Lexical and Structural Diffusion Lexical and Structural Diffusion: Interplay of Internal and External Factors of Language Development in the West African Sahel

International audience This volume presents some of the results of the international co-operation initiated between three research centres, based in the Czech Republic, France and Germany. The Czech Research Team is based at Charles University Faculty of Humanities, supported by Research Projects No 405/99/0995 and 405/01/1180 (Grant Agency of the Czech Republic), and by the Grant Agency of the Charles University, Research Project No 289/2001/-FG/FHS. The French Research Team is based at the University of Nice and its ‘Bases, Corpus et Langage’ (UMR 6039, supported by the C.N.R.S.). The German research team is based at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt a. Main, and its Institut für Afrikanische Sprachwissenschaften, supported by the DFG. The roots of this co-operation were within the original Réseau, to become later the Groupement de Recherche Européen du C.N.R.S. No 1172 Diffusion lexicale with scholars from other institutions and their respective research projects, such as CNRS- LLACAN, Paris, Institut fur Afrikanistik, Universitàt Wien, Affikanistik 1, Universitàt Bayreuth, Istituto Orientale, Napoli, and later also individual scholars from St Petersburg and Moscow Universities, etc. joining the efforts of this European research group. Since 1998, the original co-operation has focused on lexical diffusion in the Sahel-Sahara région of Africa. (Nicolaï, Ed., 1997, Zima-Tax, Eds., 1998, Zima, Ed., 2000).As electronic data-bases enable to study and analyse vast amount of data documented in large geographical areas, the présent research can concentrate also on the interférence of genetic and areal factors, so crucial in such a région as the African Sahel and Sahara where people speaking tens of languages of so different origins hâve been involved in various types of contacts and interférence, since centuries and millennia. Moreover, in recent years the feeling has increased that in this région research in language diffusion is warranted not only at the lexical level but also at the other levels of language structures. The old Prague school concept of Sprachbund ffom the late 1930’s, focused as it originally was on lexicon, is nowadays being applied in a broader sense. Hence the concept of lexical diffusion is being extended to structural diffusion, especially in such fields as noun phrase and verbal phrase typologies, morphosyntactic patterns, focalization- topicalization, and positive-negative polarity in languages of the Sahel-Sahara région as a whole. These and other topics are being analyzed not only within the respective genetic-comparative limits of the respective Chadic (Affo-Asiatic), Niger-Kordofan (Mande, West Atlantic and other branches), Saharan and Songhay families, vs. branches or complexes, but also as areal features. Moreover, a third approach is to be co-ordinated with the two preceding ones, that of research in sociolinguistic rôles and functions of languages in general, and of those in lingua ffanca functions subject to pidginisation and créolisation processes. More data on such important language structures of the Sahel-Sahara région as Hausa, Kanuri, Fula, Songhay, Bambara etc. are needed, and their analytical confrontation necessary.The présent volume brings the papers delivered and discussed at the International Round-Table on Theoretical and Methodological Questions of the Lexical and Structural Diffusion in the Sahel-Sudan Région. It was supported by ail the Czech institutions and Research Projects quoted above and was held November 2nd - 5th, 2001 in Bechynë (Czech Republic). Its general theoretical motto was formulated by one of the greatest Czech linguists of the 20th Century, Prof. Josef Vachek in 1962 : " The Interplay of Internai and External Factors in Language Development As most contributions were later re-formulated and extended for publication in this volume, it was impossible to réalisé the original ambition to include the entire transcribed texts of the meeting’s discussion. Hence it was decided to use them as one of the starting points of another common international publication, intended to be presented to a spécial workshop at the XVIIth International Congress of Linguists which is expected to take place in Prague in July, 2003. This workshop proposed by us in co-operation with Rainer Vossen (Frankfurt a. M.) has already been accepted by the Scientific Committee of the Congress, under the title The Interplay of Internai and External Factors in Language Development : the Sahel-Sahara Région of Africa as Language Laboratory. 'ReferencesNicolaï Robert (ed.), (1997) : Travaux du Cercle Linguististique de Nice, 19, Numéro spécial sur la diffusion lexicale en zone sahelo-saharienne. Nice.Vachek Josef (1962) : “On the Interplay of internai and extemal factors in the development of language”. In : Lingua 11 : 443- 452.Zima, Petr and Tax Vladimir (eds.), (1998) : Language and Location in Time and Space. München-Newcastle : Lincom. Zima Petr (ed.), (2000) : Areal and Genetic Factors in Language Classification and Description : Africa South of the Sahara. München-Newcastle : Lincom.