Is Africa a linguistic area?

Abstract

The question raised in the title of this chapter has been posed by a number of students of African languages (e.g. Greenberg 1983; Meeussen 1975; Gilman 1986), it has figured in the title of a seminal paper by Greenberg (1959), and it is raised in various parts of this work (see especially chapters 3 and 4). In the present chapter it is argued that it is possible, on the basis of a quantitative survey on African languages of all major genetic groupings and geographical regions, to define a catalogue of phonological, morphosyntactic, and semantic properties that can be of help in defining African languages vis-à-vis languages in other parts of the world. On linguistic areas Areal linguistics is a much neglected field of comparative African linguistics. While there are a number of studies that have been devoted to contact between individual languages or language groups (e.g. Mutahi 1991; Nurse 1994; 2000b; Sommer 1995; Bechhaus-Gerst 1996; Dimmendaal 1995a; 2001b; Storch 2003), not much reliable information is available on areal relationship across larger groups of languages. The following are among the questions that we consider to be especially important in this field: Can Africa be defined as a linguistic area vis-a-vis the rest of the world? Are there any clearly definable linguistic macro-areas across genetic boundaries within Africa? Are there any linguistic micro-areas? While the majority of chapters in this book deal with questions (2) and (3), our interest in this chapter is exclusively with question (1).

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