Studies in the Phonological Structure of Bantu languages

非洲的班图语在当今音系理论的发展中起了重要作用。班图语的音韵学一直很重要的一个原因是，尽管这些语言之间有基本的相似性，但每种语言的抽象语法构建块的排列方式不同，因此每种语言都提出了新的经验难题。班图语在韵律现象、音调、元音长度和音节化方面尤其丰富，并且通常具有高度发达的韵律规则系统，适用于句子层面。虽然对大约12种班图语言的音韵有高质量的描述，但在非洲有大约400种班图语言，所以人们可以准确地说，班图语言的音韵研究只是触及了表面。这个为期三年的项目的目标是为班图语语法结构的研究提供更坚实的经验基础，重点研究肯尼亚南部、坦桑尼亚北部和乌干达南部某些语言的音系问题。在这个项目中有四种语言作为广泛调查的目标，特别是Kikerewe， Runyankore， Bukusu和Kikamba。这些语言在语音系统方面，特别是在声调和音节结构方面都没有得到足够的重视。与这些语言的母语人士合作，研究小组将引出词汇项目和语法范式，包括屈折变化范式和短语结构，以确定这些语言中音位变化的范围。同时，这些数据将被分析；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，并且可以根据更广泛的结构来测试假设。这个项目产生的数据和分析将作为《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传播。

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.