Buch, Englisch, Band 39, 150 Seiten
A Wordlist of Eight South Bauchi (West Chadic) Languages: Boghom, Buli, Dott, Geji, Jimi, Polci, Sayanci and Zul
Buch, Englisch, Band 39, 150 Seiten
Reihe: LINCOM Studies in African Linguistics
ISBN: 978-3-89586-931-0
Verlag: LINCOM
The South Bauchi group of languages, spoken in northern Nigeria is the least studied subfamily of West Chadic. The body of this document consists of a lexicon of 852 words from eight South Bauchi (Barawa) languages: Jimi, Zul, Geji, Polci, Dott, Sayanci, Buli and Boghom. Most of these languages could be called endangered; only Sayanci, the largest, is relatively secure, and some of the languages have only a few hundred speakers. Nearly all speakers are bilingual in Hausa, which has had a considerable influence on the lexicons and grammars of these languages.
For scholars interested in comparative linguistics, these languages should be of maximal use, as they represent geographic extremes of the family.
Items in the lexicon are organized according to semantic and syntactic categories: semantic categories of nouns are followed by adjectives, numerals, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions and a number of categories of verb. This organization reflects a cognitive structure useful in fieldwork with native speakers, and academic and general users of these wordlists should also find this topical mode of presentation helpful. The wordlists are preceded by an introduction and outline of the phonologies of the languages.
