Papers by Roland Kießling
Wallstein Verlag eBooks, 2021
The present-day contact of Iraqw and Datooga speaking groups in the Tanzanian Rift valley has a l... more The present-day contact of Iraqw and Datooga speaking groups in the Tanzanian Rift valley has a long history which goes back to precolonial times. This contact is reflected in the intertwining of descent groups, in shared cultural practices and in lexical transfers which must have gone both ways, affecting various semantic domains, e.g. subsistence vocabulary (Rottland & Mous 2001). The present talk widens the scope beyond subsistence vocabulary, reporting on recent research into lexical transfers at the Datooga-Iraqw interface along with a discussion of methodological issues concerning the determination of the direction of borrowing, illustrated by various new findings.
<p>The South Cushitic or West Rift Cushitic languages split into two branches: Southern vs.... more <p>The South Cushitic or West Rift Cushitic languages split into two branches: Southern vs. Northern. While the Southern branch continues in Burunge, the Northern branch comprises Alagwa and Iraqwoid, which includes the dialects Gorwaa and Iraqw. Internal convergence of Alagwa towards the Southern branch produced bundles of Burunge/Alagwa lexical isoglosses which could easily be wrongly taken to reflect genetic inheritance. Languages such as Qw'adza, Aasáx, Ma'a/Mbugu, and Dahalo must be excluded from an internal classification of South Cushitic for various methodological considerations. Dahalo's genetic position between South and East Cushitic has not been determined beyond doubt. Ma'a/Mbugu rather represents an extreme case of intertwining of Bantu and Cushitic, involving language shift and deliberate creation of an ethnolinguistic register. Finally, for both Qw'adza and Aasáx, poor overall documentary coverage and the contexts of data acquisition do not allow for reliable integration into an adequate internal classification.</p>
Cambridge University Press eBooks, May 16, 2019
Typological studies in language, 2010
Information structure in Isu is encoded by a variety of morphosyntactic strategies, involving mar... more Information structure in Isu is encoded by a variety of morphosyntactic strategies, involving markers of focalisation and defocalisation, both interacting with a syntactic pattern where the relative position vis-a-vis the finite verb plays a crucial role. In most of its properties, the Isu system closely parallels the one found in Aghem. However, there are some differences relating to form and distribution of defocalising enclitic markers on nouns. This opens a low-level diachronic perspective on the phenomenon and illustrates intermediary stages of a pragmatico-syntactically motivated transition from an earlier prefix marking system of noun classes towards a system in which prefixes fade out and noun classes come to be predominantly marked by enclitics which have not (yet) made it to suffixes.
Journal of African Languages and Linguistics, Jan 11, 2007
Abstract The case system of Datooga, a Southern Nilotic dialect cluster of Northern and Central T... more Abstract The case system of Datooga, a Southern Nilotic dialect cluster of Northern and Central Tanzania, is of the marked nominative type, i.e., it is based on the opposition of a nominative case which encodes both the subject of an intransitive verb (S) and the subject of a transitive one (A) vs. an accusative case which encodes the object of a transitive verb (P). However, in contrast to prototypical nominative/accusative systems, it is the nominative case rather than the accusative which receives morphological marking in Datooga. This unusual marking pattern reflects an unusual division of labour between the case forms, the marked nominative being confined to the function of coding S and A in pragmatically neutral clauses, whereas the unmarked “accusative”, or “absolute” as it will be called further on, takes over a wide range of functions apart from coding P, e.g., it characterizes the citation form, nouns in non-verbal predication and preverbal subjects. Thus, what at first glance appears as an odd and outlandish markedness paradox from a general typological perspective turns out to be a very economical case system at closer inspection of the syntactic distribution and functional load of the opposing case forms.
Cambridge University Press eBooks, Jun 13, 2019
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2022
In this paper we investigate the semantics of verbs in Babanki, a Central Ring Grassfields Bantu ... more In this paper we investigate the semantics of verbs in Babanki, a Central Ring Grassfields Bantu language of NorthWest Cameroon. We focus on the semantic sub-domains of food collection, processing, serving and consumption where closely related verbs describe the manner of manipulating specific nouns which occur in object position. We show that instead of installing a hypernym in certain semantic domains, hyponyms which differ with respect to the direct objects they describe are generated in a specific semantic space. Consequently, there are semantic collocations which hold between transitive verbs and their direct objects (which take the semantic role of patient), based on matching with respect to semantic parameters such as the nature of an object and the manner of manipulating it. Such intricacies present interesting and revealing semantic effects since they speak about an object by changing the verb, not the noun.
Afrika und Übersee, Dec 31, 2021
In Babanki, a Grassfields Bantu language of NorthWest Cameroon, two of the numerous consumption v... more In Babanki, a Grassfields Bantu language of NorthWest Cameroon, two of the numerous consumption verbs, namely the generic verbs ʒɨ́ 'eat' and ɲʉ́ 'drink', constitute a major source of metaphorical extensions outside the domain of ingestion. Setting out from a characterisation of the basic meanings of these two lexical items as they emerge from their paradigmatic relations within the semantic field of alimentation processes, this paper explores the figurative usages of the two verbs and their underlying semantic motivations. Semantic extensions that radiate from eat can be subsumed under two closely related structural metaphors, i.e. appropriation of resources is eating and winning is eating. The first metaphor construes the acquisition and exploitation of non-food items such as material possession as eating, while the second metaphor casts the acquisition of immaterial advantage in the mould of eating. Both metaphors have further entailments, i.e. the derivation of pleasure from consumption of resources, the depletion of resources via consumption and the deprivation of a third party from access to these resources. Semantic extensions that radiate from drink can be accounted for in two structural metaphors, i.e. inhalation is drinking and absorption is drinking. Remarkably, some metaphorical extensions of consumption verbs attested in other African languages, such as extensions of eat for sexual intercourse and for killing, and the extensions of drink for undergoing trouble and enduring painful experiences are absent in Babanki.
Afrika und Übersee, Dec 31, 2020
Studies on the expression of diminutivity in Bantoid languages of the Cameroonian Grassfields hav... more Studies on the expression of diminutivity in Bantoid languages of the Cameroonian Grassfields have tended to focus on the role that noun class derivation plays within the familiar Bantu paradigm. A closer look at individual branches of Bantoid, however, reveals a more complex picture, which rather suggests a division of labour between derivational strategies and compounding and/or periphrasis. This contribution zooms in on the languages of the Central Ring (CR) branch of Grassfields Bantu, presenting an overview of diminutivisation strategies found here: the notorious transfer to gender 19/6a, which is at times, accompanied by the addition of a semantically bleached suffix-CV, and periphrasis in associative constructions headed by nouns with inherent diminutive meanings such as 'child'.
Cambridge University Press eBooks, Aug 31, 2021
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Papers by Roland Kießling