The Mambay ethnic area

A Grammar of Mambay

An Adamawa Language of Chad and Cameroon

Author: Erik John Anonby. Series edited by: Roger M. Blench.

Series: KWEF Kay Williamson Educational Foundation – African Languages Monographs Volume 4

This book provides a window into the lives and language of the Mambay, a group of 15,000 people on the banks of the Kebbi River in south-western Chad and north-western Cameroon.

The study first situates the Mambay language, a member of the Adamawa-Ubangi division of Niger-Congo, within its historical and sociolinguistic context. This is followed by a thorough description of the phonology, where special consideration is given to nasality and an underlyingly two-level tone system exhibiting downstep as well as pragmatic employment of intonational register shift.

Other striking phenomena include a profoundly phonologized labial flap and a rich vowel inventory with contrastive length, nasalization, glottalization and pharyngealization. In the discussion of morphology, attention is dedicated to a pervasive “free vs. linked” distinction in noun forms and a series of innovative noun prefixes unrelated to wider Niger-Congo noun class prefixes. Additional highlights include logophoric pronouns, a rich system of TAM (tense/aspect/mood) inflection marked on both pronouns and verbs, and an array of ideophones generated by morphological templates.

A section on clauses and clause combinations concludes the grammar, situating word classes within the context of syntax and discourse. Inter­linearized texts rich in cultural detail are presented from a variety of genres: song, legend, fable and proverb.

Table of contents

Five interlinearized Mambay Texts (see PDF documents below)

As a complement of the grammar, a Dictionnaire Mambay–Français has been published in the same series, see the link below.

Under these links you will find further descriptions of Adamawa languages and cultures:

Accompanying material:

• A Study of Mambila – Emmi Meyer’s Mambila-Studie (ISBN 978-3-89645-234-4)
• Afrikanische Sprachen im Fokus (ISBN 978-3-89645-196-5)
• Contes des Bakas (Sud-Est Cameroun) (ISBN 978-3-89645-272-6)
• Dictionnaire dii (dourou) — français avec indexes français et anglais (ISBN 978-3-89645-432-4)
• Dictionnaire mambay-français. Index français-mambay (ISBN 978-3-89645-430-0)
• Die Sprache der Fali in Nordkamerun (ISBN 978-3-89645-561-1)
• Historical Perspectives on Chamba Daka (ISBN 978-3-927620-47-6)
• Linguistische Beschreibung des Kolbila (ISBN 978-3-89645-569-7)

Cross-reference:

• Current Approaches to Adamawa and Gur Languages (ISBN 978-3-89645-233-7)
• Mechthildian Approaches to Afrikanistik – Advances in Language Based Research on Africa (ISBN 978-3-89645-226-9)
• Proceedings of the 4th WOCAL World Congress of African Linguistics, New Brunswick 2003 (ISBN 978-3-89645-338-9)
• Proceedings of the 6th WOCAL World Congress of African Linguistics, Cologne, 17-21 August 2009 (ISBN 978-3-89645-199-6)
• Transitivity in African Languages (ISBN 978-3-89645-726-4)
• Vorkoloniale Geschichte und Expansion der Avungara-Azande (ISBN 978-3-89645-209-2)

© 2024 by Rüdiger Köppe Verlag – www.koeppe.de

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