Class Marking in Emai: Retention, Reduction, and Transformation of Inflectional Resources

(Hardback)

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Class Marking in Emai: Retention, Reduction, and Transformation of Inflectional Resources examines the retention, reduction, and transformation of inflectional resources pertaining to noun class in Emai, an Edoid language of south-central Nigeria. In the larger context of Benue Congo studies, in which some members of West Benue Congo are characterized by non-inflection and radical whereas classic Bantu and many of its East Benue Congo relatives show a non-analytic, agglutinative nature. Schaefer and Egbokhare demonstrate that in contrast to its Bantu relations, Emai retains form class prefixes on a relatively small group of nouns that distribute across eleven declension sets. Prefix addition rather than prefix alternation arises when ideophonic adverbials become syntactically displaced due to information structure and when Emai borrows lexical items from other languages. Reduction is evident in two primary domains: prefixes that alternate to express form class and grammatical number, and gender classes. Finally, transformation is evident in tonal, nominal and pronominal domains. Putting Emai and its noun class system into a broader cultural and archaeological context of historical language change, this book explores what it means to be a Benue Congo language with a reduced inflectional system.

Reviews

Emai is a critically endangered language only spoken by some 30,000 people living in a cluster of 10 villages in Edo state in Nigeria. Before it breathes it last, if it ever comes to that, Schaefer and Egbokhare have meticulously provided us with a fascinating morphological, syntactic, and semantic description of its class marking system. Their analyses show clearly that Emai straddles two major systems: the Bantu and the Niger-Congo. Their book is a treasure trove of linguistic reconstruction materials that can illuminate class marking systems in other languages. Their explanations have shed some light on of class marking systems in Anyi, an Akan language spoken as far away as Cote dIvoire. This book is a must-read for anybody interested in the linguistic reconstruction of class marking systems in African languages. -- Ettien Koffi, St. Cloud State University
A fascinating look at the reduced noun class marking in Emai, a non-canonical language of Benue-Congo spoken in Nigeria, by two of Africas leading scholars and Emai experts. The detailed description has implications for the morphological systems of Edoid, Benue-Congo, and even Niger-Congo. -- Tucker Childs, Portland State University

Author Bio

Ronald P. Schaefer is professor emeritus at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Francis O. Egbokhare is professor in the Department of Linguistics and African Languages at the University of Ibadan.