A grammar of the verb in Mbum (Adamawa language, Cameroon)

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Raimund Kastenholz
• Subject Area: Applied Linguistics, Computational Linguistics ; African, American and Oceania Studies
• Term: from 2013 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 241599045

Focusing on verb and predication in Mbum (Central Adamawa, Mbum Group, Southern Mbum Sub-Group), this project aims at the monographic description of this Cameroonian language within the framework of a functional-typological approach. A phonological analysis of that language is available (Hagège 1970). In a typological perspective, the verbal systems of Adamawa Group languages in general and of the Mbum language as a case in point have a number of interesting features: Tonal polarity that distinguishes stems with different argument structures, highly complex (phonological) verb words (accumulation of clitic elements, including aspect markers), and a multitude of strategies involving complex predicates in general and, more specifically, serial verb constructions.A closer look at these latter structures in languages of the Mbum Group will yield important evidence in that field. Evidence from the related languages Kare (East Mbum Sub-Group) and Dii (Central Ada-mawa, Duru Cluster) point to serial verb constructions (henceforth SVC) the so-called "narrative SVC" type, where motion verbs as part of the structure supply a certain spatial framing to the overall event (Markgraf 2011). SVC's of this type have been documented so far for languages of Papua-New Gui-nea (Pawley and Lane 1998), and might be of some interest for studies in the field of conceptualizing space and time in various languages (see Givón 1991, Talmy 2000).The results gleaned from the intended research will also be used for a typological comparison within Central Adamawa (along with results from the still ongoing project "Grundlagenforschung in den Ada-mawasprachen"), and beyond.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants