The book is the first grammar description of the newly discovered language of Zialo, spoken by some 25,000 people in the Republic of Guinea in West Africa. The language belongs to the South-Western group of the Mande language family. Before 2010, no grammar, article or vocabulary of Zialo was ever published. The book presents a survey of the language according to the contemporary standards of language descriptions. Phonology, morphonology, tonology, morphology and syntax are analysed, with a specific focus to the syntactic structure of the language. The book also gives a brief insight into the linguistic geography of Zialo, its dialectal diversity, neighbours and language contacts. The description is supported by over 600 phrasal examples, all of which are fully glossed according to the Leipzig rules of glossing. All word or phrase examples throughout the text are fully tone-marked. The grammar is followed by Appendices including three sample texts in Zialo with glosses, he 100-item Swadesh list of basic lexicon, and the Zialo to English and French vocabulary, consisting of over 2,000 entries. The bibliography list covers about 200 reference papers. The book contains two maps (of the South-Western Mande languages, and the Zialo language), three diagrams and over 30 charts. ISBN 9783862880164 (Hardbound). LINCOM Studies in African Linguistics 82. 260pp.

Zialo: the Newly-Discovered Mande Language of Guinea PDF

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