Thursday, February 26, 2009

Department Colloquium, March 9

Date: March 9
Time: 3:30 - 4:30
Place: C2033

Authors: Sarah Rose, Derek Nurse, John Hewson

Abstract:
The structure of the verb in the non-Bantu Niger-Congo languages.

This talk provides an update on the ongoing research program of the
Memorial University Bantu Working Group. We present a summary of our current
research into the verbal categories of tense and aspect in the non-Bantu languages of
West and Central Africa. Our primary focus will be how the verbal structures of
these understudied languages differ in significant ways from the better-studied
Bantu languages of East and Southern Africa. Topics addressed include: agglutinating (synthetic) verbal morphology (typical of Bantu) vs. isolating
(analytic) structures (typical of non-Bantu Niger-Congo); tense- prominent vs. aspect prominent languages; and how time is expressed in a tenseless language.

No comments:

Post a Comment