The Kifuliiru Language, Vol. 1: Phonology, Tone, and Morphological Derivation

This volume on Kifuliiru, a Bantu (J) language of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and its companion volume, The Kifuliiru Language, Volume 2: A Descriptive Grammar (ISBN: 9781556712791), is one of the most thorough and yet readable Bantu grammars available.

This two volume set comprises "one of the most comprehensive grammars of any Bantu language. "
--Derek Nurse, Research Professor in the Linguistics Department, Memorial University

Designed primarily as language documentation rather than as theoretical analysis, these volumes aim at a thorough presentation of the many interesting features found in a typical Interlacustrine Bantu (J) language.

A special highlight of this first volume is an unusually detailed and thorough autosegmental analysis of Kifuliiru tone, with emphasis on the realization of tone in an extensive variety of verbal forms and constructions, with and without various object prefixes and including passive and causative variations of most forms. This allows clear evaluation of the concomitant tonal changes. Whereas in most Bantu languages a high tone seems to contrast only with its absence, this thorough analysis of Kifuliiru indicates a synchronic three-way distinction in verbs between high (H), low (L), and toneless (Ø). Verbs of all three classes are used to illustrate each different grammatical tone pattern.

One chapter is dedicated to a detailed presentation of the morphology and morphophonology of derivation in Kifuliiru. Discussion of the verbal extensions includes the morphophonological and syntactic aspects as well as the semantic nuances of each extension. An exhaustive treatment of the formation of the resultative (often called perfective) form of the verb stem is also included.

The Kifuliiru Language, Two Volume Set is also available. Save 12% on the purchase over purchasing volumes separately.

Table of Contents

Dedication
List of Tables
Preface
Acknowledgments
Bafuliiru Foreward
A Brief Background to Writing Grammars in Africa by Derek Nurse
Abbreviations
Maps

1 Conventions
Language name and classification
Dialects
Previous language work; contributors to the present work
Conventions

2 Phonology
Phoneme inventory
Phonetic realization and distribution of phonemes
Phonological rules and processes
Syllable structure, word structure, and syllable prominence

3 Tone
Assumptions from autosegmental theory
The tone-bearing unit: mora or syllable?
Tone inventory
Functional load of tone
Tone on verbs
Extratonality of the final syllable in nouns and verbs
General characteristics of tone association in Kifuliiru
General rules affecting tone at the word level
Lexical tone of verbal affixes
Tone on nouns
Tone on other parts of speech
General rules affecting the tones of words on the phraseand clause level
Downdrift
Floating L tones and (non-automatic) downstep

4 Derivational processes
Noun derivations
Verb derivations
Adjectives derived from verbs
Adverbs derived from verbs

5 Verb stems
Extensions: General considerations
Degrees of productivity in extensions
Relative order of extensions
Extensions and their relationship to valence
Productive extensions
Non-productive extensions and expansions
Other suffixes (expansions)
Various extension combinations
The resultative final: Structural considerations

Appendix: Determining word boundaries and related orthography issues
The relevant units: words, affixes, and clitics
Phonological indicators of word boundaries
Grammatical indicators of word boundaries in verbs
Other word break issues

References
Person index
Language index
Overall index