Elements of Modern Igbo Grammar
Author: E. Nọlue Emenanjọ
Publisher: University Press, Nigeria
Published: 1978
Total Pages: 270
ISBN-13:
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A Grammar of Contemporary Igbo
Author: Emenanjo, E. Nolue
Publisher: M & J Grand Orbit Communications
Published: 2016-02-22
Total Pages: 676
ISBN-13: 9785412733
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn twenty-five chapters this book covers phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. The chapters are organized in four discrete parts: phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. They are uneven in terms of scope covered, length, the density of their contents and their degrees of difficulty. Each chapter ends with ‘Some References’ relevant to both the topic(s) treated in the chapter, in Igbo linguistics, and in general linguistics.
ModalityAspect Interfaces
Author: Werner Abraham
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Published: 2008-06-26
Total Pages: 450
ISBN-13: 9027290199
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe main topics pursued in this volume are based on empirical insights derived from Germanic: logical and typological dispositions about aspect-modality links. These are probed in a variety of non-related languages. The logically establishable links are the following: Modal verbs are aspect sensitive in the selection of their infinitival complements – embedded infinitival perfectivity implies root modal reading, whereas embedded infinitival imperfectivity triggers epistemic readings. However, in marked contexts such as negated ones, the aspectual affinities of modal verbs are neutralized or even subject to markedness inversion. All of this suggests that languages that do not, or only partially, bestow upon full modal verb paradigms seek to express modal variations in terms of their aspect oppositions. This typological tenet is investigated in a variety of languages from Indo-European (German, Slavic, Armenian), African, Asian, Amerindian, and Creoles. Seeming deviations and idiosyncrasies in the interaction between aspect and modality turn out to be highly rule-based.
Syntax and Semantics of Spatial P
Author: Anna Asbury
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Published: 2008
Total Pages: 428
ISBN-13: 9789027255037
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe category P belongs to a less studied area in theoretical linguistics, which has only recently attracted considerable attention. This volume brings together pioneering work on adpositions in spatial relations from different theoretical and cross-linguistic perspectives. The common theme in these contributions is the complex semantic and syntactic structure of PPs. Analyses are presented in several different frameworks and approaches, including generative syntax, optimality theoretic semantics and syntax, formal semantics, mathematical modeling, lexical syntax, and pragmatics. Among the languages featured in detail are English, German, Hebrew, Igbo, Italian, Japanese, and Persian. This volume will be of interest to students and researchers of formal semantics, syntax and language typology, as well as scholars with a more general interest in spatial cognition.
Social and Regional Variation in World Englishes
Author: Paula Rautionaho
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2022-09-30
Total Pages: 234
ISBN-13: 1000653978
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis collection charts the evolution of grammatical variation in Englishes from Late Middle English to the present, using corpus linguistic tools to address divergence and convergence in local and global perspectives. The book considers both diachronic and synchronic perspectives in grammatical variation across varieties of English across the UK, North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. The volume reflects on the questions of whether patterns of variation diverge or converge and to what extent catalysts for change are shared in time and space. Chapters look at different factors in grammatical variation at both the macro and micro level, investigating specific linguistic and grammatical features but also at wider phenomena in contact linguistics, social patterns, social networks, and media-based corpora. Chapters progress from the local to the global, all with an eye towards using the latest methodological approaches from corpus linguistics to shed light on the affordances of data-informed methods to study grammatical change and the possibilities for future research. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in sociolinguistics, corpus linguistics, and World Englishes.
Studies in Nigerian Linguistics
Author: Ndimele, Ozo-mekuri
Publisher: M & J Grand Orbit Communications
Published: 2016-09-13
Total Pages: 500
ISBN-13: 9785416461
DOWNLOAD EBOOKStudies in Nigerian Linguistics is a compilation of research papers on topical issues in Nigerian languages and linguistics covering three main areas of research, viz.: Language and Society, Applied Linguistics and Formal Linguistics. The papers in this volume are sectioned as such, even though there are bits of overlapping, especially for some of the papers contained in the first and second sections. The first fifteen (15) papers focus on the major theme of Language and Society in Nigeria. Many of the papers in this section address some peculiar sociolinguistic issues that affect the nation, including the nagging and lingering problem regarding the “language question” for the Nigerian nation even after five decades of the attainment of “Political Independence”, language and national development and language varieties. Section 2 contains papers in Applied Linguistics in its narrow and extended senses. There are papers on language teaching and learning, interference and intraference phenomena, language engineering (with focus on codification), communication disorders, and much more. The third section contains sixteen (16) papers in the core areas of linguistics, including phonology, morphology and syntax of Nigerian languages. Some of the papers address aspects of the phonological and morphosyntactic processes of deletion, affixation, cliticisation, causativisation, complementation, serialisation, agreement, and much more. The phrasal structure and pronominal systems of some languages were also discussed.
Quotative Indexes in African Languages
Author: Tom Güldemann
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Published: 2008-11-06
Total Pages: 707
ISBN-13: 3110211459
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe book represents the results of a synchronic and diachronic cross-African survey of quotative indexes. These are linguistic expressions that signal in the ongoing discourse the presence of a quote (often called "direct reported speech"). For this purpose, 39 African languages were selected to represent the genealogical and geographical diversity of the continent. The study is based primarily on this language sample, in particular on the analysis of quotative indexes and related expressions from a text corpus of each sample language, but also includes a wide range of data from the published literature on other African as well as non- African languages. It is the first typological investigation of direct reported discourse of this magnitude in a large group of languages. The book may thus serve as a starting point of similar studies in other geographical areas or even with a global scope, as well as stimulate more detailed investigations of particular languages. The results of the African survey challenge several prevailing cross-linguistic generalizations regarding quotative indexes and reported discourse constructions as a whole, of which two are of particular interest. In the syntactic domain, where reported discourse has mostly been dealt with under so- called sentential complementation, the study supports the minority view that direct reported discourse and also a large portion of indirect reported discourse show hardly any evidence for the claim that the reported clause is a syntactic object complement of some matrix verb. With respect to grammaticalization, the work concludes that speech verbs are, against common belief, not a frequent source of quotatives, complementizers, and other related markers. Far more frequent sources are markers of similarity and manner; generic verbs of equation, inchoativity, and action; and pronominals referring to the quote or the speaker. Another more general conclusion of the study is that especially direct reported discourse can be fruitfully analyzed as part of a larger linguistic domain called "mimesis". This comprises expressions which represent a state of affairs by means of enactment/ performance rather than with the help of "canonical" linguistic signs and includes, besides reported discourse, world-referring bodily gestures, ideophone-like signs, and non-linguistic sound.
Four Decades in the Study of Nigerian Languages and Linguistics
Author: Ndimele, Ozo-mekuri
Publisher: M & J Grand Orbit Communications
Published: 2019-03-31
Total Pages: 935
ISBN-13: 9785644006
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis volume is produced in commemoration of the official retirement of Professor Kay Williamson from the Department of Linguistics and Communication Studies, University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria. The contributing essayists cover five main generations of Nigerian linguists. The collection is divided into six sections: Language, history and Society; Applied Linguistics and Orthography Design; Gender and Communication Studies; Stylistics and Literature; Pragmatics, Discourse Analysis and Translation; and Formal Linguistics. Some of the contributors include: Ayo Bamgbose, Okon Essie, Ben Elugbe, P.A. Nwachukwu, E.N. Emenanjo, P. Anagbogu, Chinyere Ohiri-Aniche, O.M. Ndimele, O.G. Harry, Levi Igwe, C.U. Omego, O. Ojukwu, A.U. Weje, O.N. Anyanwu and A. Idafuro.
Theoretical Approaches to African Linguistics
Author: Akinbiyi Akinlabi
Publisher: Africa World Press
Published: 1995
Total Pages: 432
ISBN-13: 9780865434639
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe first of a new series devoted to the study of African linguistics, this study presents papers on a wide range of disciplines pertinent to the field that will be of interest to students and researchers. This first volume includes work on Niger Congo languages such as Yoruba and Igbo, and several Bantu languages.
Modes of Modality
Author: Elisabeth Leiss
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Published: 2014-01-15
Total Pages: 519
ISBN-13: 9027270791
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe volume aims at a universal definition of modality or “illocutionary/speaker’s perspective force” that is strong enough to capture the entire range of different subtypes and varieties of modalities in different languages. The central idea is that modality is all-pervasive in language. This perspective on modality allows for the integration of covert modality as well as peripheral instances of modality in neglected domains such as the modality of insufficieny, of attitudinality, or neglected domains such as modality and illocutionary force in finite vs. nonfinite and factive vs. non-factive subordinated clauses. In most languages, modality encompasses modal verbs both in their root and epistemic meanings, at least where these languages have the principled distribution between root and epistemic modality in the first place (which is one fundamentally restricted, in its strict qualitative and quantitative sense, to the Germanic languages). In addition, this volume discusses one other intricate and partially highly mysterious class of modality triggers: modal particles as they are sported in the Germanic languages (except for English). It is argued in the contributions and the languages discussed in this volume how modal verbs and adverbials, next to modal particles, are expressed, how they are interlinked with contextual factors such as aspect, definiteness, person, verbal factivity, and assertivity as opposed to other attitudinal types. An essential concept used and argued for is perspectivization (a sub-concept of possible world semantics). Language groups covered in detail and compared are Slavic, Germanic, and South East Asian. The volume will interest researchers in theoretical and applied linguistics, typology, the semantics/pragmatics interface, and language philosophy as it is part of a larger project developing an alternative approach to Universal Grammar that is compatible with functionalist approaches.
