Wikisida, AF1211 V23 Typologi och språkliga strukturer i afrikanska språk: Lesson 4 Morphological typology

Wikisida
2022-10-28T07:28:28+02:00

We are now leaving the smallest units which can distinguish meaning; the phonemes. Morphemes, the topic of this lesson, are the smallest units of language that are meaning-bearing; i.e. that have semantic content.

Read & practice:

A. From our main textbook - Velupillai: An introduction to linguistic typology

Chapter 5 Morphology

This is a general chapter on morphology and typological distinctions. Study questions for this chapter.

B. More specifically on morphology in African languages, read chapter 4 Morphology in:

Childs, G. Tucker. 2003. Introduction to African Languages. John Benjamins Publishing Company. ProQuest Ebook Central

The linguistic question of this lesson relates to word formation.

C. We will also read about comparisons of morphological aspects in African languages. The following paper, on variation in object marking in the Bantu language family, illustrates this:

Marten, Lutz, Nancy C. Kula and Nhlanhla Thwala. 2007. Parameters of morphosyntactic variation in Bantu. Transactions of the Philological Society 105:1-86

It is a long paper, but much of it is appendix. Also, you don't have to read section 3 (on the data) in detail. Come prepared to discuss this paper and the rest of the literature when we meet on Zoom!

Do the exercise of this lesson, concerning noun class systems. Answer the questions and discuss.