Die Wortklassen des Bambara: Bestand und Abgrenzung

Summary The article is a revised version of the author’s concept of word classes in Bambara first published in Lehrbuch den Bambara (Leipzig 1974). The problem is also discussed in modern Mande linguistic studies of various authors (Dumestre, Ebermann etc.). Trying to further develop Fries’ concept (The Structure of English, London 1963) of analysing word classes from their grammatical-syntactical distribution, four form classes and seven classes of functional words are recognised in Bambara. In addition to these two groups a third one is postulated: communicative-pragmatic words, which do not have any syntactic function nor do they serve to realise them, they only modify the speech intention and the communication process.