LOSING THE FLAVOUR? FROM ORATURE TO LITERATURE, AND ON CHOICES WHEN COMPILING DICTIONARIES FOR UN WRITTEN AFRICAN LANGUAGES
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25159/1016-8427/708Abstract
Any hitherto unwritten language, in Africa as elsewhere, as soon as it becomes the object of linguistic and philological documentation and research, automatically crosses the Rubicon from oral to written and undergoes the first steps from orature to literature. This almost natural process may be studied under at least two perspectives: that of the linguistic and cultural ‘costs†of such transition, and that of the ideological burden in terms of stereotype and prejudice when researchers with a ‘Western’ background (by extension including researchers, also in Africa, who have been trained under the impact of ‘Western’ scholarship) approach languages and cultures of ‘others’. This links up with lexicographic work on languages which are predominantly or exclusively used for oral communication, by influencing the choices that lexicographers face in terms of lemma identification and speech variability when compiling the – often first ever – bilingual dictionary of a hitherto unwritten language.
References
Finnegan, R. 1970. Oral literature in Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Greenberg, J.H. 1949. Hausa verse prosody. Journal of the American Oriental Society 69: 125–135. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/594988
Greenberg, J.H. 1960. A survey of African prosodic systems. In Culture in history, ed. S. Diamond. New York: Columbia University Press.
Said, E. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books.
Stappers, L. 1953. Toonparallelisme als mnemotechnisch middel in spreekworden. Aequatoria 16: 99–100.
Stappers, L. 1952. Eerste geluiden uit de Luba poezie. Kongo-Overzee XVIII(2): 97–110.
Van Avermaet, E. 1955. Langage rhymé des Baluba. Aequatoria 28: 1–5.
Wolff, H.E. 1980. Sprachkunst der Lamang. Stil, Bedeutung und poetische Dimension in zwei Genres oral tradierter Ein-Satz-Literatur. Glückstadt: J.J. Augustin.
Wolff, H.E. 2013. Was ist eigentlich Afrikanistik? Eine kleine Einführung in die Welt der afrikanischen Sprachen, ihre Rolle in Kultur und Gesellschaft, und ihre Literaturen. Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang.
Wolff, H.E. 2015. The Lamang language and dictionary: Documenting Gwà ɗ Là amà N - endangered Chadic language of Northeastern Nigeria. Vol. I: The Language Documentation Project, Revised Grammar of Lamang, and Elements of Lamang-Hdi Comparative Phonology Grammar, and Lexicon. Vol. II: A Dictionary of Lamang (Gwà ɗLà amà N) – Lamang-English Dictionary & English-Lamang Reference List. Cologne: Ruediger Koeppe.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright will be vested in Unisa Press. However, as long as you do not use the article in ways which would directly conflict with the publisher's business interests, you retain the right to use your own article (provided you acknowledge the published version of the article) as follows:
- to make further copies of all or part of the published article for your use in classroom teaching;
- to make copies of the final accepted version of the article for internal distribution within your institution, or to place it on your own or your institution's website or repository, or on a site that does not charge for access to the article, but you must arrange not to make the final accepted version of the article available to the public until 18 months after the date of acceptance;
- to reuse all or part of this material in a compilation of your own works or in a textbook of which you are the author, or as the basis for a conference presentation.
Accepted 2015-12-07
Published 2016-04-18
