33.2209, Review: General Linguistics; Typology: Vossen, Dimmendaal (2020)

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Subject: 33.2209, Review: General Linguistics; Typology: Vossen, Dimmendaal (2020)

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Date: Wed, 06 Jul 2022 18:51:43
From: Paul Fallon [pfallon at umw.edu]
Subject: The Oxford Handbook of African Languages

 
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36799477


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/31/31-1589.html

EDITOR: Rainer  Vossen
EDITOR: Gerrit J. Dimmendaal
TITLE: The Oxford Handbook of African Languages
SERIES TITLE: Oxford Handbooks
PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press
YEAR: 2020

REVIEWER: Paul D Fallon, University of Mary Washington

SUMMARY

“The Oxford Handbook of African Languages”, edited by Rainer Vossen & Gerrit
J. Dimmendaal, is a collection of 77 chapters divided into nine parts dealing
with all major aspects of African linguistics: language history,
classification, structure, and roles in society. References are conveniently
found at the end of each chapter.

In Chapter 1, “Introduction” (the sole chapter in Part I) by Gerrit J.
Dimmendaal and Rainer Vossen, the editors observe that about a third of the
world’s languages are in Africa. They describe the volume as a reference book
which provides “a set of descriptive, typological, historico-comparative,
sociolinguistic and other analytical statements about African languages” (p.
3).

Part II, “Domains of Grammar,” covers Chapters 2-5 on language
structures–phonetics and phonology, tone, morphology, and syntax.

Chapter 2, “Phonology and Phonetics” by Michael J. Kenstowicz, provides a
clear overview of the contributions of African languages to
phonological–especially autosegmental–theory.

Chapter 3, “Tone” by David Odden, examines such tonal phenomena as the number
of levels of tone, the nature of contour tones, tone features, and more.

Chapter 4, “Morphology” by Klaus Beyer, provides a brief historical survey of
morphological typology, and a brief description of salient concepts in
morphology.

Chapter 5, “Syntax” by Jochen Zeller, presents an overview of basic syntactic
properties of African languages.

Part III, “Language Comparison,” contains three chapters (6-8) on this broad
topic. 

Chapter 6, “African Language Types” by Rainer Vossen, highlights major salient
features of African languages and their distribution, and phonological and
morphosyntactic characteristics.

Chapter 7, “Dialectology and Linguistic Geography” by Mena B. Lafkioui,
primarily uses dialectometry to present a fascinating case study of Berber
lexis.

Chapter 8, “Reflections on the History of African Language Classification” by
Ludwig Gerhardt, is an engaging summary of 19th and 20th century attempts at
the classification of African languages.

Part IV, “Language Phyla and Families,” is the largest section of the book,
with 25 chapters on various language families, described across 300 pages.

Chapter 9, “Niger-Congo, with a Special Focus on Benue-Congo” by Jeff Good,
focuses on the largest of the four major phyla of African languages proposed
by Greenberg (1949), which contains over 1,500 languages.

Chapter 10, “Atlantic” by Friederike Lüpke, analyzes the history of
classification of a diverse group of languages. Lüpke argues that the
comparative method is inapplicable, in part because of consonant mutations;
she provides a correspondence set between Sereer /b/ and 21 different reflexes
in Kinyagi to illustrate the point.

Chapter 11,  “Mande” by Henning Schreiber, explores a very diverse set of
30-71 speech communities. Schreiber includes a dense but succinct discussion
of external and internal classification, and notes that Mande lacks a
proto-level reconstruction. 

Chapter 12, “Kwa” by Mary Esther Kropp Dakubu, is a fascinating examination of
the classification and reconstruction controversies in the Kwa languages.

Chapter 13, “Gur” by Gudrun Miehe, treats some of the less well-documented
West African languages, noting parallels with other languages. Besides the
lexicon, only noun class markers and a few derivative morphemes are
reconstructable.

Chapter 14, “Bantu and Bantoid” by Lutz Marten, is a succinct but detailed
overview of the 450-550 Bantu languages, the largest in geographic and
demographic size (about 250 million speakers in 27 countries).

Chapter 15, “Adamawa” by Ulrich Kleinewillinghöfer, describes this
linguistically diverse and not well documented family of some 90 languages
spoken in Cameroon, Nigeria, Chad, and the Central African Republic (CAR).

Chapter 16, “Ubangi” by Helma Pasch, treats a family of some 71 languages
spoken primarily in the CAR. Interestingly, the national official medium of
CAR, Sango, developed from a stabilized pidgin which later creolized.

Chapter 17, “Kordofanian” by Nicolas Quint, introduces readers to the language
family of some two dozen languages, a branch of Niger-Congo spoken in what is
now southern Sudan. It is heartening to read that since 2000, there is growing
interest and research by scholars and civil society in documenting them. 

Chapter 18, “Afro-Asiatic Overview” by Victor Porkhomovsky, begins with an
interesting overview of the various names of the family. Porkhomovsky
concludes that “AA comparative linguistics is still in its infancy.”

Chapter 19, “Egyptian” by Balázs J. Irsay-Nagy, is less than four pages of
text and gives an updated but quite succinct survey of the language.

Chapter 20, “Berber” by Maarten Kossmann, describes the Berber language group
as having internal differences similar to Germanic or Romance. Kossmann doubts
the applicability of a tree model, and prefers to describe eight main
“blocks,” or bundles of varieties.

Chapter 21, “East Cushitic” by Mauro Tosco, focuses on the genetic
classification of East Cushitic (EC), which embraces 33 of 45 Cushitic
languages.

Chapter 22, “North Cushitic” by Martine Vanhove, treats the only language of
this branch, Beja. In addition to the descriptive overview, Vanhove provides a
summary of recent findings linking Beja to the languages of the ancient Medjay
and Blemmye tribes, and a possible attestation of a Beja word as far back as
1000 BCE. 

Chapter 23, “Central Cushitic” (CC) by Zelealem Leyew, describes the language
family of four main languages and a few smaller varieties (known by some as
Agäw). Curiously, there is no cross-reference to Zelealem’s contribution on
the under-documented CC language Kolisi later in the volume (Ch. 43).

Chapter 24, “South Cushitic” by Roland Kießling, wrestles with complex issues
of internal classification of these languages due to a cluster of problems of
the lack of phonological innovations distinct from morphological innovation,
and the impossibility of sorting out shared innovations from shared
retentions, along with the morphosyntactic and typological features which link
SC to EC.

Chapter 25, “Omotic” by Bernhard Köhler, focuses solely on classification
issues of this family of some 30 languages, which has seen rigorous debate
about its status as an independent branch of Afroasiatic.

Chapter 26, “Chadic” by Bernard Caron, tackles this family of 170 languages by
providing a list of Chadic languages and classifying them into four major
branches. He then paints a portrait of a “typical Chadic language”.

Chapter 27 “Ethio-Semitic” (E-S) by Victor Porkhomovsky, is a brief overview
of E-S classification, a distinct genetic unit within Semitic with many
controversies on internal classification.

Chapter 28, “Nilo-Saharan and its Limits” by Gerrit J. Dimmendaal, provides a
brief history of the hundred or so languages of Nilo-Saharan (NS), noting that
“neither the internal classification nor the limits of NS have been settled in
a range of cases” (365).

Chapter 29, “Saharan” by Norbert Cyffer, surveys this small language family, a
branch of Nilo-Saharan. 

Chapter 30, “Eastern Sudanic” by Gerrit J. Dimmendaal and Angelika Jakobi,
describes this Nilo-Saharan family of some eleven subgroups, with a major
Northern and Southern division.

Chapter 31, “Central Sudanic” (CS) by Pascal Boyeldieu, examines another
branch of Nilo-Saharan, with some 60 languages. Boyeldieu argues that these CS
languages constitute “a genetic, historical unit made up of five more or less
equidistant subgroups” (408), with another six languages often considered CS
as probable “indeterminate outsiders”. 

Chapter 32, “Khoisan” by Henry Honkens, briefly covers the history of
research, and a survey of recent literature. He states that  “Most researchers
believe [Khoisan languages] fall into a number of unrelated families” (423).

Chapter 33, “Linguistic Isolates” by Gerrit J. Dimmendaal, briefly describes
25 linguistic isolates and some of the methodological problems of identifying
isolates. African languages are not only classified into the three major phyla
of Greenberg, but there are at least nine smaller families and an unknown
number of isolates.

Part V, “Language Structures: Case Studies,” is intended to highlight some of
the “genetic and typological diversity” among the major families, and covers
18 languages. A map of their geographic distribution, however, is given on p.
6, while a more natural placement might be at the beginning of the section on
p. 438. Each chapter of this section provides a grammatical sketch, some
primarily in tabular format, while others are more discursive.

Beginning with Niger-Congo, in Chapter 34 G. Tucker Childs describes “Bom-Kim”
(Atlantic;  Sierra Leone). In Ch. 35 Valentin Vydrin examines “Dan,” a Mande
language. Coffi Sambiéni surveys “Biali” (Gur) in Ch. 36. Rose-Juliet Anyanwu
surveys “Yukubene” (Jukunoid, i.e. Benue-Congo) in Ch. 37. Yuko Abe describes
“Bende” (Narrow Bantu) in Ch. 38.
Ulrich Kleinewillinghöfer covers “Waja” (Adamawa) in Ch. 39. Helma Pasch
provides a grammar of Zande (Ubangi) in Ch. 40.

Catherine Taine-Cheikh describes “Zenaga” (Berber of Mauritania) in Ch. 41.

The Cushitic family receives three sketches. Kazuhiro Kawachi describes
“Sidaama” (East Cushitic) in Ch. 42. Zelealem Leyew shares his fieldwork on
“Kolisi” (Central Cushitic) in Ch. 43. Southern Cushitic is covered through
“Iraqw” by Maarten Mous (Ch. 44).

Zygmunt Frajzyngier analyzes the Central Chadic “Wandala” in Ch. 45. 

Nilo-Saharan is sampled with three languages. Osamu Hieda describes “Kumam”
(Western Nilotic) in Ch. 46. Gerrit J. Dimmendaal writes on “Baale”
(Southwestern Surmic) in Ch. 47. And Lameen Souag surveys “Songhay Languages”
in Ch. 48.

The final three sketches cover Khoisan languages. Rainer Vossen describes
“Cara” (Central Khoisan) in Ch. 49. Henry Honken sketches “ǁX’egwi” (South
Khoisan) in Ch. 50. And lastly, 
Helen Eaton analyzes “Sandawe” (Central Khoisan) in Ch. 51.

Part VI,  “Language, Cognition, and Culture,” contains seven chapters on more
interdisciplinary aspects of African languages.

Chapter 52, “Ideophones” by Christa Kilian-Hatz, seeks to redress the
“irritating” omission of ideophones from language description. She reviews
various definitions of ideophones with examples from African and non-African
languages.

Chapter 53, “Color Term Systems: Genetic vs. areal distribution in sub-Saharan
Africa” by Doris L. Payne, contains a review of basic color term (BCT)
concepts and systems. Payne here surveys 70 languages across all the major
phyla and families, from 3 BCTs in Narrow Banru to more than 6 BCTs in
Nilo-Saharan.

Chapter 54, “Experiencer Constructions” by Ulrike Zoch, studies syntactic
constructions in which “a sentient being…experiences an emotion, a physical
sensation, a wish, or a perception.” A striking example comes from Lango in
which ‘He’s happy.’ is literally encoded as ‘His liver is soft.’AKK

Chapter 55, “Language and Ethnobotany” by Karsten Legère, examines the African
folk taxonomy of plants, focusing mostly on Bantu and the noun classes into
which various plant names fall.

Chapter 56, “Distinctive Languages” by Patricia Friedrich, examines such
special languages as technical languages and varieties such as cant, argot,
jargon, which can be used to distinguish social groups.

Chapter 57, “Conversation Analysis” by Maren Rüsch, focuses on the structural
organization of language such as turn-taking and sequence organization.

Chapter 58, “Cognition and Language” by Axel Fleisch, focuses on the
convergence between cognitive linguistics and African language studies that
are “increasingly sympathetic to (neo-)relativistic hypotheses.”

Part VII,  “Language and Society,” is a section with 14 chapters on various
topics in which the two areas intersect.

Chapter 59, “Indigenous African Scripts” by Andrij Rovenchak and Solomija Buk,
provides a geographic grouping of various African writing systems.

Chapter 60, “Language Policy and Politics” by Kembo Sure, critically examines
contemporary language policy and ideologies in several countries. He
emphasizes that “seemingly egalitarian policy” often results in “inequality
whereby people neglect or reject outright their mother tongue and demand to be
given more of others’ language(s)” (815).

Chapter 61, “Language and Education” by Ingse Skattum, provides a concise
literature review on language and education and then examines 48 African
countries to determine whether instruction is in African or European
languages. Only six countries have a late exit from mother tongue education.

Chapter 62, “Language Endangerment, Documentation, and Revitalization” by
James Essegbey, discusses types of endangerment, mentions the continued need
for documentation, and finishes with a section on revitalization.

Chapter 63, “Language Birth: Youth/Town Language” by Ellen Hurst, examines
five varieties such as Nouchi (Ivory Coast) and Sheng (Kenya), concluding they
are “attempts at formulating a coherent national identity by youth growing up
amongst the complexities of an Africa intersected by global phenomena” (852).

Chapter 64 “Language Contact” by Klaus Beyer, emphasizes that language contact
is the norm rather than the exception, summarizes recent developments, and
includes a case study of Mande-Gurunsi language contact.

Chapter 65, “Mixed Languages: The case of Ma’á/Mbugu” by Maarten Mous,
describes two languages that share a grammar and a double and parallel
lexicon.

Chapter 66, “African Languages in the Diaspora” by Andrea Hollington,
discusses a range of issues such as the complex concept of the African
Diaspora, how African languages live on in the diaspora in different types of
contact, as well as issues of cultural identity and connection with “home.”

Chapter 67, “Pidgin and Creole Languages” by Gabriele Sommer, includes a
listing and brief context for 37 varieties, both exoglossic (European language
or Arabic) and endoglossic.

Chapter 68, “Sign Languages” by Victoria Nyst, is a brief look at African Sign
Languages. She observes that when a deaf school is established, a sign
language is typically provided; when sign is not encouraged in education,
local sign has room to develop.

Chapter 69, “Arabic in Africa” by Jonathan Owens, covers two main types of
Arabic: Native Arabic, and Classical and Standard Arabic. The section on
Native Arabic briefly surveys dialects such as the Maghreb, Sudanic, Egyptian,
and Eastern Libya.

Chapter 70, “Orthography Standardization” by Elke Karan and David Roberts,
discusses design challenges specific to Africa (e.g. under-representing vowels
and dealing with tone), and standardization practices.

Chapter 71, “Pragmatics and Communication” by Thomas Bearth, discusses a wide
range of pragmatic phenomena, including a fascinating discussion of applied
pragmatics for AIDS communication and an analysis of how noun class markers
can dehumanize.

Chapter 72, “African Languages in Information and Communications Technology”
by Kristin Vold Lexander, examines the digital divide, and the use of African
languages to interface with technology.

Part VIII, “Language and History,” is comprised of two chapters. 

Chapter 73, “Words, Things, and Meaning: Linguistics as a Tool for Historical
Reconstruction” by David L. Schoenbrun, discusses the “Words and Things” (WT)
method, which states that if a word, e.g. for ‘oil palm’ can be reconstructed,
then “whenever and wherever people spoke” that proto-language, they knew about
oil palm.

Chapter 74, “Language and Archaeology” by Koen Bostoen, examines the common
principles and their specific interpretations in historical linguistics and in
archaeology, focusing on examples related to “the so-called Bantu Expansion”
(974).

The final section, Part IX “Language and Orature” deals with narratives,
proverbs, and poetry.

Chapter 75, “Narratives” by Wilhelm J. G. Möhlig, treats this dominant
cultural feature of Africa, tracing the Western reception of African oral
literature, its general features, and examines specific genres of oral
literature.

Chapter 76, “Proverbs” by Sebastian K. Bemile, is a succinct but thorough and
well organized exploration of the historical and cultural heritage involved
with proverbs.

Chapter 77, “Poetry” by Clarissa Vierke, notes that many African languages
lack a cover term for “poetry” or “literature”, referring instead to specific
genres (e.g. praise poetry, war and hunting poetry, etc.).

EVALUATION

The editors do not set forth specific goals for this work; they simply write
that “this volume is a reference book, providing a set of descriptive,
typological, historico-comparative, sociolinguistic, and other analytical
statements about African languages” (3). The dust jacket states more clearly
that this is “a comprehensive overview of current research in African
languages and linguistics.” 

In fact, what the editors have produced is an absolutely monumental piece of
scholarship, a reference work to be cited, read, re-read, and consulted for
decades to come, well into the 21st century. This work relied on 68
well-chosen, top-notch scholars from 24 countries. It is remarkable how much
detailed information each and every author packed into their chapters.
Invaluable as well are the hundreds of references contained within its pages.
The editors sell themselves short when they state that the volume is for
“different populations of readers, especially students, Africanist as well as
general linguists, but also non-linguistic scholars specializing in Africa”
(3). There is much here that professional academics will appreciate and much
new they can learn, in most chapters. This volume should be on the shelf of
every Africanist. The wide variety of topics make this linguistic smorgasbord
appealing to every intellectual palate. 

Part II on Domains of Grammar will not contain much new to experienced
linguists, but should be useful to students, non-specialists, and
non-linguists.

Part III on Language Comparison has a useful introduction to African typology
(Ch. 6 by Vossen) and a bird’s eye review of the history of African language
classification (Ch. 8 by Gerhardt). Chapter 7 by Lafkioui is a superb,
detailed report of original research and innovative methodology on Berber
dialectology and linguistic geography.

I found the strongest sections of this book to be Part IV on “Language Phyla
and Families,” and Part V, the grammatical sketches. It would be instructive
to compare side-by-side Part IV of this volume (hereafter V&D), Güldemann
(2018), the Ethnologue, and Glottolog. Each and every author in V & D did
admirably. Of course, the amount of detail was uneven in relation to the
number of languages in each section. Some authors such as Marten were tasked
with Bantu and Bantoid (702 languages in the Ethnologue), while Zelealem got
the privilege of focusing on the four main Central Cushitic languages, and
Vanhove, on just one (Beja). The different scopes of each chapter allow the
reader to appreciate the difficulties even of mid-level classifications, and
the chapters with smaller groups could capture details not found in the larger
groupings. I am most familiar with the content of the Afroasiatic chapters
(Chs. 18-27), and especially commend each of those authors for fairly and
accurately summarizing and explaining the linguistic controversies and state
of the art for classification.

One inconsistency in Part IV on classification is the accompanying maps. Most
maps are labeled “The geographical distribution of [Language Family X]”.
Depending on the family, the maps could have included additional specific
names of languages or subfamilies. Less helpful were the 14 maps which
outlined only the geographic extent of a family, without marking or
distinguishing major subfamilies or prominent individual languages.

It would have been quite a treat (even if it raised the cover price) to have
included a fold-out color map of African languages. The map of “The Non-Bantu
Languages of Kenya” in Heine (1980) or the pleasantly large (roughly 113 x 83
cm) map of “The Non-Bantu languages of North-eastern Africa” in Tucker and
Bryan (1956) are all too rare and would have made quite a fine addition to
this volume.

The case studies of Part V are brief grammatical sketches of 18 languages.
Each one followed a similar model, covering phonology, morphology, and syntax.
The uniformity allowed this reviewer to simply group them in the section
summary, but in this evaluation, it is again astounding with how much detail
the authors were able to describe their languages, many of which were drawn
from personal fieldwork and some, like Zelealem’s Kolisi (ch. 43) appearing in
widely accessible print sources for the first time. Not every research
question will be answered, but, given the references at the end of each
chapter, linguists are well guided to lengthier and more detailed sources,
after enjoying this sampler of grammatical delights, from Childs’ description
of Bon-Kim (Atlantic) personal pronouns, morphology and syntax, Sambiéni’s
information-rich tabular description of Biali, Anyanwu’s explication of
Yukuben TAM marking strategies, to much more. The many tables provided across
the chapters allow easy comparison of noun class systems, for example, and
treat many varied syntactic phenomena, with interesting sample sentences and
structures.

One minor complaint for the grammatical sketches is that genetic affiliations
of the languages were not always given, and sometimes not even the specific
region. In which country (of three mentioned) is the “Gwɛɛtaa area” where Dan
is spoken (451)? 

The chapter on Zenaga (41) did not clearly explain the use of capital letters
in transcription.

Porkhomovsky argues against the term “Afro-Asiatic” saying that it “may mean
all the languages of Asia and Africa” (p. 270). However, no one interprets
“Indo-European” to mean ‘all the languages of India and Europe’. He also
claims that the argument against the term “Hamitic” is not as valid as it was
in the 1950s, when it implied a dichotomy between Semitic and “Hamitic”
branches. Hyphenated language families are usually thought to consist of two
branches, e.g. Balto-Slavic, Nakh-Daghestanian. I still see no reason to
privilege “Semitic” and oppose it to the other five branches. The term
“Indo-European” is typically defended as the geographic range of the eastern
most and western most ranges of its languages. Likewise, Afroasiatic (however
one spells it) or its derivative Afrasian should, in my opinion, be
encouraged.

While this reviewer could not cross-check data with original sources, the
number of typographic errors I found was miniscule. One example is that the
reference to Nicole (2002) at the top of p. 202 should doubtless be to Nicole
& Nicole (2000). This appears to be a meticulous, well-edited and well-proofed
volume.

A consistent theme of many of the chapters is that the study of African
languages is in its infancy. Coupled with that are reports that descriptive
data is increasing and is hoped to contribute to questions of classification.
Another note sounded especially by Lüpke, Marten, and Kossmann is to question
whether proto-languages might profitably be reconstructed, for a variety of
reasons. This is something the field of African historical-comparative
linguistics will need to grapple with in coming decades.

In sum, Vossen & Dimmendaal’s Oxford Handbook of African Linguistics is a
state-of-the-art luxury liner of a reference work on all aspects of African
linguistics. Many scholars of African languages will consult it frequently and
repeatedly for the foreseeable future as one of the major monuments of
scholarship in this multidisciplinary field.

REFERENCES

Ethnologue = Eberhard, David M., Gary F. Simons, and Charles D. Fennig (eds.).
2022. Ethnologue: Languages of the World. Twenty-fifth edition. Dallas, Texas:
SIL International. 

Glottolog = Glottolog 4.5 edited by Hammarström, Harald, Robert Forkel, Martin
Haspelmath and Sebastian Bank. https://glottolog.org/ 

Greenberg, Joseph H. 1949. Studies in African linguistic classification. 1.
The Niger-Congo family. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 5. 79-100. 

Güldemann, Tom (ed.) (2018). The languages and linguistics of Africa: A
comprehensive guide. (The World of Linguistics, 11). Berlin: DeGruyter Mouton.

Heine, Bernd. 1980. The Non-Bantu languages of Kenya. (Language and Dialect
Atlas of Kenya vol. II). Berlin: Dietrich Reimer.

Nicole, J. 2000. ‘La chèvre ne mange pas bien’: syntaxe et discours dans la
phrase simple en nawdm, Gur Papers/Cahiers Voltaïques 5. 115-122.

Nicole, J. & M.-C. Nicole. 2000. Les peuples voltaïques (gur): Bibliographie
commentée des peuples parlant les langue voltaiques (ou gur). Cologne: Rüdiger
Köppe.

Tucker, A.N. and M.A. Bryan. 1956. The Non-Bantu languages of North-eastern
Africa. Published for the International African Institute by Oxford University
Press.

Vossen, Rainer and Gerritt J. Dimmendaal (eds.). 2020. The Oxford handbook of
African languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [This volume reviewed
here].


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Paul D. Fallon is Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Mary
Washington, in Fredericksburg, Virginia, USA. He teaches a variety of
undergraduate courses in linguistics. His research interests are in the
Cushitic languages, phonology, historical linguistics, and writing systems.





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