An Introduction to African Languages

by G. Tucker Childs

This book introduces beginning students and non-specialists to the diversity and richness of African languages. In addition to providing a solid background to the study of African languages, the book presents linguistic phenomena not found in European languages. A goal of this book is to stimulate interest in African languages and address the question: What makes African languages so fascinating? The orientation adopted throughout the book is a descriptive one, which seeks to characterize African languages in a relatively succinct and neutral manner, and to make the facts accessible to a wide variety of readers. The author’s lengthy acquaintance with the continent and field experiences in western, eastern, and southern Africa allow for both a broad perspective and considerable depth in selected areas. The original examples are often the author’s own but also come from other sources and languages not often referenced in the literature. This text also includes a set of sound files illustrating the phenomena under discussion, be they the clicks of Khoisan, talking drums, or the ideophones (words like English lickety-split ) found almost everywhere, which will make this book a valuable resource for teacher and student alike.

Genres: Language, Linguistics

285 pages, Paperback

First published December 19, 2003

Reviews

[Christopher]

George Tucker Child's AN INTRODUCTION TO AFRICAN LANGUAGES, published by John Benjamins in 2003, presents the unique and peculiar features of this region's languages. The book is accessible to undergraduates, but it does demand prior courses in phonological and morphological theory and a willingness to follow references (Childs keeps things generally simple, but he'll pique your interest with lots of citations to theories too detailed to go into in this book).

The book covers the entire continent, not just Sub-Saharan Africa, but North Africa as well. It falls roughly into five parts. This first discusses the genetic grouping of African languages, with a good overview of the polemics and the major figures. The second portion is a look at the phonological peculiarities of African languages, such as click sounds, vowel harmony and insanely complicated tone systems. The third portion is morphology and syntax, covering e.g. Afro-Asiatic's non-concatenative morphology. The fourth part concerns typology, while the fifth part is the sociolinguistic aspect. The book comes with a CD that is very useful to really understand the phonology.

My own field is Indo-European, Uralic and Altaic linguistics. I found Childs' book an accessible and entertaining introduction to the interesting features to be found on the African continent, and I certainly learnt quite a lot (talking drums!).