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In this chapter, we compare Urban Youth Speech Styles (UYSS’s) in Nairobi, Kenya (Kiessling and Mous 2004) and in the western parts of the Netherlands as it has been documented around the major cities of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Den Haag and Utrecht (Dorleijn and Nortier 2012 and references there). This chapter is a first attempt at a Northern-European/African cross-continental comparison.

This thesis describes the Ashéninka language as it is spoken in the Gran Pajonal plateau and the upper Ucayali River in Peru, an area where the last Andean foothills give way to the Amazonian lowlands. The number of speakers is estimated at around 10,000. This language forms part of the so-called Ashé-Ashá dialect continuum, which is part of the group of Campan languages, a subgroup of the Arawak language family. The Ashéninka people live in so-called 'comunidades nativas', indigenous settlements with official authorities that are legally recognised in Peru.The thesis presents a description of the phonology, morphology and syntax of the language. The discussion of the morphology is by far the longest, with the description of verbs comprising roughly half of the thesis due to the complex verbal morphology. Furthermore, the text discusses the relations within the Ashé-Ashá dialect continuum, compares the reality status systems of the different Campan languages and shows the partial loss of this system in Ucayali-Pajonal Ashéninka. Other relevant findings include the probable origin of the word 'campa', the non contrastive but distinctive affricates, the long adjectives denoting forms, the discussion of the subject cross-referenced with a suffix instead of the usual prefix, the proposal of the existence of a future suffix in all Ashé-Ashá varieties, and some suffixes that have not been mentioned in the literature on other Ashé-Ashá varieties.Moreover, the thesis contains annexes with 11 glossed texts from different genres and a vocabulary of 625 words.

This book is about the speech habits of young people from the Qassim region in central Saudi Arabia. It focuses on the way they speak when addressing people who are not from their home region. This way of speaking is referred “White Dialect”. While this term is used more generally in Saudi Arabia, it may not always refer to the same type of entity. In this book, the term “White Dialect” is used exclusively in the way it is used by the young Qassimi speakers that participated in this research. This book investigates the “White Dialect” used by the young Qassimi Arabic speakers and answers three main questions: what is the “White Dialect”? when it is used and why it is used. Besides the “White Dialect”, this book also highlights some of the differences between old and young Qassimi Arabic. The “White dialect” is not a dialect in the common linguistic sense, with relatively stable forms and a clear grounding in one or another group. However, the term “White Dialect” is retained in this book, because it is the term used by the speakers themselves, and thus implies a certain awareness of it as a variety different from other varieties. Results show that the “White Dialect” is a linguistic strategy for Arabic speakers to adopt linguistic features from the range of different Arabic varieties available to them, to produce a spontaneous and fluid form of Arabic that serves their desired communicative motives.

The central argument of this thesis is to establish the link between mobility, material culture and urbanisation in Africa with special focus on the urban elite of Baba I in the North West Region of Cameroon. The study lies within an intricate political system and topography. The thesis questions the effects of material culture on landscape transformation of the society through mobility. Over the past decades, the use and acquisition of land have changed greatly with increased geographical and social mobility. This has caused tremendous effects on the lives of people be it politically, economically and socially and above all in the dynamics of land acquisition and development. The changes on the landscapes are not only physically visible but also socio-culturally with the way people carry themselves around through their daily interactions. Thus, the thesis attempts to study these transformation processes in the form of an ethnography of mobility and belonging of the Papiakum people of Baba I. An extra contribution of this thesis is that it is the first to tell the story of the Papiakum who have been glossed over by the early colonial ethnographers and anthropologists of the North Western Grassfields of Cameroon. The research focused on a specific group: the urban dwellers of Baba I who are constructing at home. I tried to understand the meaning and importance of land and houses (home) within the Baba community in which these elites invest. The study of these changing infrastructural landscapes gave an insight into the socio-political and cultural settings and challenges as well as the role of the elite in development.. The construction of these houses and other infrastructure are an expression of this elite’s belonging as required by Papiakum cultural tenets.

This book provides a description of Cuvok, a language spoken by about 10,000 people in the far north of Cameroon. The study of the linguistic elements addresses and provides an analysis of the language through the examination of phonological and morphological aspects, as well as some notes on syntax and a bilingual lexicon.The issue of prosodies is central to the discussion of vowel segments. The harmonic domain of the word has a prominent place in the morpho-phonological discussion. The noun and the verb are the only grammatical categories that exhibit harmonic domains within which the features +palatalization and -palatalization are observed. All satellite elements of these two categories are either palatalized or non-palatalized depending on the opposition between the two phonemic vowels in the final position of the nominal or verbal complex. The perception of the Cuvok world is revealed through the study of prepositions, markers of temporal and spatial location. The expression of the four cardinal points shows a fixed orientation of the Tchouvok people.Particular emphasis was placed on the ethnolinguistic aspect, which deals with the role of the blacksmith as a key actor in the development of the society. This monographic section examines the role of the blacksmith in a society that is undergoing rapid change and is prey to new ideas and habits.The Cuvok grammar is a work that constitutes a decisive step towards the development and standardization of this language and hence of the central Chadic languages in general.

This dissertation presents a description of Mankanya, an Atlantic language spoken by about 65 000 speakers in Guinea-Bissau, Senegal and the Gambia. It includes a sketch of the phonology and a detailed description of the morphology and syntax of the language. Some aspects of discourse level structure are also discussed and two interlinearised sample texts are included.Mankanya has a rich morphology with both nominal and verbal inflection, and a range of derivative morphemes. Like many other Atlantic languages, nouns can be grouped into classes based on the agreement of the inflections between nouns and their modifiers. Verbs have prefixes that agree with the subject. Though some verbal affixes indicate different aspects, most distinctions of tense, aspect and mode are made by using verbal auxiliaries. Clause chaining is possible with reduced subject agreement if the subject is unchanged. Where the subject does change a different subject marker is often used.A Grammar of Mankanya will be of interest for those studying of Atlantic languages, as well a resource for wider typological comparison.

A focus on the everyday has produced this ethnography, which hopes to give a nuanced voice to an extended family of semi-sedentary nomads, living at the centre of a country and region known for its political turmoil, ecological insecurities, and socio-economic hardship. Based in central Chad, the Walad Djifir are part of extensive socio-economic networks, ranging from very local cattle markets, to Western Unions in Libya, and selling merchandise in the Central African Republic. The ferīkh (nomadic camp) is where all of the Walad Djifir’s networks meet, and often also begin— providing the departure point of this research. This analytical and methodological approach embraces the intricate relationships between sedentary and mobility, the mundane and the extreme, flexibility and expectations to explore how regional trends can be understood in light of the Walad Djifir’s daily lives. Over time, the Walad Djifir have developed ways of coping and dealing with insecurities, interacting with infrastructural, technological, and socio-political developments in specific ways. In exploring how such insecurities and crises become anchored into the everyday, the ferīkh provides answers. It is precisely the mundane elements of daily life which anchor disruption.

This dissertation provides a comprehensive look at the consonant-tone interaction embedded in a description of the sound system of two under-documented Chinese dialects, namely Lili Wu Chinese and Shuangfeng Xiang Chinese. In the existing literature, consonant-tone interaction generally concerns a [voiceless/H]-[voiced/L] co-occurrence pattern. A high tone usually co-occurs with a voiceless consonant, while a low tone usually co-occurs with a voiced consonant. However, largely because of the high level of homogeneity in the languages sampled, and the lack of access to up-to-date statistical techniques, this [voiceless/H]-[voiced/L] pattern has veiled the full picture of consonant-tone interaction across the world’s languages. Based on a series of phonetic studies of phonological contrasts, there are two key findings that contribute to our understanding of the diversity in consonant-tone interaction. First, voiceless aspirated onsets can also co-occur with low tones. This finding is antagonistic to the [voiceless/H]-[voiced/L] pattern which posits that only contrastively voiced onsets can be in favor of low tones. Second, the realization of consonant-tone interaction is not only specific between languages but also within languages. Speakers of different generations of a given language can utilize phonetic cues differently to signal the same phonological contrasts.

This thesis is about the Mochica language, an extinct linguistic isolate that was spoken until the mid- to late-nineteenth century in the northern coastal area of Peru. The aim of this study is twofold. The first goal is to reconstruct and better understand the Mochica language, in order to achieve the second goal of this research: a comparison of the Mochica language with other languages, which could potentially allow the establishment of contact or genealogical relations.This thesis includes a brief grammatical sketch of the Mochica language, as well as the reconstruction of some of its grammatical aspects (nominal possession, numeral classification, and nominalization) and its phonology. The thesis also offers the results of the grammatical and lexical comparison carried out between the Mochica language and other surrounding languages, and with other typologically similar languages.This thesis will be of interest to linguists who study indigenous languages of the Americas, Andean Linguistics and Linguistic Typology.

Dit promotieonderzoek heeft tot hoofddoel de mogelijke cognaten te analyseren voor bepaalde antiloopsoorten in de Bantoe gemeenschappen. Door enerzijds de fundamentele principes van de Historisch-Vergelijkende Taalkunde (vergelijkende methodologie) en anderzijds een maximum aantal bibliografische bronnen te gebruiken, zijn een groot aantal woorden uit een aanzienlijk aantal Bantoetalen verzameld. 174 protovormen betreffende de woordenschat specifiek voor de antilopen in Bantoe zijn uitgelicht. Van deze vormen waren 62 stammen al voorgesteld in de database Bantu Lexical Reconstructions (BLR) (2003) en 14 via andere bronnen. Sommige veelvoorkomende lexicale creatieprocessen in de Bantoetalen zijn semantische uitbreiding, reduplicatie, metathese en de metafoor. Bovendien heeft dit onderzoek het mogelijk gemaakt de betekenis te verfijnen van meerdere reeds voorgestelde reconstructies in de BLR. De semantische velden van de nomenclatuur van dieren zijn onderhevig aan heel wat verschuivingen, wat voornamelijk wordt verklaard door de veranderingen van de nominale klassen, maar ook door problemen met de betrouwbaarheid van bepaalde bronnen. In sommige gevallen is men erin geslaagd de oorsprong van de betekenis van gereconstrueerde stammen te achterhalen en hun semantische motivaties te begrijpen.

Majang is a Nilo-Saharan language of the Surmic subfamily spoken in Southwest Ethiopia. This language provides an interesting subject for phonological, morphosyntactic and pragmatic studies, particularly from a typological perspective. Majang is a tonal language with two tones and two different sources of non-automatic downstep; the tones distinguish meaning both in the lexicon and in the grammar. As would be expected from an Eastern-Sudanic language, Majang features an intricate number-marking system, where numerous inflectional strategies are chosen for the different nouns of the lexicon. This number marking interacts with the case marking of Majang, which is one of the few African languages with clearly manifested ergative-absolutive structures, balanced by an alternative system with nominative-absolutive markings; the deciding factor between the two systems is deeply grounded in the pragmatic context of the predications. The topicality of constituents not only influences the case-marking strategies, but has further manifestations in a topicality-based sentence-final marker and in a syntactic distinction mostly known from Bantu languages, the conjoint-disjoint distinction. This language description covers a wide range of topics: sociolinguistics, phonology, morphology, syntax and pragmatics, supplemented by two interlinearized texts and two wordlists (Majang-English and English-Majang).

This thesis explores the influence of prescriptivism on language use in American English. It does so by studying the relationship between language advice literature, patterns of language use, and speakers’ attitudes. The thesis shows that the genre of usage guides, routinely associated with prescriptivism, is undergoing change to reflect processes of change in progress in American English. Furthermore, prescriptivism and language use are shown to mutually influence each other.

In Luganda, the widest spoken minority language in Uganda, the word for photographs is 'ebifananyi'. However, 'ebifananyi' does not, contrary to the etymology of the word photographs, relate to light writings. 'Ebifananyi' instead means things that look like something else. 'Ebifananyi' are likenesses. My research project explores the historical context of this particular conceptualisation of photographs and its consequences for present day visual culture in Uganda. It also discusses my artistic practice as research method, which led to the digitisation of numerous historical collections of photographs. This resulted in eight books and in exhibitions that took place in Uganda and in Europe. The research was conducted in collaboration with both human and non-human actors. These actors included photographs, their owners, Ugandan picture makers and visitors to the exhibitions that were organised in Uganda and Western Europe. This methodology led to insights into differences in the production and uses of, and into meanings given to, photographs in both Ugandan and Dutch contexts. Understanding differences between ebifananyi and photographs shapes the communication about photographs between Luganda and English speakers. Reflection on the conceptualisations languages offer for objects and for sensible aspects of the surrounding world helps prevent misunderstandings in communication in general.

This book provides a grammatical description of Noon, an Atlantic language spoken by fewer than 32,000 people in 33 villages and neighborhoods in the outskirts of Thiès. The study, based primarily on new data collected by the author, provides an analysis on phonology, morphology, nominal classification, verbal system, ideophones, interjections and linguistic routines, syntax and divination systems. This work constitutes an important step forward in the nominal classification system. There are two nominal class systems in Noon: a Niger-Congo agreement system for modifiers that are attached to the head noun and another system for independent modifiers. The second nominal class system, based on human and diminutive semantic features, has an additional agreement singular/plural class pair for human nouns. The author also describes the divination practices in Noon by presenting an overview of divination systems in Senegal based on audio/video recordings collected in a natural setting. This empirical work, carried out in a linguistic and multimodal perspective, allows to focus first on the forms of divination of Noon, then on their meanings and expressions, and finally on some characteristic features in divination practices.

The present study deals with the phonological system of three Iranian Balochi dialects namely Mirjaveh Sarhaddi (MBS), Sarawani Balochi (SB) and Lashari Balochi (LB). Those three selected Iranian Balochi dialects are spoken respectively in Mirjaveh, Sarawan, and Lashar in Sistan and Balouchestan province, which is located in the southeast of Iran. As t the title of the present research, both descriptive and theoretical approaches (Optimality Theory) are concerned, since they can complement each other, connecting language (i.e. Balochi) to language (i.e. universal grammar), and give a formal and precise description and analysis of the grammatical properties of Iranian Balochi dialects sounds.

The broader aim of this thesis is to contribute to the literature seeking the role of languages in determining the socio-economic development in Sub-Saharan Africa. The four chapters are related to three issues: linguistic diversity measurement, the role of languages other than communication, and the long-term roots of the language situation. Existing linguistic diversity indices measure the probability that two randomly selected people in the society speak different primary languages. Although some indicators recognize that certain languages are more similar than others, none of them account for other than primary languages. Since the majority of the population in linguistically fragmented countries is multilingual, ignoring second languages, which are assumed to overcome linguistic barriers, could lead to somewhat biased results when analyzing the relationship between the language situation and socioeconomic outcomes. Chapter 3 elaborates on the Index of Communication Potential (ICP) which shows the probability that two people of the country selected at random can communicate given their language repertoire. Data are taken from the Afrobarometer Project. Chapter 3 also reveals the most important dimensions of the language situation in twenty Sub-Saharan countries including the ethnic and linguistic diversity, the average number of spoken languages, the share of people speaking the former colonizer’s language and the relationship between local and European languages. The most important functions of languages are communication, identity construction, and the transmission of culture and traditions. If we consider the communication function of languages in its strict sense (i. e. we ignore that languages are often attached cultural and symbolic value), it should not matter if information is transmitted in one’s primary language or in another: in theory, they can be equally efficient (especially in simple situations). However, when it comes to the other two functions, we expect that the cultural and symbolic value attached to primary and secondary languages are different. While the social and political science literature provide evidence that the identification and cultural role of primary languages is strong, the importance of additional languages in these aspects is less established. The thesis provides evidence that multilingualism can be beneficial: it promotes social cohesion. While Chapter 4 finds that people who live in an area with higher average communication potential are more likely to trust in unknown people, Chapter 5 shows that speaking more than two languages and higher individual communication potential leads to stronger identification with the nation compared to one’s own ethnic group. While existing studies predominantly focus on the geographical and climatic determinants of ethnolinguistic diversity across the globe, the thesis investigates how historical factors have influenced a less investigated dimension of the language situation, namely language status. Chapter 2 finds that the languages of ethnic groups with more socio-economic complexity before the colonial era and languages which were standardized earlier by Christian missionaries are more likely to be officially recognized and less likely to be endangered today.

This dissertation is a descriptive grammar of the language Tadaksahak spoken by about 30,000 people living in the most eastern part of Mali. The four chapters of the book give 1. Information about the background of the group. 2. The phonological features of the language with the inventory of the phonemes and the observed sound rules. 3. The description of the morphology. It is shown that verbal derivation pulls on unrelated Tamasheq for causative, reciprocal and middle as well as passive. In addition, any verb root that is of Songhay origin is suppleted when derived and a semantic equivalent of Tamasheq origin takes its place. Another non-Songhay feature concerns inflection where the subject pronoun cliticizes to the verb and is always present even when a noun phrase holds the subject slot. The nominalization strategy used depends on the etymology of the term, a feature paralleled in the formation of adjectives. 4. Basic syntax. Noun phrases, simple clauses, focalization and topicalization, question words with their syntax, complement clauses and the two possible relativization strategies as well as subordinate clauses are described. The appendixes provide texts with glosses, lists of verb roots with their suppletions when derived, and two differently organized wordlists.

This dissertation presents a grammar of Khwarshi, a Nakh-Daghestanian language. The grammar is based on material collected by the author during fieldwork. The dissertation gives an overview of the main aspects of the phonology, morphology, and syntax of the language. At the phonological level, a description of the system of vowels and consonants is given as well as of the secondary articulations: nasalization, palatalization, and pharyngealization. Khwarshi has several interesting morphological features including an elaborate system of up to 43 spatial cases, five noun genders which mark agreement between the Absolutive noun phrase and the verb, adjective, adverb, or postposition with the help of the gender affixes. Khwarshi is an ergative language with basic SOV word order and widespread use of non-finite verb forms. In the chapter on syntax, the main types of subordinate clauses such as relative, complement, and adverbial clauses are treated.

This dissertation presents a comprehensive description of the grammar of Logba, one of the fourteen Ghana-Togo Mountain (GTM) languages spoken by approximately 7,500 speakers on the Southeastern frontier of the Ghana-Togo border. It is the outcome of fifteen months research in Logba speaking communities. The grammar covers phonology, morphology, syntax and aspects of pragmatics such as routine expressions, particles and interjections. The language displays three interconnected systems of nominal classification –prefix classes, singular plural pairings and agreement system. The interaction of external verb agreement and noun phrase internal agreement results in nine different agreement patterns. Other typologically interesting features of Logba accounted for include its two adpositional classes, verb serialisation with features marked only on the first verb, and the coding of topological relations in verbs. The influence of Ewe, the dominant lingua franca, on the grammar and lexicon as well as Logba’s differentiation from its presumed genetic relatives like Likpe and Lelemi are touched upon. A corpus of glossed and translated texts that was used as data sources as well as a trilingual wordlist are also included. The descriptor is of interest to specialists in African linguistics, linguistic typology as well as contact linguistics.