The Oxford Handbook of African Languages

This book provides a comprehensive overview of current research in African languages, drawing on insights from anthropological linguistics, typology, historical and comparative linguistics, and sociolinguistics. Africa is believed to host at least one third of the world's languages, usually classified into four phyla - Niger-Congo, Afro-Asiatic, Nilo-Saharan, and Khoisan - which are then subdivided into further families and subgroupings. This volume explores all aspects of research in the field, beginning with chapters that cover the major domains of grammar and comparative approaches. Later parts provide overviews of the phyla and subfamilies, alongside grammatical sketches of eighteen representative African languages of diverse genetic affiliation. The volume additionally explores multiple other topics relating to African languages and linguistics, with a particular focus on extralinguistic issues: language, cognition, and culture, including colour terminology and conversation analysis; language and society, including language contact and endangerment; language and history; and language and orature. This wide-ranging handbook will be a valuable reference for scholars and students in all areas of African linguistics and anthropology, and for anyone interested in descriptive, documentary, typological, and comparative linguistics.

Rainer Vossen is Professor Emeritus of African Studies at Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main. He has published descriptive and comparative studies on Khoisan, Nilotic, Bantu, and Mande languages as well as on dialectological, sociolinguistic, and historical topics. His recent books include the edited volumes The Khoesan Languages (Routledge, 2013), and African Sociolinguistic and Sociocultural Studies (Rudiger Koppe, 2014).

Gerrit J. Dimmendaal is Professor of African Studies at the University of Cologne. He has published descriptive and comparative studies on languages belonging to three different language families, Afroasiatic, Niger-Congo, and Nilo-Saharan, as well as on anthropological linguistics. His more recent monographs include Historical Linguistics and the Comparative Study of African Languages (Benjamins, 2011) and The Leopard's Spots: Essays on Language, Cognition and Culture (Brill, 2015).