Table Of ContentSchriften zur Afrikanistik
Research in African Studies
Herausgegeben von Rainer Vossen
Band 12
PETERLANG
Frankfurt am Main • Berlin ■ Bern • Bruxelles • New York • Oxford - Wien
William A. A. Wilson
Guinea Languages
of the Atlantic Group
Description and Internal Classification
Edited by Anne Storch
PETERLANG
Europ&ischer Verlag derWissenschaften
Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche
Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the
Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is
available in the internet at <http://www.d-nb.de>.
Redaktion:
Sonja Ermisch
ISSN 1436-1183
nSBN-10: 3-631-55170-3
ISBN-13: 978-3-631-55170-7
US-ISBN: 0-8204-9891-2
© Peter Lang GmbH
Europaischer Verlag der Wissenschaften
Frankfurt am Main 2007
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Foreword
Historical linguistics is based on and depends on essentially two fun
damental conditions and activities, i.e. on solid descriptive data, and on
sound methods in language comparison. Especially in the African con
text, where written records on languages are hardly available, the basic
description of individual languages is a conditio-sine-qua-non; only after
carefully transforming the orally existing linguistic facts into written
material can we start going about comparative and reconstructive work.
And with such descriptive data - as with anything in life - it is less
important how much than how good it is.
These are some of the reasons why W.A.A. WlLSON's data collected
some forty years ago on minority languages of the (West) Atlantic group
- the names of which are hardly known up to the present - is of great
value and importance. The name of W.A.A. Wilson, whom I have
known for almost forty years and whose contributions to the West
African Languages Congresses have always been highly valued by all of
us for their undoubted solidity and correctness, guarantees quality. In
addition, the fact that Anne STORCH - herself a young scholar of excellent
standing - has volunteered to take on the burden of editing Wilson's
linguistic materials is laudable in itself and strengthens our confidence in
the new linguistic source material made available and accessible to the
linguistic community by the present volume.
Herrmann Jungraithmayr
Preface
This book is intended to fill the gap in the literature that is currently
available to scholars and students of Atlantic languages. Most publi
cations on the Atlantic group as a whole are written for surveys of Niger-
Congo or the languages of Africa and do not contain detailed data and
examples of the linguistic structures of the group's individual languages.
Even though an already large number of monographs on Atlantic lan
guages have appeared during the last decades, there is still nothing
available on such languages as Nalu, or the fast disappearing Cobiana
and Cassanga. Our task has been twofold: to present data on the Atlantic
languages spoken from the Casamance to Sierra Leone, in such a way
that it is understandable and comparable in terms of the various gram
matical features, morphemes and structures both in Atlantic and in
Niger-Congo as a whole, and also easily available to scholars who are
interested in languages on which otherwise no published data would be
accessible.
We have undertaken this task with certain considerations in mind.
Because most of the material presented here was collected many years
ago, a sketch of Wilson's field trip in the Atlantic area is included. The
introductory part of the book also contains an overview of Atlantic and
its internal classification, and a list of the coastal Atlantic languages of
the Guinea Republic, compiled from information given by Erhard
Voeltz, to whom we are very indebted for giving us access to his data,
and for his fascinating ideas.
The descriptive part of the work contains sketches of 17 Atlantic
languages and of some of their subgroups, covering phonology, mor
phology and syntactical patterns. The languages are listed roughly from
north to south. Well-studied languages like Fula and Wolof have not
been included, for they are the subject of a huge number of publications
already, and they were not in our research focus.
The third part consists of comparative wordlists based on Swadesh's
"First 100". We have included all Atlantic languages on which material
was available, both from personal field data and from published sources.
The late Professor Malcolm Guthrie was the inspirer of this research. It
was he who had invited Wilson, when about to graduate from Cam
8 W.A.A. Wilson & Anne Storch
bridge in 1951, to apply for a studentship to join his Africa Department
at SOAS, London, and in due course, by the clarity of his lectures on
Bantu grammar, gave him a model to aspire to.
Unfortunately on his return from Guinea, Wilson's career took a sud
den turn away from Atlantic, preventing the writing of more than hand
ful of articles on the subject, until his retirement, when he could return to
his Guinea notebooks.
We must acknowledge the kindness of the many Portuguese admin
istrative officers and traders, and of the missionaries, who made Wil
son's work possible in their various ways, giving him hospitality, ar
ranging his travel, and putting him in contact with the many excellent
informants with whom it was always a stimulating adventure to work,
and who deserve our warmest thanks.
The initial typesetting of the manuscripts was carried out by Antje
Helfrich, Bernhard Kohler and Melanie Schucht, to whom we are
indebted for their careful and painstaking work. We are also grateful to
Roger Blench, Marie-Paule Ferry, Konstantin Pozdniakov and Rosine
Santos for their many useful comments, suggestions and encourage
ment. We thank Gabriele Tauchnitz for drawing the maps.
We are delighted and grateful that John Stewart has agreed to "come
on board", with his own special insights. He and Wilson first met in
1951, outside the interview room where both were accepted for graduate
studentships in African studies at SOAS, and they remained colleagues,
there and later in Ghana, for many years. Just recently he has been ex
tending his interest westwards from the Ivory Coast, to look at Atlantic
in the light of his extensive knowledge of (Western) Kwa and Proto
Bantu relationships.
We are very much indebted to Tucker Childs for his many helpful
comments and suggestions and for making his bibliographies available
to Anne STORCH. We also thank Erhard Voeltz for supplying us -
besides his data - with many otherwise unknown references.
We are very grateful to Professor Herrmann Jungraithmayr for his most
generous Foreword and for his encouragement, and to Professor Rainer
VOSSEN for his support in making it possible for Anne STORCH to edit this
work. We also thank the anonymous referees of the series for their many
constructive remarks.
Preface 9
Most of all Wilson owes a huge debt of thanks to Anne Storch,
without whom this volume could not have appeared. Ever since she first
wrote to him some seven years ago she has expressed interest in his ma
terial, saying she felt sure her Institute could have it published in some
form, and eventually suggesting he send his typescripts to her for
editing.
Southborough and Frankfurt am Main, 2005 W.A.A. W. and A. S.
Abbreviations
zero morpheme or segment
o
+ plus
< stems from, derived from
equal to
> becomes
* hypothetical or ungrammatical
~c latent prenasal
Id 1st person dual
Ip, 2p, 3p 1st, 2nd, 3rd person plural
Ipi 1st person plural inclusive
IPX 1st person plural exclusive
IS, 2S, 3S 1st, 2nd, 3rd person singular
3SO 3rd person singular object
Aff affirmative
ANIM animate
ANPS after noun phrase subject
Ass assertive
ATR advanced tongue root
Ben benefactive
bNPS before noun phrase subject
C consonant
CM consonant mutation
Cop copula
COP copula
Csv causative
D dual
Def definite
Dem demonstrative
+DF definite
-DF indefinite
Disadv disadvantage
DP dependent prefix
Emph emphasis
EX exclusive
FUT
future
