Historical and Areal Linguistics

In this chapter, we will outline the major phonological, morphological, and syntactic properties of Niger-Congo, paying attention especially to areas of particular typological interest. We will start by discussing two problems: (i) disagreement over what is Niger-Congo; (ii) linguistic features are rarely limited to Niger-Congo (except perhaps noun classes). Our attention will be particularly on the following topics: (i) Consonant systems, usual and unusual systems, e.g. implosives, labiovelars; (ii) vowel systems, especially ATR and nasal contrasts on vowels; (iii) tone and accent:...

Based on the available literature and personal communications with specialists, this paper surveys the rich occurrence of verb extensions in the Nuba mountain languages which mark different grammatical functions such as causative, dative and locative applicatives, comparative, passive, antipassive, reciprocal/reflexive, and associative/instrumental, as well as ventive, itive, habitual, iterative and pluractional marking. Given the diversity of forms among the different groups in the area, a set of guidelines is considered to determine whether specific extensions can be reconstructed...

This article describes the evolution of past/perfective subject-verb agreement morphology in the Tukanoan family, reconstructing relevant aspects of Proto-Tukanoan verbal morphology and delineating the subsequent diachronic development of verbal subject agreement morphology in the Eastern branch of the family. We argue that suffixes that cumulatively expone past/perfective and person, number, and gender (PNG) subject agreement resulted from the fusion of post-verbal demonstratives/pronouns expressing PNG information with suffixes expressing past/perfective TAM information. We propose...