Focalization bambara

Dombrowsky-Hahn, 2020

Yvonne TREIS (Llacan, CNRS)

Dombrowsky-Hahn, Klaudia, 2020

The phasal polarity (PhP) operators ALREADY, NOT YET, STILL and NO LONGER may have different representation in particular languages. In the Mande language Bambara several items may be distinguished for each PhP expression. This paper discusses their categorization. The review of the most important dictionaries and grammars shows disagreement concerning their categorial status, which I attribute to different criteria on which the categorizations are based. Occurring in clause-final position, most items are assumed to be adverbs or particles. This paper provides a revised categorization of the PhP expressions using van Baar’s (1997) criteria, especially the principles he proposes to distinguish adverbs and particles, It is assumed that the PhP items in Bambara attest different stages of grammaticalization. Some PhP items are adverbs, others are grammaticalized particles; however, showing little formal reduction, they occur in the same form as the elements supposed to be their sources.

2013

The surface tonal melodies associated with Compacité Tonale (CT) are known in the Manding literature, however no formal mechanism linking these melodies to the phonological structure of these languages has yet been offered. It is argued in this paper that, for Bambara, the observed tonal outcomes of CT are directly linked to prosodic structure above the level of the syllable. That is, tone spreading via this process is bounded and constrained by the prosodic word (PW) domain. This paper aims to offer a principled explanation for both the regular and irregular tonal outcomes of CT in terms of the (in)ability for tone spreading to occur within the PW domain, rather than within some other morphosyntactic entity. A role for the PW domain as a domain of application for phonological processes in Bambara draws on earlier work that has characterized and offered evidence for foot structure in the language (e.g. Green 2010; Green and Diakite 2008; Leben 2002, 2003). This paper draws on Prosodic Projection Theory (e.g. Ito and Mester 2007, 2009, 2010, 2013) to illustrate that CT is triggered by rightward adjunction to the PW maximal projection, followed by tone spreading within the leftmost non-maximal PW domain immediately dominated by the maximal projection.

Selected Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Conference on African Linguistics: Linguistic interfaces in African languages, 90-105.

Journal of African Languages and Linguistics, 2020

The Bambara foot is represented as a rhythmic category which can be disyllabic or monosyllabic. Foot-parsing is both segmentally and morphologically conditioned. A foot can coincide with a morpheme or be smaller than a morpheme, but it cannot include more than one morpheme. The main factors for foot-parsing are: types of initial consonants, types of internal consonants and vocalic combinations; directionality (left to right) is a secondary factor. Segmentation into feet is relevant for the realization of tone. Disyllabic feet are subdivided into two types, heavy and light; heavy feet have a long vowel in the initial syllable, while light feet have a short vowel in this position which is susceptible to elision (depending on phonotactics). It seems unnecessary to postulate stress in Bambara. The views of previous researchers on the Bambara foot are critically analyzed.

There is a rich descriptive history on Bambara tonology in the published literature. Despite the existence of several seminal works on the subject, certain details of the language's tonal system remain unclear. Scholars have developed deep knowledge about the lexical and grammatical functions of Bambara tone, yet the dependency of tones and tonal processes on prosodic structure has only more recently been explored in detail (). In this paper, we aim to contribute to this ongoing trend by considering a role played by prosodic structure in one particular set of Arabic borrowings for which the assignment of tonal melodies differs from that found in words of non-Arabic origin. We explore possible explanations for this divergence that relate to contemporary scholarship on the properties of Bambara's prosodic structure. Our point of view on this subject differs from earlier analyses (e.g., Dumestre 1987) in that we propose that prosodic structure plays an important role in the assignment of Bambara tonal melodies. Finally, we relate our findings to a taxonomic model of loanword prosody in Davis et al. (2012) and consider the bearing that our findings may have on the typology of Bambara prosodic structure alongside other Mande languages.

This thesis investigates various aspects of phonology and grammar in Kakabe, a hitherto undescribed Mande language. The aim of the study is to provide a unified account of the segmental phonology, the tonal system and the intonational patterns of Kakabe, accompanied by a short grammatical description of the language. In offering a grammatical sketch and a thorough phonological description, this thesis increases the knowledge on little-known Mande languages. Even for those Mande languages that have been described, detailed accounts of tonal, and, especially, intonational phenomena are difficult to come by. Apart from increasing the knowledge in the domain of Mande studies, this research project is intended as a contribution to phonological theory, in particular, the typology of tonal and intonational systems. Sentence-level prosody in languages with lexical tones is a domain which has received very little attention until recently and one of the aims of the present study is to contribute to filling this gap. Finally, the analysis of the various aspects of the Kakabe pragmatics, morphology and syntax, may be of interest for the typological studies in these domains.

I am very grateful to the following people and institutions for giving me their advice, knowledge, trust, encouragement, time, material, and money. Without their support, I would not have been able to finish this grammar. First and foremost, I would like to thank the Mursi society who taught me their language and culture. Most of all, I would like to thank my supervisors at the Language and Culture Research Centre (LCRC) of James Cook University, Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald and R.M.W. Dixon, who have been my mentors and constant sources of linguistic knowledge during my time in Cairns. I have learned a lot from your abundant knowledge that made me recheck my data, rethink the data and the analysis, including many of the views presented in this grammar. Second, I thank my fieldwork Mursi consultants, Barihuny Girinomeri Araro Toko (primary consultant), Barkadhe Kulumedere (secondary consultant),

1969

The purpose of this thesis is to present a description of the phonology and grammar of the Mbembe language of the Cross River area of Nigeria. Chapter 1 gives a brief general introduction to the Mbembe language and people and outlines the theoretical basis of the description. It includes a summary of the units of the phonological and grammatical hierarchies. The final section highlights some of the distinctive characteristics of the language with some comments on their interpretation. Chapter 2 describes the phonological hierarchy, focussing primarily on the syllable-piece, and discussing congruence between phonological and grammatical units. Chapter 3 describes the lexical and grammatical functions of tone in the language. There are two discrete tone levels with downstep. Chapter 4 is a brief description of patterning above the sentence, intended to provide a setting to illustrate the function of the sentence. Chapters 5-9 describe the sentence, clause, verbal group, nominal phrase...

Oxford Handbook of African Languages, 2020

The Mande language Dan, which is spoken in the West African countries of Guinea, the Ivory Coast, and Liberia, is among the few African languages that distinguish between five tone registers. Metrical feet in this language play a role with respect to nasal harmo ny as well as tonal and vocalic combinations. This chapter also presents a general overview of simple and complex sentences, with a special focus on locative marking, which constitutes a prominent morphosyntactic feature of Dan nouns, as well as on labili ty, which is a typologically interesting feature of the other major category in the lan guage, the verb.