1995
66 pp.
2 tables
Text language: English
Shona (ChiShónà) (Guthrie S.10) is the most important national language of Zimbabwe, spoken and understood also in neighbouring countries. This sketch represents a concise description of the grammatical structure of the standard form of the language including historical notes and some sociolinguistic data. The description follows mainly Doke’s linguistic terminology of the Bantu languages.
It contains chapters on phonology, tonology, morphophonological rules, nominal and verbal morphology and function of other parts of speech (adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, interjections, ideophones). Two charts on the consonant system of Shona, the various pronominal constructions and a survey of important linguistic literature on the language are added.
Under these links you will find publications by the author, among them an historical account of the discipline of African Linguistics at the University of Leipzig/Germany and descriptions of further languages, literatures and cultures of southern Africa: