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Publications (104)
The development of HLT tools inevitably involves the need for language resources. However, only a handful number of languages possesses such resources. This paper presents the development of HLT tools for the African language Naija (Nigerian Pidgin), spoken in Nigeria. Particularly, this paper is focusing on developing language resources for a toke...
The monograph covers the main aspects of studies on West African languages related to the diversity of structural patterns and complexity of their linguistic assignment. It includes various topics ranging from linguistic description and conceptualization patterns to the sociolinguistics of contemporary refugee camps. Typological diversity is enrich...
This paper is a corpus-based study of the various forms and uses of clefts in Naija, the largest West-African English lexifier pidgincreole, spoken in Nigeria and its diaspora as a second language by close to 100 million speakers. The data on which this paper is based is taken from the 500,000 word ANR-NaijaSynCor corpus, consisting of 300 samples...
The articles compiled in this volume offer new insights into the wealth of prosodic and syntactic phenomena involved in the encoding of information structure categories. They present data from languages which are rarely, if ever, taken into account in the most prominent approaches in information structure theory, and which belong to the Afroasiatic...
The development of HLT tools inevitably involves the need for language resources. However, only a handful number of languages possesses such resources. This paper presents the development of HLT tools for the African language Naija (Nigerian Pidgin), spoken in Nigeria. Particularly, this paper is focusing on developing language resources for a toke...
The term cleft is commonly used to describe a syntactic pattern which serves to separate a discourse prominent constituent structurally from the rest of the clause. It is formed by dividing a more elementary clause into two parts. One of the two parts is foregrounded, and the other, backgrounded. The structure is characterized e.g. in English by th...
Minorities and identity conflicts in the Nigerian Federation: a linguistic and geopolitical analysis
Nigeria is a federation composed of an inextricable linguistic and ethnic mosaic of more than 500 minority languages, dominated by three major groups: the Hausa, Yoroubas and the igbo. Two tendencies are competing in the country: on the one hand, a...
Nigeria is a federation composed of an inextricable linguistic and ethnic mosaic of more than 500 minority languages, dominated by three major groups: the Hausa, Yoroubas and the igbo. Two tendencies are competing in the country: on the one hand, a tendency leading to national integration, centralization, via federalism; and on the other hand, a te...
A follow-up of the CorpAfroAs project, this paper presents a typologically-oriented study of the intonation of Topic and Focus in four Afroasiatic languages (Zaar, Tamasheq, Juba Arabic and Tripoli Arabic), in relation to their phonological and information structures. The different prosodic systems represented in the study - i.e. the demarcative ac...
he objectives of this study are (i) to identify the basic components of pitch that can be isolated from tone and attributed to intonation; (ii) to establish them as the elements that must be accounted for in the transcription of an oral corpus. These components are meant to be available for typological studies of the relationship between these elem...
Le haoussa est une langue tchadique appartenant au phylum Afro-Asiatique, parlée par environ 50 millions de locuteurs en Afrique de l'Ouest, essentiellement au Nigéria et au Niger. Les TAM sont marqués par un complexe pré-verbal qui inclut une marque de personne obligatoire, indexée au sujet. Ce complexe opère comme un mot indépendant que la tradit...
Capitalizing on my recent work on Afroasiatic corpus and intonation (CorpAfroas 2007-2012), this paper uses a corpus-based analysis to study the part of intonation in the exponents of topic and focus in Zaar, a South-Bauchi Chadic language spoken in Northern Nigeria.
The 'Zaar Corpus' is part of CorpAfroAs, an integrated pilot project realized by field linguists for field linguists and typologists, which proposes: A methodology for the treatment of fieldwork textual data in underdescribed languages, from data gathering to automatic searches on the corpus, A free, open-source and user-friendly new software, ELAN...
The 'Hausa Corpus' is part of CorpAfroAs, an integrated pilot project realized by field linguists for field linguists and typologists, which proposes: A methodology for the treatment of fieldwork textual data in underdescribed languages, from data gathering to automatic searches on the corpus, A free, open-source and user-friendly new software, ELA...
A grammatical sketch of Hausa (a West-Chadic language spoken mainly in Nigeria) written as an annex to the annotated Hausa Corpus transcribed for the CorpAfroAs project (ANR-06-CORP018)
A grammatical sketch of Zaar (a South-Bauchi Chadic language spoken in Nigeria) written as an annex to the annotated Zaar Corpus transcribed for the CorpAfroAs project (ANR-06CORP)
This paper discusses the linguistic expression of similarity, aka 'similative' in Zaar, a Chadic language spoken south of Bauchi State, in Northern Nigeria. As the Zaar similative is related to other functional structures, both morphologically (e.g. equative, simulative), or cognitively (e.g. comparison of superiority, aka 'comparative'), these wil...
Zaar is a Chadic language spoken by over 100,000 speakers in Nigeria, in the South of Bauchi State. In Northern Nigeria, where Zaar is spoken, Hausa is the dominant regional language, spoken by over 60 million people, and widely used in education, administration, and the media. As a result, all adult Zaar speakers are bilingual Zaar-Hausa. This pap...
The Proto-West-Chadic pronominal system reconstructed by Newman & Schuh shows a singular/plural opposition relying mainly on a vocalic contrast inside a CV form. As the vocalic contrast has been replaced by /ə/ in South-Bauchi West (SBW) languages, another exponent had to be found to maintain the sg/pl opposition. After a quick presentation of the...
This paper explores the place of Future in the conjugation system of a groupe of 27 Chadic "languages" spoken in the south of Bauchi State, labelled 'South-Bauchi-West' by Shimizu (78). The first part is devoted to the pre-verbal conjugation pronouns (IPAM=PNG.TAM). Then, a model of evolution is proposed to account for the emergence of new paradigm...
This book is the outcome of several decades of research experience, with contributions by leading scholars based on long-term field research. It combines approaches from descriptive linguistics, anthropological linguistics, socio-historical studies, areal linguistics, and social anthropology. The key concern of this ground-breaking volume is to inv...
Geji and Pelu are two dialects of Geji proper, a language spoken in Bauchi State, Nigeria. Pelu and Geji are two very close dialects with very similar lexicon. However, tonal inversion is frequently observed in pre-pausal forms. The difference is explained in terms of tone rules applying differently to a common lexical form.
The objective of this study is to identify the basic components of pitch that can be isolated from tone and attributed to intonation, and establish them as the elements that must be accounted for in the transcription of an oral corpus in order to make it useful for typological studies of intonation. To address this problem, this study leans heavily...
Hausa is a Chadic language, belonging to the Hamito-Semitic phylum, spoken mainly in Nigeria and Niger by about 50 million speakers. With CV, CVV and CVC syllables, it possesses 10 vowels (5 long, 5 short, 2 diphthongs), 33 consonants or more according to the dialects. It is a 2-tone language, with 2 flat and 1 modular tones. Hausa is a language wi...
A short presentation of Chadic languages for the dictionary 'Les langues du Monde'.
This paper examines the present situation facing a linguist studying South-Bauchi West Chadic languages (SBW) spoken in Nigeria. Among those 27 or so idioms, some are dead, others are quite robust, while the majority are severely endangered. The question is: what kind of polylectal grammar can we propose for those languages? In order to address thi...
Geji 1 has a tonal system based on a three-level distinction between Hi, Mid and Low, with Falling and Rising combinations of Hi and Lo. This system is fully operational in both grammar and lexicon, but it may be the result of the interaction between a set of voiced consonants called depressor consonants and a deeper two-level opposition between Hi...
RÉSUMÉ A partir de faits de langues tchadiques (, ) et oubanguiens (banda-linda), cet article remet en question l'affirmation de Haiman (1978) qui fait des conditionnelles des topiques. Certaines propriétés partagées avec la focalisation, les post-rhèmes et les questions totales nous amènent à reconsidérer leur statut énonciatif, et à les c...
Bu: also called Zaranda, is a Chadic language spoken in the South of Bauchi State, in Nigeria, belonging to the South-Bauchi West group of Chadic languages (Shimizu 1978). Although generally associated with Bolu, Pelu and Geji, Bu: stands apart from these other lects with which there is no intercomprehension. Most of the Bu: population has migrated...
The synchronic study of one lexical term through the various grades of the linguistic scale (lexicon, nominal or verbal phrase, interpropositional) allows for the analysis of the diachronic process of grammaticalization and of language in general. The process of grammaticalization is illustrated by the study of the word ɗaa "son" in various areas o...
With his Grammatical outline of Gùrdùŋ, Andrew Haruna (A.H.) has published the first grammar of a South-Bauchi Chadic West-B language. This type of work, concerning a minority language spoken in Bauchi State (Northern Nigeria) and dominated by Hausa, is highly welcome and should be emulated. Despite serious shortcomings, A. H.'s work is worth comme...
It is generally assumed, following Haiman (1978) that in the information structure of conditional sentences, conditionals play the role of topics. However, in a few isolated cases, such as the Chadic languages spoken in the South of Bauchi State (Nigeria), henceforth SBW, or Banda Linda, an Adamawa language spoken in the République Centre-Africaine...
This study of the SBW pronominal and TAM system is based on personal data collected in Nigeria on 8 languages : Zaranda, Langas, Dir, Danche, Baraza, Dott, Sigidi and Zaar. In their pronominal system, these languages have lost the gender, inclusive/exclusive and dual marks characteristic of AfroAsiatic (AA) languages. They have in common a system t...
In 1933, in Northern Nigeria, the Literature Bureau, an agency of the colonial government, set up a literary contest aimed at providing reading material for Hausa people who were literate in their own language. The four laureates, edited by Rupert East, plus a fifth text co-authored by him, were published in 1934 and will form the first generation...
This paper aims at characterizing the common morphology of Polci languages, and contrasting it to that of Zaar. Zaar and Polci languages all belong to South-Bauchi-West Chadic languages, although they have been assigned to different language clusters by (Shimizu 1978).
This first publication on Za:r is part of a work that first started in 1991 in Azare and has now taken the shape of a lifelong enterprise. The general purpose of describing the Za:r language is to help put on the linguistic map a language spoken by about 150 000 speakers in the South of Bauchi State, Nigeria, and mainly in the ogoro Local Governme...
A l'occasion de mes enquêtes sur les langues Sud-Bauchi West (SBW), j'ai pu me rendre dans le village de Luri le 31 décembre 2001, puis à nouveau le 29 octobre 2002. J'ai cherché à en savoir un peu plus, et voici ce que j'ai trouvé. A une quinzaine de km au sud-est de Bauchi, au nord du Nigeria, près de Langas (9,83° Est ; 10,17° Nord), à flanc de...
In 1999, Bernard Caron arrived in the north of Nigeria on the trail of Zaar, a language that was numerically the most important of the group of Chadic languages about which precious little was known. He has written a story about this research which "Le Gré des Langues" published in French as a series from 1995 to 1997. The text was translated into...
Around the word “field” come to crystallise contrasting views, debates, sometimes unnecessary disputes about what should be a specific type of linguistics by its methodologies and its objectives. It appears, however, to be more legitimate to associate it with the manner of being a linguist when, at certain moments, the discovery of a language canno...
According to [NEWMAN, 1990 : 202], Zaar (which he calls Saya) belongs to the the West-B3 group of Chadic languages, with some doubts arising from the properties it shares with Angas. The names derived from the root 'Saya' (i.e. Bàsayèe (pl. Sayaawaa) for the speakers, and Sayancìi for the language) are the names used by the Hausas. The speakers cal...
Review of a wordlist of 8 south-Bauchi Chadic languages spoken in northern Nigeria
Descriptions of complex sentences in African languages generally focus on the presence/absence of conjunctions, whether co-ordinating or subordinating. When considering complex sentences without conjunctions, other elements are active in the integration of the dependent clause (D) into the matrix clause (M). The paper will present a list of the var...
Résumé Les concepts de préconstruit et d'assertion, mis au point dans le cadre de la théorie de l'énonciation, permettent une définition contrastive des phénomènes de topicalisation et de focalisation, et leur caractérisation en contexte. La topicalisation est l'articulation entre le topique, terme posé en tête d'énoncé, et la prédication qui le su...
La langue haoussa, parlée en Afrique de l'Ouest par plus de 50 millions de locuteurs, possède une littérature multiforme, témoin de la complexité d'une société héritière d'une tradition féodale séculaire, qui n'échappe pas à la réalité économique, sociale et politique moderne. Littérature tant orale qu'écrite. En effet, les Haoussa, par le biais de...
In this article the notions of old or presupposed vs. new information have been discarded for the definition of focus. We have stressed the necessity to articulate focus and assertion. Focussing can be defined as asserting the identification of the item which is focussed, while the predicate is outside the scope of assertion, considered by the spea...
It is common in languages of the world to have grammatical words deriving from lexical words, and more precisely adverbs and prepositions deriving from names of body parts. Hausa is no exception. If we have a look at prepositions, Hausa has few " true " prepositions: à('in, at on'), ì/yì/wà, 'relatively to', gà 'at', dà 'with', dàgà 'from', bìsà'...
Many West African languages, including Hausa and Fulfulde, have particles, traditionally called modal particles in Hausa, and modal constituants in Fulfulde, which may appear in topicalisation. These particles come to specify, from a semantic point of view, the nature of the topic. They are generally not translated in the examples that can be found...
Le haoussa de l'Ader est parlé au nord de Sokoto, dans la région de Tahoua, au Niger, à l'extrême Nord-Ouest de la zone de diffusion du haoussa. Les enquêtes faites pour Caron 91 concernent la partie nord de la région où le haoussa de l'Ader est parlé, et plus précisément, la vallée de Galmahoua-Keita. Dans cette vallée cohabitent Haoussas, Peuls e...
Proceedings of the Symposium on Democratic Transition in Africa. Ibadan, June 16-19, 1992.
