and historical contacts between languages make these conventional boundaries vague in a number of respects. The region is characterized by linguistic diversity which determines the prominence of research oriented at multilingualism and language contact. The works conducted so far has focused on identifying convergence zones rather than providing the proof of the linguistic coherence in the entire region. The term convergence zone refers to a region where many linguistic features are shared across the language boundaries. The two largest units, i.e. Macro-Sudan Belt extending from Senegal to Ethiopia (Güldemann 2008) and Wider Lake Chad Region overlap to some extent, especially in Nigeria where genetically distinct and structurally diff erent languages meet Cyff er & Ziegelmeyer 2009). West Africa is characterized by extensive societal multilingualism (Lüpke & Chambers 2010). Along with indigenous languages superimposed foreign languages such as French, English or Portuguese are used. The region has always been an area where languages brought by scholars, traders or travelers were in constant confrontation with those used locally. Muslim teachers and traders moving along West Africa brought Arabic to this region. The emergence of political centers such as Ghana in 12 th century, Mali in 14 th century, Songhay in 15 th century or the Sokoto Caliphate in 19 th century strengthened the position of Arabic as the language of courts, written correspondence, religious and legal teaching. Arabic also became an important contact language among educated and infl uential people living in towns and it had an impact on the major languages of the Sahel and northern savannah. The historical empires and city-states also promoted languages spoken by the ruling class such as Hausa, Fulfulde or Mande languages, pushing many other local languages aside. Due to globalization, urbanization and economic development, the number of languages
Linguistic Typology, 2020
Journal Des Africanistes, 1989
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Papers by Klaudia Dombrowsky-Hahn