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Kam pronouns: synchrony and diachronic hypotheses

Domain:

natural language processing

Record type:

paper
Creator:
Lesage, Jakob
Editor:
HumHum
Publisher:
Hum
Host:avatar
This paper presents the pronominal system of Kam (Nigeria, ISO 639-3: kdx) within the broader context of Niger-Congo languages. It presents two key contributions: (1) a refined analysis of animacy distinctions in Kam's third-person singular pronouns, and (2) the first explicit comparative study of Kam's pronouns in relation to other Niger-Congo languages. The findings provide new evidence supporting Kam's classification within Niger-Congo. The study also identifies a distinctive third-person plural pronoun (í), which may reflect a shared innovation with neighboring languages like Mumuyic and Yendangic, raising questions about Kam’s areal and genealogical relationships. Additionally, Kam’s pronominal system exhibits features common in the Macro-Sudan Belt, such as logophoric pronouns and subject-tense-aspect-mood-polarity (STAMP) morphs. The paper argues that while Kam lacks a traditional noun class system, its pronominal animacy distinctions recall patterns found in some Ubangi languages further eastwards.

Visit

doi.orgedoc.hu-berlin.de

Languages

Kam

Tags

Kam languageNyingwom languageNiger-Congopronominal systemanimacy distinctionsgendernoun classlanguage classificationhistorical linguisticstypology+3

Licenses

(CC BY 4.0) Attribution 4.0 InternationalCreative Commons Attribution 4.0 Internationalhttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode

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