Rennison. Koromfe.pdf

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Koromfe

Strong linguistic and ecological pressures are gradually pushing Koromfe,

a local language spoken in the north of Burkina Faso, West Africa, towards

extinction. Spoken by, at the most, 10,000 people, Koromfe has defied

political and cultural domination by other local languages.

Few other researchers have studied Koromfe in such depth and this is the

first detailed linguistical analysis of its kind, consequently providing data

which sheds light on many previously unanswered questions concerning both

Koromfe and genetic and general linguistic issues. The information which

constitutes this De.scriptive Grammar is based on field work conducted by the

author. As a Gur or Voltaic language, the author shows how Koromfe shares

many phonological, lexical, morphologi<;al and syntactic affinities with other

such languages.

John R. Rennison

is currently Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at the Univer-

sity of Vienna. He has worked extensively on the theory of phonology and

morphology, and has worked on Koromfe for sixteen years.

Descriptive Grammars

Series Editor: Bernard Comrie

University of Southern California

ADVISORY BOARD

W.S. Allen, Cambridge University

J.T. Bendor Samuel, Summer Institute of Linguistics

D.C. Derbyshire, Summer Institute of Linguistics

R.M.W. Dixon, Australian National University

M.E. Krauss, University of Alaska

B. Krishnamurti, Osmania University

Lastra, National Autonomo,us University of Mexico

S.A. Wurm, Australian National University

ABKHAZ

B.G. Hewitt

KOBON

J. Davies

MANGARAYI

F. Merlan

TAMIL

R.E. Asher

WEST GREENLANDIC

M. Fortescue

JAPANESE

J. Hinds

RUMANIAN

G. Mallison

MODERN GREEK

B.D. Joseph and

Philippaki-Warburton

AMELE

J. Roberts

BASQUE

M. Saltarelli

GULF ARABIC

Clive Holes

KANNADA

S.N. Sridhar

FINNISH

H. Sulkala and M. Karjalainen

CATALAN

Jose Ignacio Hualde

PUNJABI

Tej K. Bhatia

MAORI

Winifred Bauer

KOREAN

Ho-min Sohn

NDYUKA

George

Huttar and

Mary

Huttar

RAPANUI

Veronica Du Feu

NIGERIAN PIDGIN

Nicholas G. Faraclas

WARI'

Daniel L. Everett and

Barbara Kern

EVENKI

Igor Nedjalkov

KASHMIRI

Kashi Wali and Omkar N. Koul

MALTESE

Albert Borg and

Marie Azzopardi-Alexander

Editorial statement

Until quite recently, work on theoretical linguistics and work on language

description proceeded almost entirely in isolation from one another. Work on

theoretical linguistics, especially in syntax, concentrated primarily on

English, and its results were felt to be inapplicable to those interested in

describing other languages. Work on describing individual languages was

almost deliberately isolationist, with the development of a different frame-

lang~age

work and terminology for each language or language group, and no feeding

of the achievements of language description into linguistic theory. Within the

last few years, however, a major rapprochement has taken place between

theoretical and descriptive linguistics. In particular, the rise of language

typology and the study of language universals have produced a large number

of theoreticians who require accurate, well-formulated descriptive data from

a wide range of languages, and have shown descriptive linguists that they can

both derive benefit from and contribute to the development of linguistic

theory. Even within generative syntax, long the bastion of linguistic anglo-

centrism, there is an increased interest in the relation between syntactic

theory and a wide range of language types.

For a really fruitful interaction between theoretical and descriptive lin-

guistics, it is essential that descriptions of different languages should be

comparable. The

Questionnaire

of the present series (originally published as

Lingua,

vol. 42 (1977), no. 1) provides a framework for the description of a

language that is (a) sufficiently comprehensive to cover the major structures

of any language that are likely to be of theoretical interest; (b) sufficiently

explicit to make cross-language comparisons a feasible undertaking (in

particular, through the detailed numbering key); and (c) sufficiently flexible

to encompass the range of variety that is found in human language. The

volumes that were published in the predecessor to the present series, the

Lingua Descriptive Studies

(now available from Routledge), succeeded in

bridging the gap between theory and description: authors include both

theoreticians who are also interested in description and field workers with an

interest in theory.

Editorial statement

The aim of the Descriptive Grammars is thus to provide descriptions of a

wide range of languages according to the format set out in the

Questionnaire.

Each language will be covered in a single volume. The first priority of the

series is grammars of languages for which detailed descriptions are not at

present available. However, the series will also encompass descriptions of

better-known languages with the series framework providing more detailed

descriptions of such languages than are currently available (as with the

monographs on West Greenlandic and Kannada).

Bernard Comrie

Rennison. Koromfe.pdf

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