Customer Reviews

African Languages: An Introduction

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This book has been generally well compiled, and well written. Be aware, though, that while it is a good introduction for "undergraduate students" it is still intended for college students of linguistics, as you will find much terminology relating to linguistics and little attempt to explain that terminology. If you are interested in a hair-splitting comparison-based analysis of african languages according to their lexical, syntactical, and morphological features, this book is for you. If you're interested in actually learning one of these african languages, this book isn't for you.

The book does claim to have something for everyone (intersted in african languages), such as a section on socio-linguistics. And that may be true. In the end, though, it would probably serve most people as an only-occasionally-consulted reference book for the library, as it does have an extensive index of languages by name, and a subject index, allowing you to locate, for example, the page discussing ergativity.

I have to admit that I'm not in the best position to critique "scholarly publications" on linguistics. I am only passively interested in the science of linguistics. However I am very interested in languages, and I still found most sections of this book a little too tedious for my background.