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Le présent article propose un aperçu de la trajectoire empruntée par la périphrase à valeur progressive être à INF en français québécois de la fin du XIXe siècle à nos jours. Son histoire est intimement liée à celle de être après INF et être en train de INF, avec lesquelles elle est mise en relation. Ce survol historique est découpé en trois périodes. On s’intéresse d’abord à l’usage de être à INF à la fin du XIXe siècle-début du XXe siècle, puis à son utilisation au cours des années 1955-1975 et, enfin, au sort qui lui est réservé à l’époque actuelle. L’étude se clôt par un examen des facteurs sémantiques et syntaxiques susceptibles d’avoir concouru au déclin de être à INF à l’époque actuelle dans la variété géographique de langue étudiée et, en sens inverse, au succès de la périphrase exogène être en train de INF. This article provides an overview of the trajectory taken by the progressive periphrasis être à INF in Quebec French from the end of the 19th century to the present day. Its history is intimately linked to that of être après INF and être en train de INF, with which it is compared. This historical overview is divided into three periods. First, we are interested in the use of être à INF at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, then in its use during the years 1955-1975 and, finally, in its use in the present era. The study concludes with an examination of the semantic and syntactic factors that may have contributed to the decline of être à INF in the geographical variety of French studied and, conversely, o the success of the exogenous periphrasis être en train de INF.

L’article porte sur la règle d’emploi du mode après le subordonnant après que telle qu’elle est consignée dans les grammaires et dictionnaires depuis le XVIe siècle. La règle traditionnelle appelle l’indicatif, mais le subjonctif s’est immiscé dans l’usage au XXe siècle. Initialement vivement critiqué, il est de plus en plus présenté et jugé acceptable par les ouvrages de référence. The paper examines the rule for choosing mode after après que, as it has been recorded in grammars and dictionaries since the 16th century. The traditional rule is to use the indicative, but the subjunctive is more and more widely used since the 20th century. Initially strongly criticized, it is more and more presented and said acceptable by grammars and dictionaries.

Dans cet article, nous montrerons que les items grammaticaux suivent les mêmes processus de changement que les items lexicaux à travers l’observation de deux systèmes de classification nominale. Nous illustrons dans un premier temps les changements observables dans le lexique, que ces changements soient dus à la disparition d’une forme ou d’une fonction, ou à une innovation par apparition ou réanalyse d’une forme. Dans un deuxième temps, nous montrons que les outils grammaticaux changent et que ces transformations, sans pleinement modifier le système, impliquent des réajustements qui peuvent passer relativement inaperçus, comme dans le cas des réanalyses lexicales, mais n’en affectent pas moins profondément le système. Les deux systèmes de classification nominale qui sont abordés ont la particularité d’être aux extrêmes d’une échelle de grammaticalité (Fedden & Corbett 2018). Les classificateurs constituent un système lexico-grammatical de classification des noms assez motivé, très présent dans les langues d’Asie. À l’inverse, les classes nominales sont des systèmes beaucoup plus arbitraires et considérés comme fortement grammaticalisés. Ils sont largement présents dans les langues Niger-Congo. Il est possible de montrer que, dans les deux types de systèmes, les morphèmes grammaticaux peuvent changer de fonction ou de valeur, que ce constat résulte d’une comparaison avec d’autres langues (apparentées) ou d’une perte des propriétés attendues. Nous montrons également que les morphèmes grammaticaux peuvent s’étioler ou disparaître complètement ou qu’ils peuvent être le résultat d’innovations récentes. Notre article accrédite ainsi l’idée que les changements linguistiques identifiés pour le lexique, le sont pour l’ensemble des éléments qui composent le système d’une langue, des sons aux lexèmes en passant par les morphèmes grammaticaux. In this paper, we show that grammatical items follow the same processes of change as lexical items through the observation of two nominal classification systems. We first illustrate changes occurring in the lexicon, whether these changes are due to the disappearance of a form or a function, or to an innovation by the appearance or reanalysis of a form. Secondly, we show that grammatical tools also change and that these changes, without fully modifying the system, involve readjustments which can go relatively unnoticed - as in the case of lexical reanalyses -, but nonetheless have a profound effect on the system. The two nominal classification systems discussed are located at both ends of a grammaticality scale (Fedden & Corbett 2018). Classifiers constitute a fairly motivated lexico-grammatical system for classifying names, very common in Asian languages. Conversely, nominal classes are much more arbitrary systems and considered to be highly grammaticalized. They are widely present in the Niger-Congo languages. In both types of systems, grammatical morphemes can change function or value, whether this observation results from a comparison with other (related) languages or from a loss of the expected properties. We also show that grammatical morphemes can fade away or disappear altogether. They can also be the result of recent innovations. Our article thus supports the idea that the linguistic changes identified for the lexicon are identified for all elements that make up the system of a language, from sounds to lexemes through to grammatical morphemes.

L’article propose une mise en parallèle du fonctionnement de l’expression asteure dans les français nord-américains et de son évolution en français de France. L’analyse aboutit à la conclusion de l’émergence de l’adverbe ast(h)eure à partir de l’expression à cette heure, à la suite d’une grammaticalisation de longue date. Dans un deuxième temps, on remarque l’évolution de l’adverbe de constituant asteure vers l’emploi comme marqueur discursif notamment dans les français nord-américains, ce qui rend compte d’une grammaticalisation avancée. Asteure s’inscrit ainsi dans la catégorie des adverbes de temps qui fonctionnent aussi comme marqueurs discursifs. The article offers a comparison between the functioning of the expression asteure in North American French and its evolution in French from France. The analysis leads to the conclusion of the emergence of the adverb ast(h)eure from the expression à cette heure, as a result of longstanding grammaticalization. Secondly, we notice the evolution of the temporal adverb asteure towards its use as a discursive marker, particularly in North American French, which reflects an advanced grammaticalization. Asteure thus falls into the category of temporal adverbs which also function as discursive markers.

L’objectif premier de cet article est de proposer, argumenter et illustrer une approche complémentaire de celles qui étudient le changement sémantique et deux des phénomènes qui lui sont associés : le vieillissement et l’innovation dans le domaine lexical. Le corollaire de cet objectif est de bâtir un pont conceptuel et opérationnel entre le principe explicatif du sens linguistique proposé dans le cadre de la sémantique des possibles argumentatifs – le cinétisme discursif et sémantique – et les fonctions du langage dans les changements du monde social. L’illustration de cette proposition théorique mobilise un domaine social et linguistique particulièrement sensible : celui des valeurs sociales complexes et ipso facto des valeurs modales épaisses. L’analyse porte sur les mots réclame et publicité et sur les pratiques sociales qu’ils désignent. The primary objective of this article is to propose, argue and illustrate an approach that is complementary to those that study semantic change and two of the phenomena associated with it: ageing and innovation in the lexical field. The corollary of this objective is to build a conceptual and operational bridge between the explanatory principle of linguistic meaning proposed within the framework of the semantics of argumentative possibilities – discursive and semantic kinesis – and the functions of language in changes in the social world. The illustration of this theoretical proposal mobilizes a particularly sensitive social and linguistic domain: that of complex social values and ipso facto thick modal values. The analysis focuses on the French words réclame (advertisement) and publicité (publicity) and on the social practices they designate.

Although Akan is one of the most widely spoken indigenous languages in Ghana, very little is known about children's phonological development. This paper investigates the development of consonants in Akan among typically developing children aged 3-5 years.A list of 103 Akan words was compiled, sampling the full range of prosodic structures, sound positions, features and segments, and controlling for word familiarity. A native Akan speaker audio-recorded the 103 single-word productions from each of nine typically developing children aged 3-5 years. The child productions were transcribed and analysed following procedures used in a larger cross-linguistic study. The current study presents results on the acquisition of consonants across the various ages.Preliminary results indicate that most consonants in Akan are mastered by age 4 or 5, similar to reports for other languages, although /w/ and /l/ showed late mastery, contrary to cross-linguistic observations. The rhotic /ɹ/ and consonants with secondary articulation were still developing at age 4 and showing a variety of mismatch patterns across children.The findings provide preliminary information for developmentalists and speech-language pathologists on typical phonological development in Akan and contribute to a growing database on language acquisition in Niger-Congo languages.

The category of Number is often considered as rather simple comparing to such categories as case or nominal classification. However, a serious analysis of the morphosyntactic characteristics of the category shows that Number is an interesting and diverse category. The Niger-Congo languages demonstrate a great variety in the morphosyntactic characteristics of Number. At the first glance, the number in many languages refers to two types: a uniform marking of the number only in the plural (Mande — similar to English), the distinction of the singular by gender / class (Bantu — similar to Russian). However, the number in Mande and Bantu is fundamentally different from the number in English and Russian and refers to another typological category. Two more typological varieties in expression of number are demonstrated in the article: a special plural form for the names of people and pets (nyong, Adamawa), a kind of “split” under the influence of animacy hierarchy, and marking of number only in adjectives in attributive and predicative constructions without marking a number on a noun (Maya).

The contact of the Batonu people with Arab traders and Islamic missionaries back in the 16th century resulted in the Batonu people’s embrace of Islam which has brought profound effects on most of the traditional practices of the Batonu people. Before the Batonu people converted to Islam, every Batonu child had been given a Batonu name at birth based on order of birth, gentility, circumstance of birth, parents’ occupation, natural phenomena, etc. Such child was expected to be known and addressed by that name both within and outside the community. Today, this custom seems endangered as most Batonu people now bear Muslim names given to them at birth. Thus, this paper examines the shift in the personal naming practices of the Batonu people of Nigeria. The study identifi es religious inclination, the rigid personal naming practices of the people, tendency to mask identity and political/socio-economic drives as remote causes of the shift. This shift has led to a drastic decline of traditional Batonu personal names, reflecting the cultural uprooting and the loss of indigenous vocabulary. Recognizing that restoration of traditional Batonu personal naming practices would be almost impossible, the authors propose two onomastic cultural reclamation strategies: the “weak-open reversal” and the “reversal by syncretism” — to provide for appreciable revival and sustenance of these.

The linguistic history of the Ghana-Togo Mountain (GTM) languages, spoken in southeastern Ghana and the southern half of Togo, has been the subject of detailed research for more than a century. Nevertheless, there are still problems both with the external and the internal classification of the group. The present paper provides a state of the art overview of this research field. It is argued that linguistic reconstructions that can claim to provide credible hypotheses on genetic relationship patterns among languages are best based on the application of the comparative method.

This chapter is an overview of the structure of words belonging to the major lexical categories (nouns and verbs) in Niger-Congo languages, with an emphasis on the morphological patterns typically found in the core Niger-Congo languages commonly considered as relatively conservative in their morphology: rich systems of verb morphology, both inflectional and derivational, and systems of gender-number marking with a relative high number of genders, and no possibility to isolate number marking from gender marking. As regards formal aspects of the structure of words, as a rule, verb forms are morphologically more complex than nominal forms. The highest degree of synthesis is found in the verbal morphology of some Bantu languages. Both prefixes and suffixes are found. Cumulative exponence is typically found in gender-number marking. Multiple exponence is very common in the verbal morphology of Bantu language but rather uncommon in the remainder of Niger-Congo. Consonant alternations are common in several groups of Niger-Congo languages, and various types of tonal alternations play an important role in the morphology of many Niger-Congo languages. The categories most commonly expressed in the inflectional morphology of nouns are gender, number, definiteness, and possession. The inflectional morphology of verbs commonly expresses agreement, TAM, and polarity, and is also widely used to express interclausal dependencies and information structure. As regards word formation, the situation is not uniform across the language groups included in Niger-Congo, but rich systems of verb-to-verb derivation are typically found in the Niger-Congo languages whose morphological patterns are commonly viewed as conservative.

International audience; Mande family includes more than 70 languages spoken in West Africa and is presumably one of the mid-range families of the Niger-Congo macrofamily. The current state of the Proto-Mande reconstruction is discussed in this paper: internal classification, phonological reconstruction (initial consonants, word-internal consonants, vowels, tones, metrical foot) and morphological reconstruction. The question of whether Mande belongs to the Niger-Congo macrofamily is also discussed.; La famille mandé comporte plus de 70 langues parlées en Afrique de l’Ouest, elle appartient sans doute à la macrofamille Niger-Congo. Cet article présente l’état d’art de la reconstruction du Proto-Mandé : la classification interne, la reconstruction phonologique (les consonnes initiales, les consonnes internes, les voyelles, les tons ; le pied métrique) et la reconstruction morphologique. La question de l’appartenance (ou non-appartenance) au Niger-Congo est également discutée.

This article discusses the historical underpinnings of Ebonics as a product of linguistic influence of Bantu languages spoken in West Africa today. Many teacher educators preparing White pre-service teachers for linguistic diversity in public schools tend to focus mostly on respecting culturally different students’ home languages without employing historical, lexical, grammatical, and phonological evidence to challenge students’ deficit thinking about Ebonics, which is often associated in the mainstream with a physiological deficiency. Thus, the study uses several Niger-Congo languages to explain the origin of Ebonics and the influences of the Niger-Congo languages on the grammatical and phonological structures of Ebonics, and concludes by defining it as a respectable variety of English with its own sophisticated grammar.

As the largest language phylum in the world and the most geographically widespread (Williamson & Blench 2000), Niger-Congo understandably exhibits some variation at all grammatical levels. Basic word order stands as no exception to this generalization, and there have been partisans for both an SOV and an SVO reconstructed word order. Gensler 1994 attempts to reconcile the two by claiming that neither proposal is correct; he suggests that both SOY and SVO are derived from Proto-Niger-Congo *S-AUX-O-V-Other. Because of the pattern's "quirkiness" (being found virtually nowhere else in the world) and because it is so widely attested in geographically widely separated Niger-Congo languages, the pattern should be reconstructed for all of Niger-Congo. One crucial piece of evidence for this claim comes from the Southern Atlantic language Kisi. This paper explores Kisi' s facts in further detail to show how central the structure is to the language. It then expands the investigation to other languages of Atlantic, finding that the pattern is much more widely attested than was previously realized, albeit in an attenuated form. The paper concludes by discussing the significance of the Atlantic facts to Niger-Congo in general.

This paper considers whether specific reduplication processes in the English-lexified Creole languages of Jamaica and Suriname are due to substrate transfer by exploring the extent to which their formal, functional and selectional characteristics in those languages can be related to Niger-Congo (NC). The issue is discussed in the context of a theory of markedness and we propose that formal and semantic iconicity are among the criteria for evaluating markedness in reduplication. According to markedness criteria, we identify deverbal noun reduplication and deverbal attribute formation, as they occur in Jamaican and the Suriname Creoles, and Jamaican X-like reduplication, as marked processes. Assuming that marked processes provide better evidence for substrate transfer, we searched for parallels for these specific processes in likely NC source languages. The best evidence for substrate transfer is found in stative adjective reduplication in the Suriname Creole languages, which finds a parallel in Gbe. The evidence for transfer from Gbe in the deverbal adjectives of Jamaican is less convincing, but merits consideration. Deverbal nominalizations of the Suriname Creoles and Jamaican echo an Igbo source that needs to be investigated, notably with respect to Jamaican. As for X-like reduplication, we found no convincing argument to attribute it to substrate transfer from any likely NC source.

Cross-linguistically, statements tend to be pronounced with low or falling pitch and questions with high or rising pitch, a form–meaning pairing which has been attributed to the frequency code (Ohala, 1984). In many West African languages, however, questions are marked with a ‘lax’ prosody comprising falling intonation, low tones, lengthening, breathy termination, and open vowels (Rialland, 2007). This paper presents prosody findings from Ikaan (Niger-Congo; ISO 639-3: kcf) and proposes a re-analysis of the West African lax question prosody to integrate it with the frequency code model. The paper shows that the pragmatic functions of statement and polar question are expressed prosodically in Ikaan. Audio recordings of statements and morphosyntactically identical polar questions by six speakers were annotated segmentally, tonally, and for the presence of prosodic question markers. Speakers mark questions by using higher onset pitch, wider drops to final low tones, final breathy voice and voicelessness, final vowel lengthening, vowel insertion, and increased intensity. Breathiness may further contrast with creaky voice and glottal stops in statements. Phonation mode, and the accompanying vowel lengthening and insertion, are argued to indicate friendliness and appeals for collaboration, linking phonation mode to similar functions of higher pitch in the frequency code.

Notice that there are two verbs in the constructions above. The first two verbs combine to form complex verb which means ‘arrive’ in English. The second example forms a complex predicate meaning ‘cook and eat’. Both verbs share the same subject and same object. The constructions looked at in this paper typically surface as V 1 V 2 (Obj) or V 1 (Obj) V 2. The ultimate goal in this paper is to detail the morpho-syntactic and semantic properties of SVCs in Ibibio by using criteria for SVCs established for other languages. In section 2, I provide some background information on the typology and syntax of Ibibio that is relevant for the discussion of serial verbs. Section 3 defines and describes the property of light verbs in the literature. This includes discussion of SVCs in general, the syntactic properties, the semantic properties. The purpose of this section is to show that the constructions in Ibibio are truly SVCs across both syntactic and semantic grounds and also to fit Ibibio in with the typological literature on SVCs. 2. Ibibio background Ibibio is a Lower Cross language of the East Benue-Congo branch in the Niger-Congo language phylum, which is spoken in the southern part of Nigeria by roughly 2 million speakers. The data in this section is primarily novel data, but was informed by prior descriptions of the language (Essien 1990; Kaufman 1968).

Most linguists are well aware of the fact that data pertaining to languages spoken in Africa are often less readily available than information on languages spoken in Europe and some parts of Asia. This simple fact is one of the first and largest challenges facing Africanist linguists in their pursuit of preliminary data and references on which to base their research. The challenge of locating relevant materials only increases in difficulty as the search for information narrows to include only certain subfields of linguistics or languages of a particular genetic stock. Africanist linguists interested in phonology and phonetics will find that a preliminary search for information and references pertaining to the study of intonation and prosody in African languages yields a significant bias towards materials focusing on languages in the Bantu branch of the Niger-Congo language family, as well as a select few welldocumented languages spoken elsewhere on the continent. One can explain this research bias toward Bantu languages in terms of a number of factors, including the sheer number of constituent languages in this sub-family, the relatively peaceful conditions that exist in many of the nations in which people speak Bantu languages, and overwhelmingly significant factors that have influenced the post-colonial attitudes toward Europeans and Western research in certain parts of the African continent. This bias compounds the research difficulties faced by linguists interested in languages outside the Bantu branch of the Niger-Congo family in that linguists have devoted less time to these languages, and the materials that exist are sometimes difficult to obtain. This bibliography will provide an account of materials published over the past twenty-five years pertaining to the study of intonation and prosodic phonology and phonetics in non-Bantu Niger-Congo languages. I will assume that the reader has some familiarity with both African languages and linguistics. One will find an explanation of any limits on the scope and selection of materials included in this bibliography in this introduction.

Phonological zones in Africa Some 30 percent of the world's languages are spoken in Africa, by one current estimate (Gordon 2005). Given this linguistic richness, it is not surprising that African languages reveal robust patterns of phonology and phonetics that are much less frequent, or which barely occur, in other regions of the world. These differences are instructive for many reasons, not the least of which is the fact that they bring to light potentials for sound structure which, due to accidents of history and geography, have been more fully developed in Africa than in other continents. Just as importantly, a closer study of “variation space” across African languages shows that it is not homogeneous, as some combinations of properties tend to cluster together in genetically unrelated languages while other imaginable combinations are rare or unattested, even in single groups; crosslinguistic variation of this sort is of central interest to the study of linguistic universals and typology. A further important reason for studying phonological patterns in Africa is the light they shed upon earlier population movements and linguistic change through contact. In preparing this chapter, we initially set out to examine characteristics that are more typical of the African continent as a whole than of other broad regions of the world (a goal initially set out by Greenberg 1959, 1983). However, this goal quickly turned out to be unrealistic.

Niger-Congo is by far the largest language family in Africa, comprising some 1400 languages. In this article, its internal classification is discussed and the relationships among its nine main subfamilies are outlined. Brief descriptions of each subfamily are given as well.

The geographical-referential classification ‘southern Bantu languages’ includes the Bantu languages of the Nguni group (including Zulu, Xhosa, Swati, Ndebele), the Sotho-Tswana group (including Northern Sotho, Sesotho, Tswana), the Tswa-Ronga group, the Imhambane group, as well as Shona and Venda. Southern Bantu languages are spoken in South Africa, Swaziland, Lesotho, Botswana, Zimbabwe, and southern Mozambique, and they are official languages in several countries, including South Africa, where all nine official Bantu languages are southern Bantu languages.