Studies in the Phonological Structure of Bantu languages

班图语语音结构研究

• 批准号: 9421362
• 负责人: David Odden
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Ohio State University Research Foundation -DO NOT USE
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing grant
• 财政年份: 1995
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1995-02-01 至 1998-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9421362&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Studies; Phonological; Structure; Bantu; languages

9421362 The Bantu languages of Africa have played a major role in the development of current phonological theory. One reason for the continued importance of the phonology of Bantu languages is that de- spite a basic similarity between the languages, the abstract building blocks of grammars are arranged differently in each language, so that every language poses new empirical puzzles. Bantu languages are particularly rich in the area of prosodic phenomena tones, vowel length and syllabification and often have highly developed systems of prosodic rules that apply at the sentence level. While quality descriptions of the phonology of perhaps a dozen Bantu languages are available, there are around 400 Bantu languages spoken in Africa, so one can accurately say that the surface has only been scratched in studying the phonology of Bantu languages. The goal of this three-year project is to provide a more solid empirical foundation for the study of the grammatical structure of Bantu languages, focusing on problems in the phonology of certain languages spoken in Southern Kenya, Northern Tanzania and Southern Uganda. Four languages are targeted for extensive investigation in this project, specifically Kikerewe, Runyankore, Bukusu and Kikamba. None of these languages has received adequate attention in terms of their phonological systems, especially in terms of tone and syllable structure. Working with native speakers of these languages, the research team will elicit lexical items and grammatical paradigms, including inflectional paradigms and phrasal constructions, to determine the range of phonological alternations attested in these languages. Simultaneously these data will be analyzed; hypotheses will be formed regarding the principles which explain the distribution of the available data. By collecting and analyzing the data simultaneously, errors and omissions in the data will be detected quickly and hypotheses can be tested against a wider range of const ructions. The data and analyses generated by this project will then be disseminated as a special issue of the Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics, and through journal articles and monograph-length publications.

9421362非洲的班图语在当前音系学理论的发展中发挥了重要作用。班图语音系学仍然重要的一个原因是，尽管语言之间有基本的相似之处，但语法的抽象构件在每种语言中的排列方式不同，因此每种语言都提出了新的经验谜题。班图语在韵律现象、声调、元音长度和音节方面特别丰富，往往有高度发达的韵律规则体系，适用于句子层面。虽然有可能有十几种班图语语音的高质量描述，但非洲大约有400种班图语，因此可以准确地说，在研究班图语的语音方面只触及了皮毛。这个为期三年的项目的目标是为研究班图语言的语法结构提供更坚实的经验基础，重点是肯尼亚南部、坦桑尼亚北部和乌干达南部某些语言的音系学问题。该项目针对四种语言进行广泛调查，特别是Kikerewe、Runyankore、Bukusu和Kikamba。这些语言在语音系统方面都没有得到足够的重视，特别是在声调和音节结构方面。研究小组将与以这些语言为母语的人合作，得出词条和语法范例，包括屈折范例和短语结构，以确定这些语言中证明的音位变化的范围。同时，将对这些数据进行分析；将形成关于解释现有数据分布的原则的假设。通过同时收集和分析数据，可以快速发现数据中的错误和遗漏，并可以针对更广泛的假设范围检验假设。该项目产生的数据和分析随后将作为俄亥俄州立大学语言学工作论文的特刊以及通过期刊文章和专著长度的出版物进行传播。