The Talking Balafon of the Sambla: Grammatical Principles and Documentary Implications

Q2 Arts and Humanities

Anthropological Linguistics Pub Date : 2019-09-13 DOI:10.1353/anl.2019.0006

Laura McPherson

引用次数: 14

Abstract

Abstract:This article makes the case for linguists to take part in the study of musical surrogate languages, where linguistic form is transposed onto music. It draws on the case study of the Sambla balafon, a West African resonator xylophone. Seenku (Northwestern Mande, Samogo), the language of the Sambla people, has a highly complex tonal system, whose four contrastive levels and multiple contour tones are encoded musically in the notes of the balafon, allowing musicians to communicate without ever opening their mouths. I analyze the grammar of the surrogate language and demonstrate its use in both phonological analysis and language documentation.

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桑布拉会说话的巴拉丰：语法原则和文献意义

摘要：本文提出了语言学家参与音乐替代语言研究的理由，即语言形式被转移到音乐上。它借鉴了西非共鸣木琴Sambla balafon的案例研究。桑布拉人的语言Seenku（西北曼德语、萨莫戈语）有一个高度复杂的音调系统，其四个对比级别和多个轮廓音调被音乐编码在balafon的音符中，使音乐家能够在不开口的情况下进行交流。我分析了替代语言的语法，并展示了它在语音分析和语言文档中的应用。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Anthropological Linguistics Arts and Humanities-Language and Linguistics

CiteScore

0.40

自引率

0.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： Anthropological Linguistics, a quarterly journal founded in 1959, provides a forum for the full range of scholarly study of the languages and cultures of the peoples of the world, especially the native peoples of the Americas. Embracing the field of language and culture broadly defined, the editors welcome articles and research reports addressing cultural, historical, and philological aspects of linguistic study, including analyses of texts and discourse; studies of semantic systems and cultural classifications; onomastic studies; ethnohistorical papers that draw significantly on linguistic data; studies of linguistic prehistory and genetic classification.