33.1683, Review: Language Documentation; Typology: Benítez-Torres (2021)

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-33-1683. Thu May 12 2022. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 33.1683, Review: Language Documentation; Typology: Benítez-Torres (2021)

Moderator: Malgorzata E. Cavar (linguist at linguistlist.org)
Student Moderator: Billy Dickson
Managing Editor: Lauren Perkins
Team: Helen Aristar-Dry, Everett Green, Sarah Goldfinch, Nils Hjortnaes,
      Joshua Sims, Billy Dickson, Amalia Robinson, Matthew Fort
Jobs: jobs at linguistlist.org | Conferences: callconf at linguistlist.org | Pubs: pubs at linguistlist.org

Homepage: http://linguistlist.org

Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
           https://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/

Editor for this issue: Amalia Robinson <amalia at linguistlist.org>
================================================================


Date: Thu, 12 May 2022 12:32:55
From: Erika Just [just.erika at outlook.com]
Subject: A Grammar of Tagdal: a Northern Songhay language

 
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36787077


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/32/32-3170.html

AUTHOR: Carlos M. Benítez-Torres
TITLE: A Grammar of Tagdal: a Northern Songhay language
SERIES TITLE: LOT Dissertation Series
PUBLISHER: Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics / Landelijke (LOT)
YEAR: 2021

REVIEWER: Erika Just, University of Zurich

SUMMARY

Benítez-Torres’s “A Grammar of Tagdal: a Northern Sonhgay language” presents
the author’s doctoral dissertation, published in the LOT Dissertation Series.
It comprises a summary of the sociolinguistic situation of speakers of Tagdal,
spoken in the southeastern and central regions of the modern-day Republic of
Niger, a grammatical description, and a short folk tale. The book puts special
emphasis on the stress system and phonological processes, and their
interactions with morphology. Prosodically, there are two subsystems, for
vocabulary of Tuareg origin and of Songhay origin, respectively: as a Northern
Songhay language, Tagdal is characterized by heavy Berber influence, and has
even been referred to as a mixed language (Benítez-Torres and Grant 2017). The
grammar thus provides compelling information for linguists working on language
contact, especially, but not exclusively, in Northern Africa. Most of the data
which form the basis of the description stem from the author’s own fieldwork
and were obtained between 1999 and 2019. The majority is made up of recorded
texts, complemented by elicitations. Some additional data were brought in from
Rueck and Christiansen (1999) and Benítez-Torres and Grant (2017).

Chapter 1 presents an introduction to the language. Tagdal is spoken by the
Igdaalen, a semi-nomadic people who live dispersed throughout several regions
of the Republic of Niger. There are several varieties of the language, the
most important being Kəl Amdid, the variety of Abargan and Kəl Illokoḍ, and
the Tabaro variety, which is spoken by the separate ethnic group of the
Ibaroogan. Differences are mostly phonological in nature, with the latter
variety most notably lacking palatal fricatives.

Tagdal is a Northern Songhay language which shares many features with Berber,
especially Tuareg varieties (most notably Tǝwǝllǝmmǝt), which serve as linguae
francae in various regions in the Republic of Niger. As vocabulary of Tuareg
origin is subject to different morphological rules than that of Songhay
origin, the Berber influence becomes visible in many areas in the grammar. 

Chapter 2 describes the phonological structure of Tagdal. The inventories of
the three varieties of Kəl Amdid, Abargan/Kəl Illokoḍ, and Tabarog are
provided, as well as a description of the syllable structure and the most
common phonological processes. Ample evidence is provided for the status of
each phoneme. Tagdal has open as well as closed syllables. In contrast to
Tuareg and other Northern Songhay languages such as Tadaksahak, consonant
clusters are not allowed. There are six vowel qualities, and all vowels,
except for /ə/, have long and short variants. Stress placement is mainly
lexical, but can be influenced and partly predicted by morphological
processes. 

Chapter 3 is titled “Morphology”, but, besides a description of parts of
speech, the distinction between Songhay and Tuareg vocabulary, and
morphological marking of distinct grammatical categories, it also entails
thorough descriptions of phonological processes such as vowel lengthening and
stress shift, induced by morphological processes. As mentioned above, a
distinction has to be made here between processes affecting lexemes of Songhay
origin and lexemes of Tuareg origin, with each group being subject to
different prosodic rules. 

The parts of speech described for Tagdal are nouns (including pronouns and
nominal derivations from verbs), adjectives, adverbs, adpositions, and verbs.
Tagdal pronouns display a three-way person distinction and a singular-plural
number distinction. There are free and bound pronominal forms; the latter can
attach to verbs as well as adpositions, including the case markers for dative
and genitive. Tagdal nouns have a singular-plural distinction. There is no
grammatical gender. Tuareg nouns display overall more diversity in
morphological marking, and are easily distinguished from verbs, whereas
Songhay nouns receive relatively little morphological marking. Adjectives
agree with their head noun in number. There is no morphological case-marking
for subject or direct object, but an indirect object is flagged by the
postposition “sa”. There is also a genitive marker “n” following the
possessor, which is subject to processes such as lengthening and assimilation.
>From this I conclude that the genitive marker is phonologically bound. 

The Tagdal verb consists of a stem and a number of preposed as well as
postposed markers: an obligatory proclitic subject index, potentially a
subjunctive marker, a TAM or negative-TAM portmanteau prefix, potentially a
directional suffix, and a direct object enclitic index, if the reference is
pronominal (i.e., the object index does not occur with a co-nominal, while the
subject does). The perfective aspect is unmarked. Additionally, there are
morphological causative, reciprocal, and passive. It should be noted that
these verbal derivations can only occur with Tuareg roots.

Chapter 4 is a description of Tagdal Syntax. Although it is titled “Clause,
Syntax, Paragraph structure”, there is no description of paragraph structure. 

In a Tagdal NP, the head noun is followed by its modifiers
(demonstratives/determiners, numerals, adjectives). Determiners can be used to
express a definite/non-definite distinction. Tagdal has only one preposition,
the instrumental or accompaniment marker “nda”, while all other adpositions
are postpositions. The default word order in Tagdal is S V iO dO, but object
NPs as well as adpositional phrases can be fronted. In non-verbal clauses, the
use of the copula is facultative.

Clauses can be coordinated in one of two ways: either without a connector,
whereby the predicates have to express the same TAM category, or by the use of
one of various connectors. Adverbial and complement clauses are introduced
with a subordinator, and are structurally identical to matrix clauses.
Relative clauses follow the noun. If the head corresponds to the subject of
the relative clause, the verb begins with “ǝ-” instead of the subject
proclitic. This marker “ǝ-” also occurs in adjectives of Tuareg origin. “ǝ-”
is omitted if the verb in the modifying clause is marked for future or
negation. Objects and adpositional phrases are relativized by means of a gap.

The default way to express commands is by means of the subjunctive, but there
is also an imperative, which equals the finite verb without subject index and
TAM marking. Prohibitives are formed by using standard negation. Yes/no
questions are not marked by particles or deviating syntax, but can be marked
by intonation only. Question words are not in-situ, but occur
clause-initially.

EVALUATION

In the beginning of his grammar, Benítez-Torres provides an index of all
grammatical morphemes described, something which would be desirable for any
reference grammar. The structure of the text is largely coherent and concise.
However, there are some shortcomings with regard to the presentation of the
contents of the grammar. Firstly, not all subsections appear in the table of
contents. The latter is also somewhat cluttered and inconsistent with regard
to the numbering of the sections. Also, my impression is that sometimes rather
interesting or even important information is banished into footnotes. In terms
of readability, the syntax in the descriptions is sometimes hard to process,
and there are a fair number of typos. There are also some mistakes in the
references. 

Benítez-Torres follows an onomasiological approach, and in most cases where a
marker has various functions, cross-references to the respective sections are
provided. There are ample examples for all the structural features described,
especially in the areas of phonology and the differences between the two
subsystems. This makes the grammar quite useful for typologists, who can
easily find particular structures and are provided with clearly annotated,
illustrative material. Processes affecting Songhay and Tuareg vocabulary are
clearly separated, where necessary.

However, from a typologist’s point of view, it has to be pointed out that the
descriptions of some features and constructions (or mentions, if they are not
present) are clearly missing. Among these are, for instance, the numeral
system, existential predication, nominal compounding, and reflexive
constructions. Examples for adnominal possessive constructions are looked for
in vain in Chapters 3 and 4, but are provided in the phonology section (in
2.4.4 “Lengthening of the Genitive n”). With some derivational processes, such
as diminuation, one is left wondering whether or not they are productive.
Likewise, after reading the grammar, I still do not know whether Tagdal has
any non-derived adjectives (only those derived from verbs are described), or
anything about color terms in the language. In the sections which describe
marking of “prominence”, it would have been good to know what this notion
actually entails in Tagdal, including some examples with more context.

Although the author does not at any point embed his findings in a typological
context (beyond comparison to the languages of the region), descriptive
grammatical categories in Tagdal are capitalized, while cross-linguistic
categories are not. Thus, Benítez-Torres acknowledges the fact that categories
cannot be equated across languages (cf. Haspelmath 2010). The terminology used
is appropriate for the most part, but the description of person indexes leaves
one puzzled. The same set of markers is used to index the subject of a clause
and the object of a postposition. But instead of granting the markers their
various functions, they are called “Subject clitics” throughout. Furthermore,
they are sometimes written with a hyphen, sometimes with an equals sign. On p.
107, the author states that object indexes are independent, with the exception
of the third person, but shortly after, he describes how they belong to the
same stress domain as the verb and indicates phonological boundness in the
example. Overall, a description of phonological and grammatical word domains
would have been helpful (especially where there seem to be discrepancies), not
only for the verbal domain, but also the nominal one (for instance, the status
of the Genitive marker is somewhat unclear.)

In conclusion, “A Grammar of Tagdal” is an important step towards closing the
substantial gap in the documentation of Songhay languages (cf. Souag 2012).
Due to the language’s mixed structural nature, the work might be particularly
interesting for sociolinguists and contact linguists: Benítez-Torres grants
plenty of room to examples for the different subsystems, especially in terms
of vocabulary and morphophonology. From a typologist’s point of view, the
grammar has some shortcomings, but it nonetheless gives concise insights into
the language.

REFERENCES

Benítez-Torres, Carlos M. and Anthony P. Grant. 2017. On the origin of some
Northern Songhay mixed languages. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages
32(2). 263-303. 

Haspelmath, Martin. 2010. Comparative concepts and descriptive categories in
crosslinguistic studies. Language 86(3). 663-687.

Rueck, Michael and Niels Christiansen. 1999. Northern Songhay speech varieties
in Niger. SIL Electronic Survey Reports 1999-008. Dallas, Tex.: SIL
International.

Souag, Lameen. 2012. The subclassification of Songhay and its historical
implications. Journal of African Languages and Linguistics 33. 181- 213.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

I am a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Comparative Language
Science at the University of Zurich. My research mainly revolves around the
make-up of structural units in language, and their dynamics from a diachronic
perspective. I am also interested in optionality and splits in morphological
coding, and their functions and effects in discourse.





------------------------------------------------------------------------------

***************************    LINGUIST List Support    ***************************
 The 2020 Fund Drive is under way! Please visit https://funddrive.linguistlist.org
  to find out how to donate and check how your university, country or discipline
     ranks in the fund drive challenges. Or go directly to the donation site:
                   https://crowdfunding.iu.edu/the-linguist-list

                        Let's make this a short fund drive!
                Please feel free to share the link to our campaign:
                    https://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/
 


----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-33-1683	
----------------------------------------------------------