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Senufo Languages
The Senufo or Senufic languages (''Senoufo'' in French) has around 15 languages spoken by the Senufo in the north of Ivory Coast, the south of Mali and the southwest of Burkina Faso. An isolated language, Nafaanra, is also spoken in the west of Ghana. The Senufo languages constitute their own branch of the Atlantic–Congo sub-family of the Niger–Congo languages. Garber (1987) estimates the total number of Senufos at some 1.5 million; the Ethnologue, based on various population estimates, counts 2.7 million. The Senufo languages are bounded to the west by Mande languages, to the south by Kwa languages, and to the north and east by Central Gur languages. The Senufo languages are like the Gur languages in that they have a suffixal noun class system and that verbs are marked for aspect. Most Gur languages to the north of Senufo have a two tone downstep system, but the tonal system of the Senufo languages is mostly analysed as a three level tone system (High, Mid, Low). The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mande Languages
The Mande languages are spoken in several countries in West Africa by the Mandé peoples and include Maninka, Mandinka, Soninke, Bambara, Kpelle, Dioula, Bozo, Mende, Susu, and Vai. There are "60 to 75 languages spoken by 30 to 40 million people", chiefly in Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal, the Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Ivory Coast, and also in northwestern Nigeria and northern Benin. The Mande languages show lexical similarities with the Atlantic–Congo language family, and the two have been classified together as a Niger–Congo language family since the 1950s. However, the Mande languages lack the noun-class morphology that is the primary identifying feature of the Atlantic–Congo languages. Without the help of that feature, a demonstration of the validity of Niger–Congo will require reconstructing both Proto-Mande and Proto-Atlantic–Congo. Until that work is done, linguists have increasingly decided to treat Mande and Atlantic–Cong ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nanerigé Language
Nanerigé is a Senufo language spoken in south-western Burkina Faso Burkina Faso (, ; , ff, 𞤄𞤵𞤪𞤳𞤭𞤲𞤢 𞤊𞤢𞤧𞤮, italic=no) is a landlocked country in West Africa with an area of , bordered by Mali to the northwest, Niger to the northeast, Benin to the southeast, Togo and Ghana to the .... References Languages of Burkina Faso Suppire–Mamara languages {{senufo-lang-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mamara Language
Minyanka (also known as Mamara, Miniyanka, Minya, Mianka, Minianka, or Tupiire) is a northern Senufo language spoken by about 750,000 people in southeastern Mali. It is closely related to Supyire. Minyanka is one of the national languages of Mali. See also *Senufo language The Senufo or Senufic languages (''Senoufo'' in French) has around 15 languages spoken by the Senufo in the north of Ivory Coast, the south of Mali and the southwest of Burkina Faso. An isolated language, Nafaanra, is also spoken in the west o ... References Further reading * Dombrowsky-Hahn, Klaudia (ed. by Miehe, Gudrun; Reineke, Brigitte; Roncador, Manfred von) (1999) ''Phénomènes de contact entre les langues Minyanka et Bambara (Sud du Mali)''. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe. * Prost, André (1964) ''Contributrion à l'étude des langues Voltaiques''. Dakar: Institut Francophone de l'Afrique Noire. External links Minyanka-French-Bambara-English Dictionaryto view online or download, from the Association ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
SIL International
SIL International (formerly known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics) is an evangelical Christian non-profit organization whose main purpose is to study, develop and document languages, especially those that are lesser-known, in order to expand linguistic knowledge, promote literacy, translate the Christian Bible into local languages, and aid minority language development. Based on its language documentation work, SIL publishes a database, ''Ethnologue'', of its research into the world's languages, and develops and publishes software programs for language documentation, such as FieldWorks Language Explorer (FLEx) and Lexique Pro. Its main offices in the United States are located at the International Linguistics Center in Dallas, Texas. History William Cameron Townsend, a Presbyterian minister, founded the organization in 1934, after undertaking a Christian mission with the Disciples of Christ among the Kaqchikel Maya people in Guatemala in the early 1930s.George Thomas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gabriel Manessy
Gabriel Manessy (28 March 1923 – 17 June 1996) was a French linguist who worked on Niger-Congo languages, especially the Gur languages. Manessy is known for his historical-comparative work on the Gur languages. He wrote extensively on the Gurunsi languages, Gurunsi, Oti-Volta languages, Oti-Volta, and Senufo languages, Senufo languages.Nicolaï, Robert (2001).Hommage à Gabriel Manessy ''Leçons d’Afrique : Filiations, ruptures et reconstitutions des langues'', 7-9. Peeters. Career Manessy was born on 28 March 1923. After studying literature, his interest shifted to ethnology. After working briefly at the CNRS, he taught linguistics at the Faculty of Letters of Dakar and became the first Director of the Centre de linguistique appliquée de Dakar (CLAD). He was appointed Professor in 1964. He supervised Masters students in African Linguistics, first at Dakar, then at the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences at Aix-en-Provence. From 1969 to 1988, he taught at the Faculty of Le ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Constituent Order
In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how different languages employ different orders. Correlations between orders found in different syntactic sub-domains are also of interest. The primary word orders that are of interest are * the ''constituent order'' of a clause, namely the relative order of subject, object, and verb; * the order of modifiers (adjectives, numerals, demonstratives, possessives, and adjuncts) in a noun phrase; * the order of adverbials. Some languages use relatively fixed word order, often relying on the order of constituents to convey grammatical information. Other languages—often those that convey grammatical information through inflection—allow more flexible word order, which can be used to encode pragmatic information, such as topicalisation or focus. However, even languages with flexible wo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Subject–object–verb
Subject ( la, subiectus "lying beneath") may refer to: Philosophy *'' Hypokeimenon'', or ''subiectum'', in metaphysics, the "internal", non-objective being of a thing **Subject (philosophy), a being that has subjective experiences, subjective consciousness, or a relationship with another entity Linguistics * Subject (grammar), who or what a sentence or a clause is about * Subject case or nominative case, one of the grammatical cases for a noun Music * Subject (music), or 'theme' * The melodic material presented first in a fugue * Either of the two main groups of themes (first subject, second subject), in sonata form Sonata form (also ''sonata-allegro form'' or ''first movement form'') is a musical structure generally consisting of three main sections: an exposition, a development, and a recapitulation. It has been used widely since the middle of the 18th c ... * ''Subject'' (album), a 2003 album by Dwele Science and technology * The individual, whether an adult person, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jula Language
Dyula (or Jula, Dioula, ''Julakan'' ߖߎ߬ߟߊ߬ߞߊ߲) is a language of the Mande language family spoken mainly in Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast and Mali, and also in some other countries, including Ghana, Guinea and Guinea-Bissau. It is one of the Manding languages and is most closely related to Bambara, being mutually intelligible with Bambara as well as Malinke. It is a trade language in West Africa and is spoken by millions of people, either as a first or second language. Similar to the other Mande languages, it uses tones. It may be written in the Latin, Arabic or N'Ko scripts. History Dyula is not an ethonym. The term used to distinguish Muslim traders from the non-Muslim population living in the same area, mainly Senufo agricultors. It comes from the Mandika languages and means "trader". It then became an exonym for Mandikan speaking traders such as the Bambara or the Mandinka and their languages. Later, the term was also used for a simplified version of Bambara, wh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bambara Language
Bambara (Arabic script: ), also known as Bamana (N'Ko script: ) or Bamanankan (), is a lingua franca and national language of Mali spoken by perhaps 15 million people, natively by 5 million Bambara people and about 10 million second-language users. It is estimated that about 80 percent of the population of Mali speak Bambara as a first or second language. It has a subject–object–verb clause structure and two lexical tones. Classification Bambara is a variety of a group of closely related languages called Manding, whose native speakers trace their cultural history to the medieval Mali Empire. Varieties of Manding are generally considered (among native speakers) to be mutually intelligible – dependent on exposure or familiarity with dialects between speakers – and spoken by 30 to 40 million people in the countries Burkina Faso, Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Liberia, Ivory Coast and the Gambia. Manding is part of the larger Mandé family of languages. Geographical dis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Downstep
Downstep is a phenomenon in tone languages in which if two syllables have the same tone (for example, both with a high tone or both with a low tone), the second syllable is lower in pitch than the first. Two main kinds of downstep can be distinguished. The first, more usually called automatic downstep, downdrift or catathesis, occurs when high and low tones come in the sequence H L (L) H; the second high tone tends to be lower than the first because of the intervening low toned syllable. That phenomenon is common in African languages, such as Chichewa. It has also been argued that the same phenomenon is heard in English sentences, if these sentences are pronounced with a falling intonation, for example ''I really believe Ebenezer was a dealer in magnesium'', or ''I bought blueberries, bayberries, raspberries, mulberries, and brambleberries''. Downstep proper, or non-automatic downstep, is another phenomenon found in many African languages such as Igbo. for an overview of downst ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
