{"id":800,"date":"2010-08-14T10:00:41","date_gmt":"2010-08-14T08:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elanguage.net\/blogs\/booknotices\/?p=800"},"modified":"2010-06-14T14:04:35","modified_gmt":"2010-06-14T12:04:35","slug":"studies-in-african-linguistic-typology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/?p=800","title":{"rendered":"Studies in African linguistic typology"},"content":{"rendered":"
Studies in African linguistic typology.<\/strong> Ed. by F. K. Erhard<\/strong> Voeltz<\/strong>. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2006. Pp. 426. ISBN 9789027229755<\/a>. $218 (Hb).<\/div>\n

Reviewed by Benji Wald<\/strong><\/a>, New York City<\/em><\/p>\n

The product of a symposium on African language typology sponsored by the Institut f\u00fcr Afrikanistik, Universit\u00e4t zu K\u00f6ln, this volume continues work pioneered by Bernd Heine in the 1970s. The volume is dedicated to Joseph H. Greenberg, the original impetus and continuing inspiration for the field. Erhard Voeltz\u2019s introduction briefly describes the twenty-one papers that comprise the volume. Each paper is headed by an abstract and ends with a list of references.<\/p>\n

Following Greenberg\u2019s original work on typology and Heine\u2019s exploration of grammaticalization in African languages, there is a general\u2014although not exclusive\u2014tendency for the papers to focus on typological comparisons of diachronic change rather than on static universals. Thus, quite a few of the papers focus on\u00a0 genetically related languages\u2014for example Herman M. Batibo<\/strong> examines Southern Bantu future marking (1\u201312), Philippe Bourdin<\/strong> investigates Somali directional deixis (13\u201342), Axel Fleisch<\/strong> discusses Bantu passivization (93\u2013130), Amina Mettouchi<\/strong> explores Kabyle negation (263\u201376), Maarten Mous<\/strong> focuses on (East) Cushitic selectors (303\u201326), Brigitte Reineke<\/strong> and Gudrun Miehe<\/strong> examine Gur verb valency (337\u201360), and H. Ekkehard Wolff <\/strong>contrasts focus in two Hausa dialects (397\u2013416).<\/p>\n

As Voeltz notes in his introduction, focusing on a particular language family allows for the detailed examination of linguistic phenomena before it is compared to apparently similar phenomena in other, unrelated languages. This avoids premature generalizations about language universals that may be based on inadequate analysis of one or several of the compared languages. As implied, there is much work to be done in the careful analysis of languages in many parts of the world, and Africa is no exception. In fact, several of the papers detail languages and groups for which data have been previously limited, inaccessible, or nonexistent. One such paper is Gerrit J. Dimmendaal<\/strong>\u2019s <\/strong>comparison of the Surmic languages of Nilo-Saharan to the better documented Nilotic languages with which Surmic is in contact (71\u201392).<\/p>\n

The scope of some papers is broader than others. One way to judge the generality of a paper is by whether it mentions a Khoisan language. Such mention is restricted to Tania Kuteva<\/strong> and Bernard Comrie <\/strong>(209\u201328), who discuss \u00a0relative clause formation across Africa, and Claudia Maria Riehl<\/strong> and Christa Kilian-Hatz<\/strong> (361\u201376), who explore nominal compounding. Otherwise, Denia Creissel<\/strong>\u2019s paper is quite wide in scope she indicates that in some families, obligatory subject and object marking are more common than not. Unfortunately, no paper focuses specifically on Khoisan, perhaps because for most languages, especially in the San group, full description is a matter of great urgency, so the relatively few firsthand investigators might see typologizing as a premature distraction at present.<\/p>\n

One of the great virtues of the volume is the presentation of data on languages not previously available. African languages are diverse in that description in one language group can have fresh typological implications for languages in general, as in the particular devices for marking various constituents for focus, or, as in Mous\u2019s paper, the grammatical category he calls selector<\/strong>, which varies its grammatical properties in different Cushitic languages. Indeed, data from new languages can simply provide insight into perennial problems with accepted linguistic categories, such as the word, as discussed by Larry M. Hyman<\/strong> and Francis X. Katamba<\/strong> in regard to Luganda (171\u201394).<\/p>\n

This volume is of sufficient scope and high analytic quality to serve as a new standard text in African language typology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Studies in African linguistic typology. Ed. by F. K. Erhard Voeltz. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2006. Pp. 426. ISBN 9789027229755. $218 (Hb). Reviewed by Benji Wald, New York City The product of a symposium on African language typology sponsored by the Institut f\u00fcr Afrikanistik, Universit\u00e4t zu K\u00f6ln, this volume continues work pioneered by Bernd Heine in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=800"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":801,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800\/revisions\/801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}