International African Institute

Contribution a l'étude des langues voltaïques by André ProstReview by: W. A. A. WilsonAfrica: Journal of the International African Institute, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Jan., 1966), p. 107Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the International African InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1158145 .

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REVIEWS OF BOOKS I07 work on ethno-historical methods. It goes a long way beyond the analyses of John Barnes and Ian Cunnison towards understanding the development of Central African kingdoms. It

challenges comparison with Smith's outstanding work on Zazzau, even though the latter is

dealing with a documented time dimension. But whereas Smith gives theory and documenta- tion in one volume and in one language, it is impossible to take full account of Vansina's contribution without reference to his earlier work.' Those who, like the reviewer, find Flemish an obstacle to understanding an already recondite subject, will join in pressing for an English translation of the I963 book. MARY DOUGLAS

Contribution a l'etude des langues voltaiques. Par ANDRE PROST. Memoire IFAN No. 70, Dakar, I964, pp. 46 , carte.

THE Revd. A. Prost has once again put us in his debt by giving us grammatical sketches and

lengthy comparative vocabularies of several little-known languages. Those described in this volume (written in 1957) are all spoken in the area of Banfora, near the Upper Volta

boundary with the Ivory Coast; all but one are clearly in the Gur (Voltaique) group. Kirma (or Gouin) and neighbouring Tyurama (or Turka) are closely related. Mambar (or

Miniyanka) and Senar (Kankalaba dialect, alias Yoli) and Tenyer (the Tengrela dialect of

Karaboro) are three Senoufo dialects, the first two being especially similar. Toussian is relatable to Senoufo.

The Seme language (alias Siamou or Semu) is included in this volume because it has been

previously classified as Gur.2 Father Prost is emphatic, however, that Seme has 'no simi-

larity' with Gur, or even with Mande languages, apart from a few loans, though he admits he cannot classify it positively. Actually some syntactical features mentioned, notably the

Subject-Object-Verb order, are also found both in many Mande languages, and in some of the western Gur members described here.

Two characteristic Gur features are admittedly absent in Seme, viz. noun classes and the

perfective/imperfective distinction in verbs, yet these are largely typological features whose absence should not alone preclude Seme from being regarded as Gur. Toussian's northern dialect, for instance, has nominal suffixes which have so lost their phonetic identity that it is only by comparison with the southern dialect that they are at all relatable to those of other Gur languages. Lexically, Seme's links with Gur are certainly tenuous but, on the basis of the Swadesh ' First 0oo ' list, percentages of similarity with other Gur languages are actually higher than those between these languages and Dogon, which some writers have classified as Gur.3

Two points might have been remedied by the editors: (a) the number of obvious mis-

prints involving diacritics: (b) the awkward layout of comparative tables, with lists fre-

quently beheaded arbitrarily to fit the size of page. W. A. A. WILSON

A Grammar of the Kolokuma Dialect of Ijp. By KAY WILLIAMSON. West African Language Monographs 2, Cambridge University Press, i965. Pp. vii, I27. 8js.

THIS excellent monograph is the first published transformational treatment of the grammar of an African language which has any claims to completeness. As such it would deserve close attention irrespective of its inherent merit which is, however, great. The work opens with a

De la tradition orale - essai de mdthode historique, Bryan's Languages of West Africa (I952). I96I; Geschiedenis van de Kuba van ongeveer I oo-1904, 3 See M. Swadesh (and others): A glottochrono- 1963. logical study of the Gur languages. (Paper presented

2 Notably by de Lavergne de Tressan in his at the Fifth West African Languages Congress, Inventaire linquistique de I'A.O.F. et du Togo (I953). Accra, I965; to be published I966.) The language is not mentioned in Westermann and

REVIEWS OF BOOKS I07 work on ethno-historical methods. It goes a long way beyond the analyses of John Barnes and Ian Cunnison towards understanding the development of Central African kingdoms. It

challenges comparison with Smith's outstanding work on Zazzau, even though the latter is

dealing with a documented time dimension. But whereas Smith gives theory and documenta- tion in one volume and in one language, it is impossible to take full account of Vansina's contribution without reference to his earlier work.' Those who, like the reviewer, find Flemish an obstacle to understanding an already recondite subject, will join in pressing for an English translation of the I963 book. MARY DOUGLAS

Contribution a l'etude des langues voltaiques. Par ANDRE PROST. Memoire IFAN No. 70, Dakar, I964, pp. 46 , carte.

THE Revd. A. Prost has once again put us in his debt by giving us grammatical sketches and

lengthy comparative vocabularies of several little-known languages. Those described in this volume (written in 1957) are all spoken in the area of Banfora, near the Upper Volta

boundary with the Ivory Coast; all but one are clearly in the Gur (Voltaique) group. Kirma (or Gouin) and neighbouring Tyurama (or Turka) are closely related. Mambar (or

Miniyanka) and Senar (Kankalaba dialect, alias Yoli) and Tenyer (the Tengrela dialect of

Karaboro) are three Senoufo dialects, the first two being especially similar. Toussian is relatable to Senoufo.

The Seme language (alias Siamou or Semu) is included in this volume because it has been

previously classified as Gur.2 Father Prost is emphatic, however, that Seme has 'no simi-

larity' with Gur, or even with Mande languages, apart from a few loans, though he admits he cannot classify it positively. Actually some syntactical features mentioned, notably the

Subject-Object-Verb order, are also found both in many Mande languages, and in some of the western Gur members described here.

Two characteristic Gur features are admittedly absent in Seme, viz. noun classes and the

perfective/imperfective distinction in verbs, yet these are largely typological features whose absence should not alone preclude Seme from being regarded as Gur. Toussian's northern dialect, for instance, has nominal suffixes which have so lost their phonetic identity that it is only by comparison with the southern dialect that they are at all relatable to those of other Gur languages. Lexically, Seme's links with Gur are certainly tenuous but, on the basis of the Swadesh ' First 0oo ' list, percentages of similarity with other Gur languages are actually higher than those between these languages and Dogon, which some writers have classified as Gur.3

Two points might have been remedied by the editors: (a) the number of obvious mis-

prints involving diacritics: (b) the awkward layout of comparative tables, with lists fre-

quently beheaded arbitrarily to fit the size of page. W. A. A. WILSON

A Grammar of the Kolokuma Dialect of Ijp. By KAY WILLIAMSON. West African Language Monographs 2, Cambridge University Press, i965. Pp. vii, I27. 8js.

THIS excellent monograph is the first published transformational treatment of the grammar of an African language which has any claims to completeness. As such it would deserve close attention irrespective of its inherent merit which is, however, great. The work opens with a

De la tradition orale - essai de mdthode historique, Bryan's Languages of West Africa (I952). I96I; Geschiedenis van de Kuba van ongeveer I oo-1904, 3 See M. Swadesh (and others): A glottochrono- 1963. logical study of the Gur languages. (Paper presented

2 Notably by de Lavergne de Tressan in his at the Fifth West African Languages Congress, Inventaire linquistique de I'A.O.F. et du Togo (I953). Accra, I965; to be published I966.) The language is not mentioned in Westermann and

REVIEWS OF BOOKS I07 work on ethno-historical methods. It goes a long way beyond the analyses of John Barnes and Ian Cunnison towards understanding the development of Central African kingdoms. It

challenges comparison with Smith's outstanding work on Zazzau, even though the latter is

dealing with a documented time dimension. But whereas Smith gives theory and documenta- tion in one volume and in one language, it is impossible to take full account of Vansina's contribution without reference to his earlier work.' Those who, like the reviewer, find Flemish an obstacle to understanding an already recondite subject, will join in pressing for an English translation of the I963 book. MARY DOUGLAS

Contribution a l'etude des langues voltaiques. Par ANDRE PROST. Memoire IFAN No. 70, Dakar, I964, pp. 46 , carte.

THE Revd. A. Prost has once again put us in his debt by giving us grammatical sketches and

lengthy comparative vocabularies of several little-known languages. Those described in this volume (written in 1957) are all spoken in the area of Banfora, near the Upper Volta

boundary with the Ivory Coast; all but one are clearly in the Gur (Voltaique) group. Kirma (or Gouin) and neighbouring Tyurama (or Turka) are closely related. Mambar (or

Miniyanka) and Senar (Kankalaba dialect, alias Yoli) and Tenyer (the Tengrela dialect of

Karaboro) are three Senoufo dialects, the first two being especially similar. Toussian is relatable to Senoufo.

The Seme language (alias Siamou or Semu) is included in this volume because it has been

previously classified as Gur.2 Father Prost is emphatic, however, that Seme has 'no simi-

larity' with Gur, or even with Mande languages, apart from a few loans, though he admits he cannot classify it positively. Actually some syntactical features mentioned, notably the

Subject-Object-Verb order, are also found both in many Mande languages, and in some of the western Gur members described here.

Two characteristic Gur features are admittedly absent in Seme, viz. noun classes and the

perfective/imperfective distinction in verbs, yet these are largely typological features whose absence should not alone preclude Seme from being regarded as Gur. Toussian's northern dialect, for instance, has nominal suffixes which have so lost their phonetic identity that it is only by comparison with the southern dialect that they are at all relatable to those of other Gur languages. Lexically, Seme's links with Gur are certainly tenuous but, on the basis of the Swadesh ' First 0oo ' list, percentages of similarity with other Gur languages are actually higher than those between these languages and Dogon, which some writers have classified as Gur.3

Two points might have been remedied by the editors: (a) the number of obvious mis-

prints involving diacritics: (b) the awkward layout of comparative tables, with lists fre-

quently beheaded arbitrarily to fit the size of page. W. A. A. WILSON

A Grammar of the Kolokuma Dialect of Ijp. By KAY WILLIAMSON. West African Language Monographs 2, Cambridge University Press, i965. Pp. vii, I27. 8js.

THIS excellent monograph is the first published transformational treatment of the grammar of an African language which has any claims to completeness. As such it would deserve close attention irrespective of its inherent merit which is, however, great. The work opens with a

De la tradition orale - essai de mdthode historique, Bryan's Languages of West Africa (I952). I96I; Geschiedenis van de Kuba van ongeveer I oo-1904, 3 See M. Swadesh (and others): A glottochrono- 1963. logical study of the Gur languages. (Paper presented

2 Notably by de Lavergne de Tressan in his at the Fifth West African Languages Congress, Inventaire linquistique de I'A.O.F. et du Togo (I953). Accra, I965; to be published I966.) The language is not mentioned in Westermann and

This content downloaded from 195.78.108.105 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 04:55:27 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions