Synopsis:

This is the first modern grammar and dictionary of Sherbro, an endangered Mel language spoken by ca. 50,000 people in Sierra Leone. The language faces significant pressure being abandoned in favor of the lingua francas Mende, Themne, Krio, and English. The previous grammar, while competently done, was written in 1921 as a handbook for missionaries. The autonym for the language is Bolom; however, speakers of the language while speaking Krio or English use “Sherbro” to refer to themselves and their language, so that practice is followed here. The grammar and dictionary are based on field data collected as part of a four-year research project (2016-2020), “Documenting the Sherbro Language and Culture,” funded by the Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Documentation Programme. An archive of the project is permanently housed by the Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR), www.elar-archive.org including the FLEx database, more than 30 glossed transcriptions and more than 150 recordings. This book is intended as a resource for linguists and Sherbro speakers, learners, and educators.

This book provides a first-ever comprehensive overview of the grammatical structure of Fwe. Fwe is a Bantu language spoken on the border between Zambia and Namibia, by some 20,000 people. Very little previous documentation exists on the language, and the current description of Fwe is based exclusively on newly collected field data. It includes an analysis of the grammatical structure of Fwe, followed by basic cultural information on greetings, a Fwe narrative with its English translation, and a lexicon comprising some 2200 Fwe lexemes with their English translation. This book is intended as a resource for linguists, whether interested in African languages, Bantu languages, language typology, or general linguistics.

This book is a dictionary and grammar sketch of Ruruuli-Lunyala, a Great Lakes Bantu language spoken by over 200,000 people in central Uganda. The dictionary part includes about 10,000 entries. Each lexical entry provides translations into English, example sentences, and basic grammatical information. The dictionary part is supplemented with an outline of the Ruruuli-Lunyala grammar, which treats most of the phonological and morpho-syntactic topics. This book is a result of a joined effort of a large team of linguists and many speakers of Ruruuli-Lunyala and is intended as a resource for linguists and Ruruuli-Lunyala speakers, learners, and educators.

This book presents an extensive dictionary of the Dagaare language (Niger-Congo; Gur (Mabia)), focussing on the dialect of Central Dagaare, spoken in the Upper West region of Ghana. The dictionary provides comprehensive definitions, example sentences and the English translations, phonetic forms, inflected forms, etymological notes as well as information dialectal variation. This work is intended as a resource for linguists, but also as a resource for Dagaare speakers. Also included is a grammatical sketch of Dagaare contributed by Prof. Adams Bodomo.

This book is the first comprehensive monograph dedicated to Chakali, a Southwestern Grusi language spoken by less than 3500 people in northwest Ghana. The dictionary offers a consistent description of word meaning and provides the basis for future research in the linguistic area. It is also designed to provide an inventory of correspondence with English usage in a reversal index. The concepts used in the dictionary are explained in a grammar outline, which is of interest to specialists in Gur and Grusi linguistics, as well as any language researchers working in this part of the world.

This grammar provides the first comprehensive grammatical description of Moloko, a Chadic language spoken by about 10,000 speakers in northern Cameroon. The grammar was developed from hours and years that the authors spent at friends’ houses hearing and recording stories, hours spent listening to the tapes and transcribing the stories, then translating them and studying the language through them. Time was spent together and with others speaking the language and talking about it, translating resources and talking to Moloko people about them. Grammar and phonology discoveries were made in the office, in the fields while working, and at gatherings. In the process, the four authors have become more and more passionate about the Moloko language and are eager to share their knowledge about it with others. Intriguing phonological aspects of Moloko include the fact that words have a consonantal skeleton and only one underlying vowel (but with ten phonetic variants). The simplicity of the vowel system contrasts with the complexity of the verb word, which can include information (in addition to the verbal idea) about subject, direct object (semantic Theme), indirect object (recipient or beneficiary), direction, location, aspect (Imperfective and Perfective), mood (indicative, irrealis, iterative), and Perfect aspect. Some of the fascinating aspects about the grammar of Moloko include transitivity issues, question formation, presupposition, and the absence of simple adjectives as a grammatical class. Most verbs are not inherently transitive or intransitive, but rather the semantics is tied to the number and type of core grammatical relations in a clause. Morphologically, two types of verb pronominals indicate two kinds of direct object; both are found in ditransitive clauses. Noun incorporation of special ‘body-part’ nouns in some verbs adds another grammatical argument and changes the lexical characteristics of the verb. Clauses of zero transitivity can occur in main clauses due to the use of dependent verb forms and ideophones. Question formation is interesting in that the interrogative pronoun is clause-final for most constructions. The clause will sometimes be reconfigured so that the interrogative pronoun can be clause-final. Expectation is a foundational pillar for Moloko grammar. Three types of irrealis mood relate to speaker’s expectation concerning the accomplishment of an event. Clauses are organised around the concept of presupposition, through the use of the na-construction. Known or expected elements are marked with the na particle. There are no simple adjectives in Moloko; all adjectives are derived from nouns. The authors invite others to further explore the intricacies of the phonology and grammar of this intriguing language.

This book is a dictionary and grammar sketch of Ik, one of the three Kuliak (Rub) languages spoken in the beautiful Karamoja region of northeastern Uganda. It is the lexicographic sequel to A grammar of Ik (Icé-tód): Northeast Uganda’s last thriving Kuliak language (Schrock 2014). The present volume includes an Ik-English dictionary with roughly 8,700 entries, followed by a reversed English-Ik index. These two main sections are then supplemented with an outline of Ik grammar that is comprehensive in its coverage of topics and written in a simple style, using standard linguistic terminology in a way that is accessible to interested non-linguists as well. This book may prove useful for language preservation and development among the Ik people, as a reference tool for non-Ik learners of the language, and as a source of data, not only for the comparative study of Kuliak but also the wider Afroasiatic and Nilo- Saharan language families.