Drafts by Gerrit Dimmendaal
Sahara, Nile Valley and Beyond:Comparing Linguistic and Archaeological Data., 2024
Fundamental morphosyntactic changes in languages belonging to the southern branch of Eastern Suda... more Fundamental morphosyntactic changes in languages belonging to the southern branch of Eastern Sudanic, within Nilo-Saharan, and the attestation of similar typological changes in eastern extensions of Niger-Congo, in particular in Bantu, point towards areal contacts during the spread of these languages among typologically different languages already spoken in these areas of Northeastern and Central Africa, respectively. Geographically, the extant Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Congo languages are associated with major riverine systems in these zones, such as the Nile, the Congo, the Ubangi, and the Uele River. The present contribution aims at a partial reconstruction of the most plausible scenarios for historical contacts leading to these areal phenomena, by applying linguistic methods such as the comparative method, language typology, the principle of least effort, and the words-and-things model. A further aim is to investigate the question of the extent to which the hypothesized spreading of Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Congo, but also of Afroasiatic as a language family, is backed up by archaeological findings in the region, as well as by paleaoclimatology and (where available) genetics, without being caught in circular reasoning in the attempted triangulation process.
To appear in Pier Marco Bertinetto, Denis Creissels, and Luca Ciucci (eds.), Non-verbal Predication in the World's Languages. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. Nilotic
To appear in Arkadiev, Peter, and Franz Rainer (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Historical Morphology
Morphosyntactic changes such as analogical restructuring, well-known in different language famili... more Morphosyntactic changes such as analogical restructuring, well-known in different language families across the world, also occurred in the historical development of Nilotic languages. In addition, more specific processes played a role in the history of this Nilo-Saharan subgroup, such as the influence of metrical structures in the development of morphological systems, and the rather permanent tendency of Nilotic languages to reinterpret headless attributive phrases as (head) nouns. Language contact also played a crucial role, determining the divergent directions of morphosyntactic changes in Nilotic subgroups. Examples of this are the loss of the more common Nilo-Saharan system of tripartite number marking in Southern Lwoo languages, the development of noun classes in Luo, and the emergence of non-concatenative morphology in the Dinka-Nuer-Atuot group, as well as the prominent use of clausal head marking in Kalenjin.
New language varieties and co-developing new speech styles come about as the result of language s... more New language varieties and co-developing new speech styles come about as the result of language shift, but they also develop through the copying of speech styles while maintaining one's primary language. The present contribution aims to investigate such socio-linguistic situations, with a special focus on Africa. As a result of colonialism and urbanization, different varieties of New Englishes, for example, as well as new varieties of French, Portuguese or Spanish, have come about in different parts of the world over the past centuries, and several of these have also been described to some extent in the literature, as discussed in section 1. But on closer inspection it turns out that such dynamic processes areand have beenpart and parcel of language ecology in other types of socio-political circumstances which have nothing to do with European colonialism, as discussed in section 2. This paper addresses the question of which stylistic features tend to be transferred from one language to another when new varieties emerge. For the description and analysis of these new varieties (or "language birth", as this phenomenon has also been called), concepts derived from anthropological linguistics, interactional sociolinguistics, conversation analysis, and cognitive linguistics, as well as speech act theory, are used. These are summarized and elaborated upon in section 3.
Tima, a Niger-Congo language spoken by about 7,000 people living mainly in the Nuba Mountains in ... more Tima, a Niger-Congo language spoken by about 7,000 people living mainly in the Nuba Mountains in Sudan, has three copulae playing a central role in locative expressions. The two number-sensitive copulae, ŋ̀kɔ́ 'COP.SG' and ɲ̀cɛ́ 'COP.PL', are primarily used to link two nominal phrases, of which the first one represents an entity whose position is determined by the second one. The third copula, ŋ̀kwíyʌ̀ 'COP', not differentiated for number, indicates existence or availability. We discuss the distribution of these copulae in their core functions, in their extended uses as tense-aspect markers and in their relation to focus marking. The function of ŋ̀kɔ́ as a consecutive marker used to enhance the storyline, thereby illustrating instances of heterosemy, is also described. In addition, five positional verbs play a role in locative expressions: hɘ́làk 'stay, remain, reside', hʊ̀ndɔ́nɔ́/hɘ̀ndáná 'sit (down)', dʊ́wà 'stand (up)', (k)ʌ́t̪ ù 'lie (down)', and túùh 'hang (up) (PLUR)'. The broad use of these verbs is also investigated, particularly in combination with specifying adverbs in order to describe collocational probabilities and restrictions. Although the English translational equivalents roughly match the Tima expressions, this is not always the case, as we demonstrate later in the discussion.
Chimiini is an Eastern Bantu language which until recently was spoken by the inhabitants of Brava... more Chimiini is an Eastern Bantu language which until recently was spoken by the inhabitants of Brava, a coastal town of Southern Somalia (hence its alternative name, Bravanese). As illustrated in this paper, it shows traces of contact with northern varieties of Swahili such as Amu, Siu, Pate, and Mvita, to which it is closely related, and also of contact with the Cushitic languages Somali, Tunni, to Bajuni, as well as the Semitic language Arabic, and Italian and English. As further shown below, variation within Chimiini also reflects emblematic features of specific clans and lineages within the speech community. In addition, differences from earlier accounts of this language concerning the interpretation of its phonological and morphosyntactic structure are discussed in this paper.
Across the African continent one finds a range of expansion zones, for example the area covered b... more Across the African continent one finds a range of expansion zones, for example the area covered by (Narrow) Bantu languages within Niger-Congo, or the Nilotic family within Nilo-Saharan. In addition, several accretion (residual) zones can be identified. One such zone is found in the Nuba Mountains in Sudan, an area roughly the size of Scotland, where more than forty languages are spoken, belonging to three different families: Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan, and Kadu. The genetic diversity in this area corresponds to an equally high degree of typological disparity. The influx of Arabic borrowings in languages in the area is a recent development resulting from the expanding role of Sudanese Arabic, as a result of which several of these languages are now endangered. Apart from this, there is very little evidence for the diffusion of lexical or grammatical features between languages in the Nuba Mountains area. Of course, this does not preclude the occasional lexical borrowing, as shown by Schneider-Blum (2015) in her Tima-English dictionary. As argued below, this constellation of languages, manifesting dramatic genetic and typological differences in spite of their geographical proximity, is the result of climate changes in the area as well technological conditions, but above all it reflects language ideologies in Nuba Mountain speech communities, which are characterized by largely autarkic economies without trading networks or regional chieftancies, where linguistic exogamy is avoided.
Handbook of Number
The present contribution provides an overview of nominal, pronominal and verbal number marking in... more The present contribution provides an overview of nominal, pronominal and verbal number marking in the Nubian (Nilo-Saharan) language Karko, which is spoken in Sudan. More specifically, it addresses number values such as singular, plural, singulative, plurative, collective, paucal, transnumeral and associative as well as the distinction between agreement and verbal number in this language as well as Nilo-Saharan languages in general. Whereas Karko is characteristic for a range of Nilo-Saharan languages, it also manifests some unusual features, such as the fact that plural verb stems have valency-decreasing function, as shown by their use in derived intransitive clauses.
To appear in:
Schneider-Blum et al. (eds.): Nuba Mountain Languages Studies 3. Cologne: Rüdiger ... more To appear in:
Schneider-Blum et al. (eds.): Nuba Mountain Languages Studies 3. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe.
Preprint of an article which appeared in 2015
Papers by Gerrit Dimmendaal
Historical Linguistics and the Comparative Study of African Languages, 2011
Historical linguistics as a concept has come to be used in a number of ways. First, in referring ... more Historical linguistics as a concept has come to be used in a number of ways. First, in referring to a discipline investigating the development of single languages from an earlier to a later point in time, e.g. two or more stages of Ancient Egyptian, the language of Pharaonic times, whose written records date back four and a half millennia, and which probably became extinct as a spoken language (known as Coptic) several centuries ago. A second way in which the term historical linguistics has come to be used is as a short hand for historical-comparative linguistics – more specifically the comparative study of genetically related languages, hence the alternative term genetic linguistics. This is the way in which the term is used in the present study. In historical-comparative linguistics, or simply comparative linguistics, one reconstructs “upstream”, i.e. one works backwards from today’s languages in order to establish genetic relationships and in order to reconstruct earlier stages by studying collateral relationships. Even though as a discipline historical (or dia-chronic) linguistics grew out of philology, one does not necessarily depend on written documents or texts in order to be able to reconstruct historical changes in languages, as should become clear from the following chapters. What is needed to begin with are solid analyses of individual languages. This chapter sets out to list a number of reasons why languages may manifest similarities in their lexical and grammatical structures. After a discussion of chance, sound symbolism, borrowing and shared inheritance, basic principles of the comparative method are explained. As a first step, these involve setting up sound correspondences between cognate roots in languages assumed to be genetically related, and reconstructing historical changes in these forms.
De Gruyter eBooks, Jun 7, 2022
Cambridge University Press eBooks, Dec 13, 2007
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Drafts by Gerrit Dimmendaal
Schneider-Blum et al. (eds.): Nuba Mountain Languages Studies 3. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe.
Papers by Gerrit Dimmendaal
Schneider-Blum et al. (eds.): Nuba Mountain Languages Studies 3. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe.