2012
IV, 331 pp.
numerous graphs, tables and charts
Text language: French
Wolof is a Senegambian language of the Atlantic branch of the Niger-Congo phylum spoken by approximately 4 million people in Senegal, being the country’s most widely spoken language, while in Senegal Wolof is national and official language and further used as language of wider communication, it also spreads to (mostly the northern part of) Gambia with 185,000 and southern Mauretania with 12,000 speakers (2006).
This study deals with the expression of time in Wolof. Through a syntactic and semantic approach, it studies and gives an account of the various linguistic processes used to express various time relations in Wolof. The collected data is analysed on the basis of the syntactic constructions used to locate an event in the time. From a typological viewpoint, this study shows clearly that Wolof tends to use a predicative strategy (auxiliary verbs, fossilized verbal forms, …), whereas other languages use adverbs.
The main chapters concern:
(i) The verbal system (tense and aspects) as well as the lexical elements and the verbal and nominal phrases which convey an aspectual value;
(ii) The adverbial phrases of time (lexemes, nominal and adverbial phrases and set expressions) and the temporal discourse markers;
(iii) The temporal and hypothetical subordinate clauses; (Appendices) The vocabulary relating to the wolof calendar.
The present edition was derived from the revised and updated PhD dissertation of the author Des représentations du temps en wolof, University Paris 7 – Denis Diderot.
Under these links you will find publications by the author and descriptions of further (West)Atlantic languages and cultures in monographs and paper collections:
