LINGUIST List 31.1066
Wed Mar 18 2020
Books: A GRAMMAR OF SEENKU: McPherson
Editor for this issue: Jeremy Coburn <jecoburnlinguistlist.org>
Date: 09-Mar-2020
From: Asja Kusnezowa <Asja.Kusnezowa
degruyter.com>
Subject: A GRAMMAR OF SEENKU: McPherson
E-mail this message to a friend Title: A GRAMMAR OF SEENKU
Series Title: Mouton Grammar Library [MGL]
Published: 2020
Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
http://www.degruyter.com/mouton
Book URL:
https://bit.ly/2vQEpnF Author: Laura McPherson
Hardback: ISBN: 9783110612950 Pages: 572 Price: U.S. $ 172.99
Abstract:
Seenku is a Western Mande language of the Samogo group spoken in southwestern Burkina Faso by approximately 17,000 speakers. It has undergone a lot of phonological reduction, leading to a rich segmental and tonal phoneme inventory but mainly mono- and sesquisyllabic roots. The language has four contrastive levels of tone that combine to create over a dozen contours. Tone has a high functional load lexically and grammatically, permeating all aspects of grammar. Most verbs have two stem forms: a realis form and an irrealis form. The realis is derived from the irrealis by infixing a high vowel before the stem vowel, creating a diphthong. The use of a particular stem form is determined by aspect and construction type, but most other morphosyntactic meanings (e.g. progressive aspect or causative) are expressed analytically. Like most Mande languages, Seenku has an S Aux O V X word order in addition to areal clause-final negation. It displays a reduced set of post-subject “predicate markers” compared to other Mande languages, and those that are attested are variably realized only by tone changes and lengthening on the subject itself.
Linguistic Field(s): Language Documentation
Linguistic Theories
Typology
Subject Language(s):
Seeku (sos) Language Family(ies): Niger-Congo
Areal Regions: African
Written In: English (eng)
See this book announcement on our website:
https://linguistlist.org/pubs/books/get-book.cfm?BookID=142036
Page Updated: 18-Mar-2020