Reviewed by Elly van Gelderen, Arizona State University

Genetic relations among African languages have, since Joseph Greenberg (1963), been reasonably well accepted and studied. Bernd Heine and Derek Nurse now bring together a set of nine chapters that examine if Africa is itself a Sprachbund (Ch. 2) and if there are areas inside Africa in which genetically distinct languages share certain linguistic features due to language contact (Chs. 3–9). This book includes the views of several experts on African languages and presents many interesting case studies.

In their introductory Ch. 1, the editors adopt a framework of language contact, as also presented in Heine and Kuteva (2005), but without as much emphasis on grammaticalization. They emphasize that syntax does not belong ‘to the most stable parts of grammar’ (7). Correlations between word order and areal distribution are shown for subject-object-verb (SOV) languages from Lake Chad to the Horn of Africa and for VSO languages in the East African Rift Valley (7–8). These correlations can be attributed to language contact.

In ‘Is Africa a linguistic area?’ Bernd Heine and Zelealem Leyew discuss the problems with the term Africanism. As Greenberg (1983) notes, there is no feature that exists across all of Africa but nowhere else. Heine and Leyew provide lists of linguistic properties that are either restricted to or are more prevalent in Africa than in other areas (26–27). Chs. 3 and 4 are entitled ‘Africa as a phonological area’, by G. N. Clements and Annie Rialland and ‘Africa as a morphosyntactic area’, by Denis Creissels, Gerrit Dimmendaal, Zygmunt Frajzyngier, and Christa König. Clements and Rialland argue that Africa can be divided into six phonological zones that cross genetic boundaries—namely, North, Sudanic, East, Center, Rift, and South (37). Creissels et al. provide a discussion of nineteen morphosyntactic features that are characteristic of African languages (149–50).

In Ch. 5, ‘The Macro-Sudan belt: Towards identifying a linguistic area in northern sub-Saharan Africa’, Tom Güldemann uses six phonological and morphosyntactic isoglosses to identify the Macro-Sudan Belt. Ch. 6, ‘The Tanzanian Rift Valley area’, by Roland Kießling, Maarten Mous, and Derek Nurse, provides fifteen features (222–23) that many of these languages share—for example ventive marking of an event ‘directed towards a pre-established deictic center’ (210). Joachim Crass and Ronny Meyer discuss the Ethiopian linguistic area in Ch. 7, entitled ‘Ethiopia’. They review the features that have already been identified as well as some new features, such as different copulas in main and subordinate clauses.

Chs. 8 and 9, by Christa König and Gerrit Dimmendaal, cover the unusual case systems of Eastern Africa and verb-final languages, respectively. Both authors bring in historical considerations and compare genetic and areal factors. In sum, the chapters in this book are well-grouped, well-written, and provide interesting case studies into areal (and genetic) groupings of the languages of Africa.

References

Greenberg, Joseph. 1963. The languages of Africa. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Greenberg, Joseph. 1983. Some areal characteristics of African languages. Current approaches to African languages, ed. by Ivan Dihoff, 3-21. Dordrecht: Foris.

Heine, Bernd and Tania Kuteva. 2005. Language contact and grammatical change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.