Papers by Alexander Cobbinah
Culture and language use, Feb 14, 2024
Culture and language use, Feb 14, 2024
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), Jan 5, 2023
Africana Linguistica, 2015
Journal of Language Contact, 2010
Revista do Gel. Edição Temática: O contato linguístico e a área transatlântica, 2022
Cet article présente les aspects sociolinguistiques et linguistiques d'une situation plur... more Cet article présente les aspects sociolinguistiques et linguistiques d'une situation plurilingue dans un contexte rural en Casamance (Sénégal). En nous basant sur des recherches interdisciplinaires en cours, nous introduisons les langues patrimoniales associées aux villages que nous étudions. Nous élaborons ensuite le dualisme entre langue patrimoniale en tant que construit identitaire et usage fluide dans le discours et identifions les motivations de cette stratégie duale et comment elle s'insère dans les id²ologies linguistiques locales, régionales et nationales. Nous finissons par exposer les conséquences de ce type de plurilinguisme de longue durée sur les systèmes linguistiques et le défi qu'il pose pour une tradition descriptive basée sur la notion d'une langue et non pas sur celle d'un répertoire dynamique. Nous proposons un modèle inspiré par la théorie des prototypes servant comme repère pour ancrer la description de la variation et de l'hybridité qui caractérisent le discours.
The Santo Antão variety (SA) of Cape Verdean Creole (CVC) is not only very little studied but the... more The Santo Antão variety (SA) of Cape Verdean Creole (CVC) is not only very little studied but the existing publications, overwhelmingly in Portuguese, are not well known among a wider linguistic audience. This is particularly surprising if we consider that from the first Cape Verdean census, in 1731 (Carreira 1984), until the 1970s Santo Antão has been the second most populous island of the archipelago. The article presents a review of the literature from historical sources about the settlement of Santo Antão, which then serves as a base from which to reconsider current debates about the genesis of CVC. Linguistic data, mainly of phonological nature, from conversations recorded during a short field trip to Santo Antão (Cabo da Ribeira and Vila das Pombas), complemented by existing data on other varieties of CVC, are used to support the proposed hypotheses.
Journal of African Languages and Linguistics, 2018
In recent years, a growing number of linguists have reported constructions that fulfil all or mos... more In recent years, a growing number of linguists have reported constructions that fulfil all or most criteria for being called a passive but one: morphological or periphrastic marking in the verb phrase. In the constructions in question, passive semantics is conveyed through argument remapping, sometimes without the possibility for an oblique Actor by-phrase. The intransitive use of a transitive verb triggers a reversal of voice orientation: of the two participants of the active transitive verb, the Undergoer is linked to the one and only argument position, the subject. The Actor is either demoted to an oblique participant or not encoded at all, depending on the language. An example of such a zero-coded passive from the Mande language Jalonke is given in (2), which is the passive, intransitive equivalent of the transitive active clause in (1):
The complex noun class system of Baïnounk Gubëeher, a hitherto undescribed minority language whos... more The complex noun class system of Baïnounk Gubëeher, a hitherto undescribed minority language whose speakers are concentrated in Djibonker, Casamance/Senegal, combines a very large number of prefixes and a plural suffix, which occur in paradigms, conveying number and configurational information. The choice of the paradigm as basic unit of analysis as pursued here provides a new perspective on noun class systems. A detailed description of the paradigms attested in Gubëeher, including their semantic contribution to the nouns they derive from roots are the main concern of this thesis. The systematic aspects of how the paradigms are employed in Gubëeher are highly relevant in this context. Their role
Copyright © and Moral Rights for this thesis are retained by the author and/or other copyright o... more Copyright © and Moral Rights for this thesis are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners. A copy can be downloaded for personal non‐commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder/s. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. When referring to this thesis, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given e.g. AUTHOR (year of submission) "Full thesis title", name of the School or Department, PhD Thesis, pagination.
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Papers by Alexander Cobbinah