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Multilingualism is widespread amongst individuals and communities in African countries. However, language-in-education policies across the continent continue to privilege monolingual approaches to language use in the classroom. In this paper we highlight the colonial origins of these monolingual ideologies and discuss the detrimental effects which arise when learners� linguistic repertoires are not welcomed within the education system. We draw attention to major themes within education across a range of contexts: policy vagueness, teachers as policy implementers, and the creation and imposition of boundaries. We advocate for a language-in-education approach which brings the outside in, which welcomes individuals� lived multilingual realities and which values these as resources for learning. We highlight the ways in which translanguaging could represent a positive shift to the way in which multilingual language practices are talked about, and can contribute to decolonising language policy in African contexts. We conclude by calling to action those working on education and policy to ensure that learners and teachers are better supported. We call ultimately for a rethinking of multilingualism.

The latest language in education policy in Zambia is to use a �familiar� language in the initial stages of education before transitioning into a regional and later foreign language medium. Investigating the use of a familiar language�Namwanga�in Northern Zambia, in the context of a regional language�Bemba�the article shows that learning of literacy in the regional language is better supported by classrooms that allow free use of the �home� language or mother tongue. Results from a reading and comprehension task show no hindrance to the achievement of reading fluency in a regional language when a familiar language is encouraged in the classroom. The article provides support for multi-literacies developed through languages that learners are exposed to in their environment rather than a foreign language.

The pre-NC vowel in many Bantu languages is generally understood to be long. In Bemba, where there is also a vowel length contrast, this raises the question whether the pre-NC vowel is phonetically as long as lexical long vowels and how phonologised this length might be. In contrast to lexically long vowels, pre-NC vowel length is attributed to vowel lengthening resulting from the restructuring of a nasal to create a prenasalised stop. This is thus relevant to whether such stops are treated as unit segments or not. The present paper focuses on the pre-NC vowel and presents an evaluation of whether the pre-NC vowel is monomoraic or bimoraic by considering both phonetic and phonological evidence. Segmental and most tonal evidence leans towards a monomoraic treatment of the pre-NC vowel. One set of tonal data, however, shows variation in moraicity, presenting a mixed picture that we conclude emanates from the intermediate phonetic duration of the pre-NC vowel.¹

This paper aims to provide an overview of our current understanding of depressors by offering a comparative perspective of the types of depressors from Bantu, Khoisan and Chinese Wu. Depressor effects in Bantu/Khoisan, on the one hand, and Chinese, on the other, are hardly dealt with together leaving a more holistic approach untapped. This paper begins to bridge that gap by bringing together current findings to establish the full scope of depressor effects, from which future analyses can then build on. It is systematically observed that depressors in these languages are not restricted to voicing only. Rather, they range from voiced and breathy sounds – the most unmarked – to voiceless unaspirated sounds and even voiceless aspirated sounds as the most marked depressor type. The expansion of depressors to voiceless aspirated sounds is particularly interesting, since these sounds are traditionally assumed to correlate with a high pitch which is characteristic of high tone. Thus, the laryngeal configurations for voiceless depressors are examined and compared between Bantu, Khoisan and Chinese Wu. Proposed feature analyses for depressors are also discussed and compared.Keywords: depressors, Bantu, Khoisan, Chinese Wu, laryngeal specification

Bantu languages are well-known for having multiple remoteness distinctions in both the past and the future. This paper looks at the 4-way remoteness distinction of Bemba (central Bantu) showing that the system is undergoing change that is resulting in the loss of an intermediate past tense, by merger with the remote past. Two factors are central in driving this change; a merger of forms by tone loss and neutralisation and a shift in the scope of semantic function. Because the Bemba tense-aspect system manifests the so-called conjoint-disjoint alternation, there is also some reconfiguration of the TA system that accompanies the merger. The different factors involved in this change are unified under a cognitive multi-dimensional approach to tense, which is here extended to account for language change in tense systems.

Copperbelt Bemba exhibits several rightward spreading tonal processes which are sensitive to prosodic phrase structure. The rightmost H tone in a word will undergo unbounded spreading if the word is final in a phonological phrase (φ). In an intonational phrase consisting of several single-word φ's, the rightmost H in the first word will spread through all following toneless φ's. From a rule-based perspective, this can only be accounted for by positing mutually feeding iterative rules, as a single H-tone spreading rule cannot account for the long-distance spreading. Rather, a second rule that spreads a H from the final mora of one word onto the initial mora of the following word is required, as a bridge to further unbounded spreading. Three phrase-sensitive OT constraints are proposed to account for H-tone spreading between words. One is of the domain-juncture variety, requiring the specification of two separate prosodic domains.

(2015). INTRODUCTION: Phonetics and Phonology in Bantu. Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies: Vol. 33, Phonetics and Phonology in Bantu, pp. iii-v.

Benefactive applicative constructions can encode a range of different meanings, including notably recipient, substitutive and plain benefactive readings, which are often distinguished in cross-linguistic studies. In Bantu languages, this distinction has not received much attention, in part because most Bantu languages do not formally distinguish between different readings of benefactive applicatives. In Bemba (Bantu M42, Zambia), by contrast, substitutive applicatives, where the action of the verb is performed by the agent instead of, on behalf of, or in place of someone else, are formally marked by applicative morphology in addition to a post-verbal clitic -kó, based on a grammaticalised locative demonstrative clitic. The paper provides a detailed discussion of the construction and proposes that the interpretation of substitutive applicatives results from the interaction of abstract applicative and locative semantics and depends on underlying metaphors of spatial and abstract location. Bemba benefactive applicatives thus provide an illustration of the complex function and interpretation of Bantu applicatives and locative markers more widely. The construction is interesting from a historical-comparative and typological perspective because of the particular grammaticalisation process from a locative source involved in the historical development of the construction, and because substitution is marked in addition to applicative marking.

The paper presents a detailed discussion of morphosyntactic variation in object marking in Bantu. Building on previous work (Marten et al., 2007), the paper investigates variation in object marking in 16 Bantu languages with respect to six parameters: the co-occurrence of object markers and lexical objects, the obligatoriness of object markers with specific classes of objects, the presence of locative object markers, multiple object markers, object marking in double object constructions, and object marking in relative clauses. The study shows that even within these fine-grained parameters, variation between different languages can be further distinguished. The paper provides a systematic overview of the kind of morphosyntactic variation found in Bantu, and provides an empirical framework for further descriptive and comparative studies.Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 2012, 30(2): 237–253

In addition to practical, pragmatic functions, both money and language fulfil symbolic functions. The designation, design and language use of currencies, like choices about language policies and national languages carry symbolic weight and reflect different conceptions of national identity. In independent Africa, different approaches to language policy and currency terms are found, and the interaction between the two often reflects specific historic-political circumstances and the public and official portrayal of nationhood. Tracing language and currency choices in Zambia and Tanzania shows that the situations in the two countries stand in an inverse symmetrical relation: In Zambia, language choice was primarily pragmatic, and currency terms carry high symbolic function. In contrast, in Tanzania, the choice of Swahili as national language was highly symbolic, while the choice of currency terms was pragmatic. Although the relations between language and currency terms identified in the case studies are specific to Zambia and Tanzania, the study shows how symbolic functions of money and language are embedded in discourses about national identity more generally.

Derived environment effects involve either overapplication or underapplication of phonological rules in phonological or morphological environments. This paper focuses on underapplication effects in both phonological and morphological environments, which are treated as resulting from representational differences between derived and non-derived environments at the appropriate level. The Government and Dependency Phonology notions of head and dependent are utilised to this end. Thus, phonologically derived environment effects result from melodic structure that differentiates branching from immediate dominance relations between elements, allowing phonological processes to target a segment of one melodic configuration to the exclusion of another. Morphologically derived environment effects, on the other hand, involve representational differences at the constituent structure level, corresponding to the fact that morphological effects are a result of junctural or morpheme-integrity effects. In the latter case, head-dependent relations are defined as holding over domains, thereby differentiating affixal from non-affixal material, while in the former junctural effects the representational difference is defined at the CV tier, with phonological processes being sensitive to the presence of empty V and C positions.

Previous research has shown that listeners from tonal languages are better at processing tone compared to speakers from non-tonal languages. However, most of this research has tested Asian tone languages, particularly those which have many tonal contrasts and a dense tone-to-syllable association. In this paper we investigate the mental representation of derived tones in Bemba, a Bantu language that has a two-way tone contrast but which shows robust tone spreading patterns. Specifically, we test ternary high-tone spreading, a process that is unique from a phonological perspective. In a production task we test whether ternary spread can be extended to non-words. We complement this with an AX discrimination task comparing binary vs ternary spread, which are phonologically contrastive, on the one hand, with a tonally similarly salient but non-phonologically relevant contrast, on the other. We show that in both the production and percep- tion of non-words, ternary spread is distinct from binary spread, suggesting that derived tone is equally mentally represented as lexical tone is in Asian tone languages. published

From the inception of strict CV in Lowenstamm (1996) the question of how surface clusters are licensed in Government Phonology has been a contentious one. If constituent structure consists of a series of strictly alternating C and V positions, and empty positions are licensed by proper government, then all cluster types should be available to languages that license clusters. The initial empty CV, which though originally proposed to account for certain word-initial clitic alternations in Lowenstamm (1999), emerges as a possible solution to categorizing blatant distributional facts about clusters. Viewed as a morphological (boundary) marker imported from morphology to phonology, its presence accords with languages that show restrictions on cluster type in initial position, while its absence is consistent with languages that show free variation of clusters in initial position. In the midst of this, clusterless languages are assumed to pattern with the former group in requiring the highest restriction on clusters i.e. none at all. This paper argues that there is little ground for such an assumption and that in fact, clusterless languages have no initial empty CV, a fact that is shown to follow from the general ban on proper government in this language type. The paper proceeds as follows; §2 presents the motivations for an initial empty CV; §3 presents arguments for a parametric treatment of proper-government; §4 presents empirical evidence for the absence of an initial empty CV in clusterless languages; and §5 offers some concluding remarks.

Bemba (also called Cibemba or Icibemba; ISO 639-3 codebem) is a Niger-Congo language belonging to the Central Narrow Bantu branch (Zone M in Guthrie's 1948, 1967–71 classification). Bemba is spoken in Zambia (mainly in the Northern, Luapula and Copperbelt provinces) and the Southern Democratic Republic of Congo by approximately 3.3 million speakers (Lewis, Simons & Fennig 2013). Our data are based on Bemba spoken in Zambia.

Bantu languages are fairly uniform in terms of broad typological parameters. However, they have been noted to display a high degree of more fine-grained morphosyntactic micro-variation. In this paper we develop a systematic approach to the study of morphosyntactic variation in Bantu by developing nineteen parameters which serve as the basis for cross-linguistic comparison and which we use for comparing ten southeastern Bantu languages. We address conceptual issues involved in studying morphosyntax along parametric lines and show how the data we have can be used for the quantitative study of language comparison. Although the work reported is a case study in need of expansion, we will show that it nevertheless produces relevant results.

Bantu languages are renowned as tone languages that utilize this suprasegmental feature not only on the lexical level to distinguish lexical items, but also on the grammatical level to distinguish clause types. This article investigates one such use of grammatical tone in relative clauses in Bemba where a low tone can be used in place of a segmental relative marker. This low tone relative morpheme functions in conjunction with phrase boundary tone indicated on the head noun and which entails either restrictive or non-restrictive interpretations of relatives. Considering a mapping of XPs to major phonological phrases in the syntax-prosody interface, the resultant phonological phrasing in relatives influences the choice of syntactic structure. In the case at hand, a head-raising analysis provides an optimal mapping between syntax and prosody for restrictives. Further, a more direct influence of phonology on syntax can be seen in a perception-based model like Dynamic Syntax where the on-line building of syntactic trees can gain import from phonological information.

Tone as a distinctive feature used to differentiate not only words but also clause types, is a characteristic feature of Bantu languages. In this paper we show that Bemba relatives can be marked with a low tone in place of a segmental relative marker. We treat this low tone as a morpheme rather than as just triggering a change in tone pattern that can then be related to relativization. The low tone strategy of relativization, which imposes a restrictive reading of relatives, manifests a phonological phrasing that requires the head noun to be phrased together with the relative clause that it modifies as opposed to non-restrictives where this is not the case. The paper shows that the resultant phonological phrasing favours a head-raising analysis of relativization where the head noun is considered to be inside CP. Despite the syntactic use of the relative tonal morpheme we see that it is also subject to purely phonological constraints that results in its being unable to be used to mark headless relatives. This paper therefore highlights the phonology-syntax connection and shows that phonology can directly inform syntactic analyses. © Walter de Gruyter.

Zambia, in southern central Africa, is reported to have 25 languages spoken among 80 tribes. The languages are Bantu from Bantu-speaking people that migrated mainly from the Congo basin (now the Democratic Republic of Congo). English from former British colonial rule is the most important official language but seven Zambian languages (Bemba, Nyanja, Lozi, Tonga, Luvale, Lunda, and Kaonde) also have official status. Bemba and Nyanja function as the most important lingua francas across the country. Some languages remain undocumented and are probably severely endangered while a comprehensive language survey remains to be done.

Sesotho, also called Southern Sotho, is the major language spoken in Lesotho; 85% of the Lesotho population speaks Sesotho, comprising more than a third of the total number of Sesotho speakers in southern Africa. The people of the Basotho nation were led to the present mountainous location of Lesotho, in central South Africa, by King Moshoeshoe at the beginning of the 19th century. Sesotho is the national and official first language of Lesotho; English is the official second language. Totally surrounded by South Africa, the Xhosa (from the south) and Zulu (from the east) languages are also spoken in Lesotho. Within the region, Sesotho is related to the Tswana and northern Sotho languages.