Kikongo

Karl Edvard Laman (1867-1944) appartient à la première génération des missionnaires suédois établis dès 1881 dans l’État indépendant du Congo. Il y séjourne durant plus d’un quart de siècle, de 1891 à 1919. Laman s’affirme peu à peu comme une grande figure savante, linguiste et fin connaisseur de la culture Kongo qu’il documente, y compris dans ses expressions matérielles, au moment où ses fondements se disloquent sous les chocs de l’entreprise coloniale. L’œuvre scientifique se double d’un projet humaniste : l’émancipation des populations par l’éducation populaire dont les deux vecteurs sont pour lui l’accès à la Bible en langue kikongo (sa traduction parait en 1905) et la promotion des valeurs culturelles kongo. Cette valorisation de la langue et de la culture Kongo est au fondement de son activité savante.

La partícula focal jue (<español fue) en el criollo palenquero: ¿gramaticalización y/o sustrato? 1 Resumen: Este artículo examina el origen y distribución de la partícula focal jue (procedente del español fue, esto es, de la tercera persona singular del perfecto simple del verbo ser) en el criollo palenquero, hablado en la localidad de San Basilio de Palenque (Colombia). Para ello, se definen primero los distintos usos copulativos, que, en el caso del palenquero, presentan un inventario de formas parcialmente distinto en cada caso. De entre estos, la cópula en oraciones hendidas parece estar estrechamente relacionada con un uso innovador como partícula focal, del que solo la separan su variabilidad formal (é~jue) y la compañía de un elemento relativo en el segmento oracional no focalizado. Dado que la lengua de superestrato (el español caribeño colonial) hace uso de varios recursos de focalización, pero nunca de partículas focales, es necesario buscar una explicación alternativa que dé cuenta de su origen: ya sea como resultado de un proceso de gramaticalización " cópula > partícula focal " (durante la criollización o durante los cuatro siglos de andadura histórica del criollo), ya sea como un calco de la lengua de sustrato (el kikongo del siglo XVII). Finalmente, propongo la actuación de una " gramaticalización por contacto lingüístico " (siguiendo el modelo de Heine/Kuteva 2003): los hablantes criollizadores debieron extender el empleo del verbo copulativo español a un uso (más gramatical) de partícula focal siguiendo la pauta del kikongo, donde la cópula predicativa/identificativa i se podía emplear también como partícula focal. Abstract: This paper aims to explain the origin and current use of the focus particle jue in Palenquero Creole, spoken in the village of San Basilio de Palenque, Colombia. Since Spanish is Palenquero's major lexifier, it can be assumed that jue descends from the Sp. verb form fue ('he/she/it was'). First, copulas can be used with several meanings, which, in the particular case of Palenquero, are conveyed by partially different linguistic forms. Amongst these, it is the use of copulas in cleft constructions that seems to be related to the focus particle —the only difference being the variability of the copula (é~jue) with clefts, as well as the presence of a relativizer in the out-of-focus sentence—. Due to the fact that Spanish does not have any focus particle, we should still explain how this particle arose. Two main hypotheses are then available: grammaticalization (has it taken place during creolization or during Palenquero's internal history) and substratal influence (i.e. syntactic calque from the Bantu language Kikongo, as spoken during the 17th century). Finally, it will be argued that it was a " contact-induced grammaticalization " (Heine/Kuteva 2003) that actually took place in Palenquero: first

L’ancien royaume Kongo a non seulement donné son nom au fleuve et aux deux pays modernes dont ce cours d’eau constitue une frontière naturelle, mais aussi à la langue bantoue qui fut et est toujours parlée sur son territoire. Ce qui est généralement appelé le kikongo renvoie en fait à un ensemble de plusieurs langues étroitement apparentées, plutôt qu’à un seul et unique parler.

This paper deals with the origins of generic-noun-based indefinites in two Ibero-Romance varieties, the Spanish-lexified Palenquero Creole and the heterogeneous group of postcolonial varieties of Portuguese that are spoken in the exclave of Cabinda (Angola). Both varieties have in common the fact that they have been influenced by the same 'substrate', the Bantu H language Kikongo. Both substratal influence and language universals (during first-and/or second-language acquisition) seem to interact to in the making of indefinite expressions, as they always interact in language restructuring phenomena. However, as regards indefinite expressions, there are substantial differences between Palenquero and Cabindan Portuguese, due to the fact the latter often retains the special indefinites from the superstrate, whereas most Spanish special indefinites have been lost in the former (with some exceptions, most especially ná < nada). The two varieties studied here result from different language contact ecologies, which account for quantitative and qualitative differences between both varieties.

In this article a little-known dictionary manuscript from the 1930s, the Lexique kikongo-français by the Jesuit missionary Charles Polis, is analysed in great detail. Section 1 expounds on the goal and raison d'être of the study, Section 2 introduces the manuscript, its author as well as the Kikongo variety dealt with, Section 3 presents the inner workings of the Lexique on macro-, micro- and mediostructural levels, Section 4 gives a lexicographical appreciation based on a large selection of the entries, Section 5 joins the international debate on the exact nature of a dictionary's macrostructure, access structure and access route, and Section 6 compares Polis's work with a dictionary from the same region and period. Conclusions are offered in Section 7, chief among them the fact that Polis designed the most innovative outer access structure of any Bantu dictionary.

This paper was written for the course "Syntax and Lexicon" at Ghent University in 2014. In this paper, I compare two visual perception verbs, kumona and kutala, in Kindibu. I argue that the semantic difference between these two verbs, roughly corresponding to 'see' and 'look' in English, pertains to the dichotomy of the perception of an abstract 'inner' (for kumona) and an abstract 'outer' (for kutala).

Abako (Alliance des Bakongo), one of the main political parties rallying for Congolese independence in the late 1950s, started off as a linguistic-cultural movement to promote the use of the Kikongo language and Kongo identity in Leopoldville against a dominance of the Lingala language and “Bangala.” In reaction to this, members of the “Bangala” elite also organised themselves, after which a series of ideological confrontations between “Bakongo” and “Bangala” intellectuals ensued. Tracing back Abako's transformation from cultural movement to political party, we describe how, in pre-independence Kinshasa, politics was ethnicised and ethnicity was politicised along this Bakongo–Bangala and Kikongo–Lingala divide. We analyse how the initial entente between Abako elites and colonial missionaries in favour of Kikongo morphed into a hostile, anti-colonial discourse as the struggle for independence reached its height. This Congolese case shows how, as the decades of colonial decay progressed, the nexus between ethnolanguage and colonisation inevitably also became one between ethnolanguage and anti-colonisation.

In this article we examine variation in the expression of tense and aspect (TA) in 23 modern and two historical Bantu language varieties belonging to Guthrie's B40, H10 and H30 groups in order to shed light on the internal classification of the Kikongo Language Cluster (KLC). We apply the Comparative Method to this specific set of morphological data to test a recent phylogenetic classification of the KLC. We identify eight widespread TA markers as shared retentions dating back to the period before the internal fragmentation of the KLC. Six of these are inherited from Proto‑Bantu. Two other markers go back to Proto‑Kikongoid and Proto‑Kikongo. They confirm that the KLC constitutes a discrete clade within West‑Coastal Bantu. We furthermore distinguish fourteen shared innovations that took place after the break‑up of the last common ancestor of the KLC. These innovations provide corroborating evidence for three phylogenetic subgroups within the KLC, namely East, South and West, and for the fact that the latter subgroup falls apart in two discrete genealogical subunits. They furthermore testify to the horizontal transmission of TA features between subgroups. Such language convergence often correlates with relatively recent historical developments within the Lower Congo region and contributed to the multilayered constitution of the KLC.

O artigo analisa convergências e divergências entre africanismos lexicais no papiamentu, no português do Brasil e no espanhol uruguaio:

-pap. bomba & port. bombear, bombeiro & esp. bombero (p.168-170);

- pap. kachimbo & port. /esp. cachimbo; esp. cachimba (p. 170-171);

- pap. kanga & esp./ port. canga (p. 171-173)

- pap. konga & esp./ port. conga (p. 174)

- mandinga / manzinga (p. 174-175)

- marimba / marimbula (p. 175-176)

- mondongo (p. 176-178)

Além disso, trata dos etnônimos do papiamentu:  luangu/ luango (p. 179-181), gueni (p. 182-183) e pap. makamba (p. 183-186).

The North-Angolan Bantu language Kisikongo has a present tense (Ø-Rang a ; R = root) that is morphologically more marked than the future tense (Ø-R-a). We reconstruct how this typologically uncommon tense-marking feature came about by drawing on both historical and comparative evidence. Our diachronic corpus covers four centuries that can be subdivided in three periods, viz. (1) mid-17th, (2) late-19th/early-20th, and (3) late-20th/ early-21st centuries. The comparative data stem from several present-day languages of the "Kikongo Language Cluster. " We show that mid-17th century Kisikongo had three distinct constructions: Ø-R-a (with present progressive , habitual and generic meaning), Ø-Rang a (with present habitual meaning), and ku-R-a (with future meaning). By the end of the 19th century the last construction is no longer attested, and both present and future time reference are expressed by a segmentally identical construction, namely Ø-R-a. We argue that two seemingly independent but possibly interacting diachronic evolutions conspired towards such present-future isomorphism: (1) the semantic extension of an original present-tense construction from present to future leading to polysemy, and (2) the loss of the future prefix ku-, as part of a broader phenomenon of prefix reduction, inducing homonymy. To resolve the ambiguity, the Ø-Rang a construction evolved into the main present-tense construction.

In this contribution Rove Chishman and Bruna da Silva present questions to the President of the European Association for Lexicography, Gilles-Maurice de Schryver. In answering, G-M de Schryver calls a spade a spade: No, there is no theory of lexicography, but yes, there is a future for lexicographers. For that future to be bright, lexicographers will have to join hands with the Big Data companies, and accept that their invaluable input will be all but invisible to the users. Artificial Intelligence components will have to be used in earnest, so that ‘searches’ (not ‘look-ups’!) will instantly lead to context-sensitive answers. Browsing lexical data only starts from these answers and proceeds from there in two- (and why not three-) dimensional multimedia spaces. To achieve this, G-M de Schryver points to the most promising research ideas at present, as well as the top teams involved in digital dictionary user research.

Ce dictionnaire cap-verdien - français, le premier du genre, propose des traductions en langue française pour plus de 4.000 mots et 10.000 expressions courantes du cap-verdien moderne, langue maternelle de plus d'un million de personnes dans le monde.
Chaque mot cap-verdien est orthographié en orthographe standard, sa prononciation est systématiquement indiquée, et l'étymologie (portugaise ou africaine) est mentionnée pour plus de 90% des entrées. Un abrégé grammatical spécialement conçu pour des non-spécialistes permettra aux utilisateurs de se faire une idée des bases du fonctionnement de la langue. Le dialecte retenu est le créole de l'île de Santiago (appelé aussi badiais), parlé par plus de la moitié des Cap-Verdiens, et compris par l'écrasante majorité de la population. Un lexique du créole de l'île de Maio donne une idée des variantes régionales.
Ce dictionnaire est destiné à servir la communication entre Francophones et Cap-Verdiens. Les touristes et coopérants français auront désormais un moyen de communiquer plus efficacement avec les habitants de l'Archipel du Cap-Vert. Les plus de 40.000 Cap-Verdiens résidant en France, ainsi que les nombreuses communautés créoles cap-verdiennes d'Afrique de l'Ouest pourront ainsi accéder plus aisément au français à partir de leur langue maternelle. Enfin, l'existence de cet ouvrage permettra un enseignement plus efficace du français au Cap-Vert, pays membre de la francophonie.
La sortie de ce dictionnaire vient compléter le dictionnaire français - cap-verdien, déjà disponible aux éditions L'Harmattan. Une adaptation cap-verdien - portugais de cet ouvrage a été publiée par les éditions Verbalis à Lisbonne.

The present paper analyzes 33 series of culinary vocabulary in a representative set of Kongo languages from the point of view of language history. Even if from a culinary perspective, few series can relate to historical changes prior to 1482, many are revealing with respect to language history. The effects of historical state borders and trade routes clearly resulted in diverging and converging developments within the Kikongo Language Cluster (KLC). The paper demonstrates a dichotomy between northern and southern Kongo languages with Sundi and Manyanga shifting alliances. Moreover, relatively recent innovations differentiate part of the West Kongo languages from the remainder of the KLC.

"A Verbalis desenvolveu para este dicionário uma base de dados relacional para armazenamento e gestão dos dados lexicais Caboverdiano-Francês fornecidos pelo autor em suporte Microsoft Word. Esta base de dados foi em seguida ampliada para uma base trilingue Caboverdiano-Francês-Português, na qual foi desenvolvido na Verbalis todo o trabalho de tradução e adaptação que deu origem à versão portuguesa da obra. Esta base de dados constitui o acervo de informação de suporte tanto do dicionário electrónico como do dicionário em formato de livro.
Mais de 4 000 palavras do Caboverdiano falado na ilha de Santiago
5 000 expressões exemplificativas do uso dessas palavras
Mais de 10 000 sentidos em Português
3 684 etimologias propostas
Transcrição fonética
Breve descrição do sistema gramatical do Caboverdiano e dos critérios de base à grafia utilizada"

At AfLaT 2013 we wish to broaden our activities by reaching out to all colleagues who have lexical resources for the African languages, and already work with those resources, but have not yet necessarily made the move to using advanced computational routines to speed up the analysis or the building of tools.