Groundwork in Generative Grammar: Focus on African Languages

Many languages have been described insightfully within the rubrics of Chomsky's generative grammar to test the validity of the framework. The studies carried out have contributed to the development of this grammar and account for the change in perspective in its evolution from 1957 (Syntactic Structure) to the present (the Minimalist Program). African languages are yet to contribute substantially to the development of generative grammar. The book surveys and describes a wide range of linguistic phenomena, in particular, the nature of syntactic categories as the building blocks and units of grammatical analysis in these languages within the generative framework. It maintains that many functional heads that introduce lexical categories are characteristically multifunctional. Some have heterogeneous origins and heterogeneous positions in the clause. The multifunctionality and hetergeneous nature of these markers may affect clause typing and the interpretation of a sentence. Even where a marker has a fixed position, it may show variation in its phonology. There are properties exhibited by these languages that cannot be straightforwardly accounted for within generative grammar.

Autorentext
Florence A. E. Tabe is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of African Languages and Linguistics at the University of Yaounde 1.Pius N. Tamanji was a Professor of Linguistics in the Department of African Languages and Linguistics at the University of Yaounde 1.