Overview

This book is an attempt at a selective word geography of Maa (“Maasai”) varieties as spoken in Kenya and Tanzania, an area extending, from north to south, over a distance of approximately 1,000 kilometres. Maa is a member of the Eastern branch of Nilotic and as such belongs within the so-called Nilo-Saharan language phylum. The study meticulously describes the geographical distribution of a set of faunal terms: animals, both wild and domestic, as well as fauna-related items and concepts. Word geographies not only contribute decisively to the reconstruction of language-internal history but also shed light on ethno-historical processes and events. The study is based on elicited data that had been collected almost fifty years ago. It therefore represents, first of all, the situation of that time. Over decades, semantic change may have altered that state to some degree.

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9783631941393

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Rainer Vossen is Professor Emeritus of African Studies at Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main. His publications include descriptive and comparative studies on various language families as well as on dialectological, sociolinguistic, and historical topics. Antje Meißner PhD studied Ethnology, Prehistory and African Linguistics in Frankfurt. From 1998 to 2003 she was a collaborator in a word-geographical project on Maa. Carlotta Zürn is a student in Comparative Linguistics at Goethe University with a focus on African, Austronesian and Semitic languages.

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