Agaw, Cushitic and Afroasiatic: The Personal Pronoun Revisited

Northeast African Studies, 2013

The dictionary has four parts: a 20-page introduction providing essential linguistic background; the dictionary of some 720 English-Agaw entries comparing words of the four principal Agaw varieties-Bilin, Kemant, Xamtanga (also known as Chamir), and Awngi (Awiya)-plus reconstructions, where possible, and discussion; as appendices, a list of reconstructed forms (about 400) and Agaw-English wordlists of the four Agaw varieties; and a four-page bibliography. Most entries of the dictionary include etymological notes and discussion, with word variants from the older literature, and possible cognates in other Afroasiatic languages. The Agaw-English wordlists are words of main entries but also those that arise in the discussion of these words. The introduction is a concise review of Agaw-language studies, to which Appleyard has, for some time, been the principal contributor. It has three parts: "the Linguistic Context," concerning the linguistic and geographic setting of the languages; "The Dictionary," which explains how entries of the dictionary are constructed; and "The Basis for

2014

In the article existing classifications of the Agaw, i.e. Central Cushitic, languages are summarized and discussed and finally a new model is formulated on the basis of application of the recalibrated glottochronology. The results are compared with the models of classification analyzed in the first part of the contribution. All word-lists with etymological comments are added in Appendix.

2012

1 The People The Kulisi Agaw is an unknown small ethnoliguistic group in northwestern Ethiopia. They are widely known as Kunfel though the name is perceived as impolite by the people themselves. Among Amharic and Awŋi speakers of Gojjam and Gondar, Kunfel has the connotation of ‘ugly face’. Cowley (1971) reported that the name Kunfel is considered abusive and hence prefer to be called K’olläɲɲoʧʧ; an Amharic word which means “lowlanders”. In his anthropological work on the neighboring ethnolinguistic group (Gumuz), Gebre (2001) too writes that the people are unhappy to be called Kunfel, but Kulisi also means “lowlander”. Hence, both names: K’olläňňoʧʧ and Kulisi refer to the same group of people who inhabit the lowland area of southwestern Ethiopia on the way to the Sudan border. During a meeting held exclusively for bestowing the appropriate name for the ethnic group and their language a year ago, it was agreed that Kunfel is a misnomer and instead Kulisi Agaw or Kulisi was accepte...

Diachronic Perspectives on Suppletion, 2019

The puropose of the present contribution is to summarize all the relevant forms of the personal pronouns in all branches of the Afroasiatic macrophylum, i.e. Semitic, Egyptian, Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, and Omotic, to identify their internal structure and, on the basis of mutual comparisons, to reconstruct the partial pronominal protosystems in the daughter protolanguages and finally the most probable primary pronominal system in the Afroasiatic protolanguage.

2023

Iraqw has a number of preverbal elements that are compounded to the verb and some of these have functions similar to an applicative. These compounds are not fully productive and are prone to lexicalisations. One of them, hara, doubles as a preposition. The grammaticalisation of a number of these preverbal elements allows us to study the process of development from preposition (and other independent elements) to verbal applicative marker.

2011

In 1971, Roger Wenman Cowley published a short article on “The Kunfal people and their language,” providing some data on a group of people living in the area west of Lake T'ana in Ethiopia. Since then, no further research has been conducted on the people or the language. This report is based on two recent language survey trips to the area reported in Cowley's article. A vital community was found that matches Cowley's description, but rejects the name “Kunfäl,” as this is seen as a derogatory name. Their language is a ...

MA Thesis, 2024

This study offers a grammatical description of the Suruwahá language, which belongs to the Arawá language family and is spoken by a community of 156 members in southern Amazonas, Brazil. The Suruwahá language has been the subject of only a few previous publications, all of which focused on its phonology. The current study covers the language's phonology, morphology, and syntax, with a particular focus on the morphosyntax of nouns and verbs, including topics such as quantification, modification, nominal tense, gender, determiners, relative clauses, possession, case marking, the marking of information structure, person and number agreement, directional and locational affixes, Aktionsart, negation, valency, and the tense-aspect-mood-evidentiality system. The description is based on an existing corpus of linguistic data collected by the author through long-term involvement and interaction with the Suruwahá community. This comprehensive grammatical description of the Suruwahá language is expected to serve as a foundation for the future development of bilingual teaching materials, thereby bridging the existing communication gap between the Suruwahá and the outside world.

2005

Tuwuli is a Kwa language spoken by about 11,000 people in the mountainous and linguistically diverse Central Volta Region of Ghana. It is one of a group of at least 14 poorly described minority languages, often referred to as the "Central-Togo" group. As well as bringing to light much new linguistic data, this thesis shows that Tuwuli is a language with many unusual typological properties. Tuwuli"s noun-class system is of particular interest because it is motivated primarily by the plural forms rather than by the combination of the singular and plural forms, as is typically the case in Bantu languages. Phonologically, Tuwuli is interesting because it is one of the few Volta-Congo languages displaying a seven-vowel system with cross-height ATR and labial vowel harmony. Regarding verb structure, verbs in Tuwuli can carry up to six prefixes and one suffix simultaneously; few, if any, Kwa languages can boast such agglutinativity. One of the verbal prefixes functions as a type of auxiliary focus-marker and betrays a clear link with the marking of negation. At the syntactic level, Tuwuli exhibits a wide variety of argument structures; whilst cognate object constructions are almost entirely absent, at least eight different types of monotransitive and ditransitive construction can be identified by the syntactic properties of the verb and its complement(s).

Languages and Linguistics is a new peer-reviewed international forum devoted to the descriptive and theoretical study of Afroasiatic languages. Te territory of the Afroasiatic family spans a vast area to the South of the Mediterranean, extending from the Atlantic Ocean to the Middle East and reaching deep into the heart of Africa. Some of the Afroasiatic languages have been studied for centuries, while others still remain partially or entirely undocumented. In the course of the second half of the 20th century, the constantly increasing qualitative and quantitative contribution of Afroasiatic languages to the elaboration of linguistic theory has met with considerable attention from the linguistic community. General instructions for submission Brill's Annual of Afoasiatic Languages and Linguistics is a new peer-reviewed international forum devoted to the descriptive and theoretical study of Afroasiatic languages. It welcomes top-level contributions in phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, comparative and historical linguistics.

2021

The papers in this volume were presented at the 50th Annual Conference on African Linguistics held at the University of British Columbia in 2019. The contributions span a range of theoretical topics as well as topics in descriptive and applied linguistics. The papers reflect the typological and genetic diversity of languages in Africa and also represent the breadth of the ACAL community, with papers from both students and more senior scholars, based in North America and beyond. They thus provide a snapshot on current research in African linguistics, from multiple perspectives. To mark the 50th anniversary of the conference, the volume editors reminisce, in the introductory chapter, about their memorable ACALs.