The Fundamentals of Lekongho
The Fundamentals of Lekongho

Author: A. B. K. Kasozi

Publisher: African Books Collective

Published: 2024-04-26

Total Pages: 172

ISBN-13: 9956554014

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This book stems from a compilation of two separate research projects. The first was A Long Essay entitled Meaning of the Names of People in Mbo, Department of Linguistics, University of Buea and the other was an Essay entitled Time in Lekongho. The authors succinctly presented Nkongho- Mbo traditional names, their meaning and socio-cultural implications in the Nkongho-Mbo Speech Community. Most importantly, the researchers examined the impact of the Nkongho- Mbo names to the bearers. They explored the positivity and negativity of the selected Nkongho- Mbo names, including the meanings portrayed through the Lekongho language. In addition, they demonstrated the wealth and diversity of African languages, cultures and traditions and how they are fast losing their richness and diversity to the domineering influence of European colonialism and modernization which has drastically altered the socio-cultural, socio-economic and political conditions in Africa and given rise to a new generation of Africans who take greater pride in imbibing and promoting Europeans rather than fostering African values. The authors also addressed the Nkongho conception of time and names in a succinct analysis of how the Nkongho-Mbo people conceived, interpret and use them. The concept of time in most African cultures is very elusive, fluid and imprecise but this book has demonstrated that careful research and patient analysis can reduce that elusiveness, fluidity and imprecision. The authors have moved away from that colonial frame of mind and have shown great interest in reviving certain of the African values that have fallen prey to modernization.

English - Lekongho Dictionary
English - Lekongho Dictionary

Author: Mehpah, Sentemong

Publisher: Langaa RPCIG

Published: 2019-10-22

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 9956551848

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In 2005, a United Nations study reported that half of the world’s languages (estimated at 6,000) would disappear by the end of this century. A third of these endangered languages are in Africa where, according to the same study, nearly 250 languages have disappeared in the last century. Language is the heart, identity, storage system for the collective and unique memory and experience of every culture, people, including their natural habitat. Loss of language means loss of the ability to retain and pass on not just a belief system but also invaluable knowledge to future generations. This English-Lekongho/Lekongho-English Dictionary is a modest first attempt to minimize the envisaged sad phenomenon of language loss. Nkongho-Mbo people speak Lekongho, one of the five variants of the Mbo language of the Mbo ethnic group of Cameroon, with their ancestral home in the Kupe Muanenguba Administrative Area of the South-west Region. With this book, the authors’ fervent hope is that there will no longer surface any justification to continue to refrain from speaking Lekongho on a daily basis. This effort will help to regionalize, nationalize and internationalize the Lekongho language since Nkongho people are spread all over the country, Africa and the world.

The English Speaking Mbos of Cameroon
The English Speaking Mbos of Cameroon

Author: G. Fonsah

Publisher: African Books Collective

Published: 2016-06-13

Total Pages: 191

ISBN-13: 9956763551

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The Mbos are a large ethnic group in present day Cameroon and an important and powerful group until the Anglo-French partition. Following the defeat of the colonial power, Germany, in the First World War (WWI), the League of Nations in a March 1916 Mandate, partitioned the territory into two unequal halves among the victorious imperial powers of England and France, to be governed in trust as from 1922. As a result of the partition, the Mbos, who happened to find themselves right along the lines of division, were thrust under French and English administration, respectively. Roughly two thirds of the Mbos found themselves in what had then become French (East) Cameroon, while the remaining one third was thrust under British (West) Cameroon rule. Today the Mbos, as a whole, occupy parts of the Littoral and Western (Francophone) and Southwest (Anglophone) regions of Cameroon. While the Francophone Mbos have, over the decades, benefited from all aspects of economic, social, political, and agricultural development, the Anglophone Mbos have been isolated and deprived of all the outward and physical (tangible) aspects of socio-economic and political progress. The persistence of such colonial divisions makes for inequality among the Mbos, despite their common ancestry, ethnicity and cultural heritage. This book seeks to update on diverse aspects of the study conducted on the British Mbos by J.W.C. Rutherfoord and others as a first step toward a comprehensive publication on the Anglophone Mbos.

A Grammar of Igala
A Grammar of Igala

Author: Ejeba, Salem Ochala

Publisher: M & J Grand Orbit Communications

Published: 2017-01-17

Total Pages: 269

ISBN-13: 9785431185

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The book establishes 28 phonemic consonants and 7 vowels, as well as lexical and grammatical tones in Igala. It shows the canonical syllable types as V and CV with no complexity, and relates resyllabification to the retiming of segments as tone bearing units and the duration of their mora. The work discusses nine word classes, as well as ideophones and clitics in Igala. There are splitting verbs of various structures and fully-fledged pronouns with morphologically toneless clitic counterparts that are toned in their syntactic context, among other elements of the Igala morphology. The work establishes clitics as generally bearing the grammatical tones of various categories as a result of their morphological tonelessness and their availability for post-lexical tone assignment. It also accounts for the generally complex interaction of clitics and tones in the organisation of the morphosyntax and the tone-syntax interface. Igala has both verbal and nominal extensional affixes with various semantic features. Some interesting discussions in the Igala syntax include the structural and functional types of serial verb constructions, the detransitivizing process of verb movement in object demoting structures, coreferentiality in relativised constituents and the future/non-future temporal distinction. Complementary binominals are conjoined with a specified binominal morpheme, and their rigidly irreversible structures have implications in the Igala semantics. The binominals demonstrate a grammatically specified pattern defined over a conceptual space, showing the network among conceptual categories, such as kinship, marital, social, hunter-hunted, more-less and cause-effect relationships as reflected in the Igala grammar.

The Fundamentals of Lekongho
The Fundamentals of Lekongho

Author: Esendugue Greg Fonsah

Publisher: Langaa RPCID

Published: 2024-04-26

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9789956554607

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This book stems from a compilation of two separate research projects. The first was A Long Essay entitled Meaning of the Names of People in Mbo, Department of Linguistics, University of Buea and the other was an Essay entitled Time in Lekongho. The authors succinctly presented Nkongho- Mbo traditional names, their meaning and socio-cultural implications in the Nkongho-Mbo Speech Community. Most importantly, the researchers examined the impact of the Nkongho- Mbo names to the bearers. They explored the positivity and negativity of the selected Nkongho- Mbo names, including the meanings portrayed through the Lekongho language. In addition, they demonstrated the wealth and diversity of African languages, cultures and traditions and how they are fast losing their richness and diversity to the domineering influence of European colonialism and modernization which has drastically altered the socio-cultural, socio-economic and political conditions in Africa and given rise to a new generation of Africans who take greater pride in imbibing and promoting Europeans rather than fostering African values. The authors also addressed the Nkongho conception of time and names in a succinct analysis of how the Nkongho-Mbo people conceived, interpret and use them. The concept of time in most African cultures is very elusive, fluid and imprecise but this book has demonstrated that careful research and patient analysis can reduce that elusiveness, fluidity and imprecision. The authors have moved away from that colonial frame of mind and have shown great interest in reviving certain of the African values that have fallen prey to modernization.

The Numeral Systems of Nigerian Languages
The Numeral Systems of Nigerian Languages

Author: Ozo-mekuri Ndimele

Publisher: African Books Collective

Published: 2016-04-30

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 9785421538

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The papers in this collection present the numeral systems of more than twenty Nigerian languages. The papers mainly emanate from a workshop on the numeral systems of Nigerian languages organised by the Linguistic Association of Nigeria during its 23rd Annual Conference which was held at the University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria. The workshop arose from awareness created by Dr. Eugene S.L. Chan on the need for Nigerian linguists to document this severely endangered but very important aspect of natural languages. The quantum of mathematical computations - addition, multiplication, subtraction, or a combination of two or all of these - involved in the numeral systems of Nigerian languages is remarkable. The papers reveal that a variety of numeral systems do exist, such as: binary, decimal, incomplete decimal, duodecimal, quinary, quaternary, ternary, mixed, body-part tally systems, and much more. The book is a resource about how different languages manipulate their numeral systems.

In the Linguistic Paradise
In the Linguistic Paradise

Author: Ndimele, Ozo-mekuri

Publisher: M & J Grand Orbit Communications

Published: 2019-02-19

Total Pages: 674

ISBN-13: 9785644014

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In the Linguistic Paradise is the second volume in the Nigerian Linguists Festschrift Series. The motivating force behind the establishment of the Festschrift Series is to honour outstanding scholars who have excelled in the study of languages and linguistics in Nigeria. This volume is dedicated to Professor E. Nolue Emenanjo, a celebrated linguist and a pioneer professor of Igbo Linguistics. The book is organised in five sections, as follows: Language, History and Society; Literature, Stylistics and Pragmatics; Applied Linguistics; Formal Linguistics; and Tributes. There are 15 papers in the first section the majority address the perennial problem of language choice in Nigeria. Section two contains 10 papers focusing on literature, stylistics and pragmatics. Section three contains 17 papers a sizeable number of which focus on language teaching and learning, two are on lexicography, while others are on language engineering. Section three contains 16 papers focusing on the core areas of linguistics. In section four a biographical profile of Professor E. Nolue Emenanjo and list of publications is presented, while Nwadike examines the contributions of Emenanjo in Igbo Studies.

Affixation and Auxiliaries in Igbo
Affixation and Auxiliaries in Igbo

Author: Chinwe Onumajuru

Publisher: African Books Collective

Published: 2015-12-29

Total Pages: 166

ISBN-13: 9785421546

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This study focusses on affixation and auxiliaries in Igbo, drawing on data mainly from Onicha (Onitsha) Igbo. It identifies prefixes, suffixes, interfixes, circumfixes, super/suprafixes, extensional suffixes and auxiliaries in the variety of Igbo studied. The work is presented in two sections: Section 1 discusses affixation, while Section 2 is focused on auxiliary verbs. Section 1 contains five chapters. Chapter 1 is a general introduction that provides some background information regarding O? ni?cha [make sure this word is correct i.e. represented in the spelling of the language, and not just Onicha] Igbo and the speakers of the lect. Chapter 2 an overview of affixation as an important word formation process in world languages. Chapter 3 is the morpho-syntactic analysis of inflectional affixes. Chapter 4 discusses the morphosyntactic characteristics of derivational affixes, while Chapter 5 is concerned with the morpho-syntactic as well as the semantic charateristics of verbal extensions in Igbo. Section 2 is a sole chapter which discusses in a systematic manner the different types of auxiliary verbs, their uses and the effect of their co-occurrence with perfective verb forms.

Convergence: English and Nigerian Languages
Convergence: English and Nigerian Languages

Author: Ndimele, Ozo-mekuri

Publisher: M & J Grand Orbit Communications

Published: 2016-02-22

Total Pages: 922

ISBN-13: 9785412709

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The present volume, which is the 5th in the Nigerian Linguists Festschrift Series, is devoted to Professor Munzali A. Jibril, a celebrated icon in university administration, and an erudite Professor of English Linguistics. The title of this special edition was specifically chosen to crown Professor Jibril’s academic prowess in both English and indigenous Nigerian languages, and to mark and laud his official departure from active university lectureship. 72 assessed papers are included from the many submitted. Papers cover the main theme of the volume, i.e. the interaction between English and indigenous Nigerian languages, and there are a number of papers on other secular areas of linguistics such as: language and history, language planning and policy, language documentation, language engineering, lexicography, translation, gender studies, language acquisition, language teaching and learning, pragmatics, discourse and conversational analysis, and literature in English and African languages. There is also a rich section devoted to the major ‘traditional’ fields of linguistics - phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics.

The Gospel Sounds Like the Witch's Spell
The Gospel Sounds Like the Witch's Spell

Author: Kiyoshi Umeya

Publisher: African Books Collective

Published: 2022-02-10

Total Pages: 766

ISBN-13: 9956552798

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The Gospel Sounds Like the Witch's Spell is a highly detailed ethnography about how the Jopadhola in eastern Uganda talk about, interpret and cope with death, illness and other misfortunes. The book presents a provocative discussion that critiques the idea of the revival of witchcraft in the neo-liberalised contemporary world, as represented by the 'modernity model of witchcraft', and attempts to formulate a 'spiderweb model' that connects witchcraft to contemporary society in a more complex manner. The book is a unique ethnography of the collective memory of indigenous knowledge and local historicity. The author moves the reader from curse to misfortune to fortune as he plots the notion of 'curse' as deeply embedded in the Adhola way of life. He weaves between culture, religion, state and modernity with lived experience. Did the concept of witchcraft unwittingly endear the Adhola to the Christian way of life because of the presence of the notion of 'curse' in the Bible or make them less susceptible to the vagaries of modernity compared to their neighbours? These are some of the questions that the author puts on the table in a deeply reflective manner. The phenomenon of witchcraft is given an intriguing angle that invites the reader to reexamine earlier anthropological writings on the subject among African peoples.