Date: 09-Mar-2007 From: Ulrich Lueders <lincom.europat-online.de> Subject: A Descriptive Grammar of KaThemne (Temne): Kamarah
Title: A Descriptive Grammar of KaThemne (Temne)
Series Title: Languages of the World/Materials 465
Published: 2007
Publisher: Lincom GmbH
http://www.lincom.eu
Author: Sheikh Umarr Kamarah
Paperback: ISBN: 9783895863554 Pages: 186 Price: Europe EURO 60.00
Abstract:
KaThemne (Temne), is a member of the South Atlantic sub-family of the larger Niger-Congo family of languages. It is one of the two major languages of the West African country of Sierra Leone. The language is spoken by over a million native speakers and over a million second language speakers. It is the regional lingua franca of the Northern Province of Sierra Leone. KaThemne has been known to, and studied by European linguists for over one and a half centuries. Because of its comprehensive Noun Class system, KaThemne has been compared to Bantu languages.
This volume is the first comprehensive description of the linguistic components of the language. The book is divided into four parts: Part 1 presents the language and its dialects. Part 2 deals with the segmental phonetics and phonology of the language. The phonemes of the language are fully described, and phonological rules presented. In Part 3, the morphology of KaThemne is presented. Both nominal and verbal morphology are thoroughly explored. Part 4 deals with the syntax (sentence structure) of the language. This section presents, among other things, the Temne syntactic categories and phrasal types. Following this description is a sample text with interlinear translation.
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