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Title Morphosyntactic variation in Bantu: Focus on East Africa
Full text https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/38833/1/Morphosyntactic%20variation%20in%20Bantu_%20Focus%20on%20East%20Africa.pdf
Date 2022
Author(s) Edelsten, Peter; Gibson, Hannah; GueÌrois, Rozenn; Mapunda, Gastor; Marten, Lutz; Taji, Julius
Abstract Recent studies have developed a systematic approach to morphosyntactic variation among Bantu languages, taking well-known and widely attested construction types as a starting point and sketching their distribution across the family. One such approach, Guérois et al. (2017), utilises 142 morphosyntactic parameters or features, across a sample of some 50 Bantu languages (Marten et al. 2018). The present paper builds on this work and focusses on 10 parameters of variation where there is a significant difference between the values for East African Bantu languages and non-East African Bantu languages of the sample. The parameters relate to areas such as noun class morphology, agreement, and word order and so cover a wide range of morphosyntactic structures. The paper shows that the differences overall can be used for an initial characterisation of East Africa as a morphosyntactic area, with its own specific language change and language contact dynamics.
Language en
Publisher Language Association of Eastern Africa
Relation https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/38833/; https://scholarship.claremont.edu/jlaea/vol1/iss1/4/; 10.5642/jlaea.OMUG7174
Type of publication Journal Article; PeerReviewed
Format text
Rights cc_by_4
Identifier Edelsten, Peter, Gibson, Hannah, GueÌrois, Rozenn, Mapunda, Gastor, Marten, Lutz and Taji, Julius (2022) 'Morphosyntactic variation in Bantu: Focus on East Africa.' Journal of the Language Association of East Africa, 1 (1). pp. 1-24.
Repository London - SOAS, University of London
Added to C-A: 2023-02-15;12:25:28