Dissertation
A Grammar of Mankanya
On the 5th of November, Timothy Gaved successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Timothy on this achievement!
- Author
- Timothy Gaved
- Date
- 05 November 2020
- Links
- Leiden University Repository
This dissertation presents a description of Mankanya, an Atlantic language spoken by about 65 000 speakers in Guinea-Bissau, Senegal and the Gambia. It includes a sketch of the phonology and a detailed description of the morphology and syntax of the language. Some aspects of discourse level structure are also discussed and two interlinearised sample texts are included.
Mankanya has a rich morphology with both nominal and verbal inflection, and a range of derivative morphemes. Like many other Atlantic languages, nouns can be grouped into classes based on the agreement of the inflections between nouns and their modifiers. Verbs have prefixes that agree with the subject. Though some verbal affixes indicate different aspects, most distinctions of tense, aspect and mode are made by using verbal auxiliaries. Clause chaining is possible with reduced subject agreement if the subject is unchanged. Where the subject does change a different subject marker is often used.
A Grammar of Mankanya will be of interest for those studying of Atlantic languages, as well a resource for wider typological comparison.