Pferde, Schwerter und Macht

Eine historisch-vergleichende Studie zu Kulturwortfeldern in den Oti-Volta-Sprachen

Author: Klaus Beyer. Series edited by: Gudrun Miehe, Brigitte Reineke, Manfred von Roncador.

Series: Gur Monographs · Monographies Voltaïques Volume 2

1998
238 pp.
9 maps, 1 figure: language family tree of Gur languages, numerous tables and charts
Text language(s): German
Format: 170 x 240 mm
420 g
Paperback
€ 49.80

Buy 'Pferde, Schwerter und Macht' as a downloadable PDF document directly from our online shop »

Order 'Pferde, Schwerter und Macht' as print edition »

The present book on cultural semantic fields in the Oti-Volta languages is placed in the tradition of comparative and historical africanistics, bordering on the neighbouring disciplines of ethnology and history. Starting with a comparative analysis of selected cultural semantic fields, this work aims at proposing a relative chronology of the development of the lexicon and to phases of cultural development. Thus, this study operates on the assumption that the formation and development of cultural vocabulary to a certain extend reflects the cultural history of the speakers of a given language and can be used for ethno-historical argumentation.

It is also concerned with the question of how far linguistic analysis is actually able to trace cultural developments. The geographical background to this study is the upper Volta basin, the Atakora mountains of Northern Benin and Northern Togo, and the Gambaga plateau in Northern Ghana. This being a relatively isolated region, the various languages and cultures of the different ethnic groups developed continuously without extreme external influence. Thus, on the one hand, foreign influence on the languages dealt with is easier to detect and to chronologize, on the other hand the development of the various subsystems of the languages, for example the lexicon, is better understood.

The study consists of three parts. The first part explains the methodological framework on which the analysis is based. The second part gives an overview of the state of the art of the three relevant disciplines africanistics, ethnology, and history in respect of the languages and ethnic groups of the region studied here.

The third part finally comprises the description and analysis of the cultural semantic fields. The book is concluded by an appendix including indices of languages, countries and speakers, the individual semantic fields, a genealogical tree, and maps of languages and divisions of selected lexemes.

By the same author a grammar of Pana was published with us, as well as several paper collections and contributions to them:

Accompanying material:

• Gur Languages and Nominal Classification Diversity (ISBN 978-3-89645-613-7)
• La langue pana (Burkina Faso et Mali) (ISBN 978-3-89645-117-0)
• Noun Class Systems in Gur Languages I + II (ISBN 978-3-89645-619-9)

Cross-reference:

• Afrikanische Sprachen im Brennpunkt der Forschung (ISBN 978-3-89645-121-7)
• Aktuelle Forschungen zu afrikanischen Sprachen (ISBN 978-3-89645-401-0)
• Current Approaches to Adamawa and Gur Languages (ISBN 978-3-89645-233-7)
• Language Change under Multilingual Conditions (ISBN 978-3-89645-724-0)
• Linguistics across Africa (ISBN 978-3-89645-510-9)
• Mechthildian Approaches to Afrikanistik – Advances in Language Based Research on Africa (ISBN 978-3-89645-226-9)

Reviews

« back

Print version

[top]