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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Lexicography In West Africa: Preparing A Bilingual Kisi-English Dictionary, George Tucker Childs
Lexicography In West Africa: Preparing A Bilingual Kisi-English Dictionary, George Tucker Childs
Applied Linguistics Faculty Publications and Presentations
This paper presents some of the issues involved in preparing a bilingual dictionary for Kisi, an underdocumented language spoken in West Africa. Because the language possesses little in the way of literacy materials, fundamental issues as to orthography, word division, etc., had to be considered. In addition, no grammar of the language (or its closest congeners) was available and thus basic grammatical analysis had to be performed simultaneously. I briefly consider some of these problems, discussing the use of the lexical data base programs known as LEXWARE. I then focus on the specific problems raised by the expressive word class …
Nasality In Kisi, George Tucker Childs
Nasality In Kisi, George Tucker Childs
Applied Linguistics Faculty Publications and Presentations
This paper presents the various manifestations of nasality in Kisi, a Mel language belonging to the Southern Branch of (West) Atlantic. In this language, as in many West African languages, nasality plays a prominent role in the language's sound system and grammar. Nasality in Kisi is realized phonetically on both consonants and vowels and phonologically on consonants. There are even cases of 'spontaneous nasalization', situations in which there is no nearby nasal segment to contribute the nasal feature. Nasality may also function in the morphology and is used expressively for emphasis. The findings reported here will be of use to …
Where Do Ideophones Come From?, George Tucker Childs
Where Do Ideophones Come From?, George Tucker Childs
Applied Linguistics Faculty Publications and Presentations
This paper begins with an analysis of ideophones in Kisi (West Atlantic, Guinea). This examination leads to consideration of the diachrony of ideophones, but because of the lack of data with any real time depth, we are limited to finding clues in the synchronic data. This study looks first at verbs, the class of words which Kisi ideophones resemble most closely. Such is also the case in other African languages, where ideophones can often be analyzed as verbs, as has been done for several Southern Bantu languages. I then demonstrate how Kisi ideophones can be derived from verbs, illustrating several …