Reference and Pedagogical Resources for 'Standard

Electronic Journal of Africana Bibliography, Feb 2014

This annotated bibliography compiles and accounts for the current state of knowledge on Somali, with a particular focus on characteristics of the ‘standard,’ northern variety of the language. The purpose of undertaking this work is to complement our own ongoing descriptive work on Somali with the goal of producing a comprehensive, contemporary reference grammar for the language. We include in this bibliography all published materials (e.g. journal articles, book chapters, conference proceedings) on standard Somali known to us, as well as a number of unpublished materials (e.g. conference talks, theses, dissertations) to which we have been able to gain access via the internet and university services such as interlibrary loan.

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Reference and Pedagogical Resources for 'Standard

Volume Reference and Pedagogical Resources for 'Standard' Somali Christopher Green Michelle E. Morrison Nikki B. Adams Erin Smith Crabb Evan Jones Recommended Citation Follow this and additional works at; https; //ir; uiowa; edu/ejab - See next page for additional authors Reference and Pedagogical Resources for 'Standard' Somali Authors Christopher Green, Michelle E. Morrison, Nikki B. Adams, Erin Smith Crabb, Evan Jones, and Valerie Novak Reference and Pedagogical Resources for ‘Standard’ Somali Crabb, Evan Jones, and Valerie Novak, University of Maryland, Center for Advanced Study of Language (CASL) Introduction Somali [Af-Soomaali, iso:som] is perhaps the best documented Cushitic language in the linguistic literature, with early descriptions dating back to the late nineteenth century (e.g. Hunter 1880; Schleicher 1892). The language is located genetically within the Eastern Cushitic branch of the larger Afro-Asiatic language family. It is estimated that Somali is spoken by approximately seventeen million people, mainly in the Republic of Somalia, but also in neighboring Kenya, Djibouti, and Ethiopia, as well as by large emigrant populations in the United States, Canada, and in parts of Europe and the Middle East (Lewis, Simon & Fennig 2013). Somali was designated an official language of Somalia in 1973, and its Roman-script orthography was standardized to some degree shortly beforehand in 1972 (Andrzejewski 1978; Caney 1984), though even today there continues to be significant variation in the application of orthographic conventions among users of the language. It is well-understood that ‘standard’ Somali is the variety spoken in the northern regions of the country, including the region that is now referred to by some as Somaliland (Abdullahi 2000). Closely related and considered to be largely mutually intelligible with ‘standard’ Somali is the Benaadir (coastal or southern) dialect, which is also spoken in the national capital, Mogadishu (Muqdisho). Another widely spoken but less mutually intelligible language variety within the ‘Somali’ group of Eastern Cushitic is Maay [Af-Maay, iso:ymm]. As implied by the fact that Maay has its own iso code, while Benaadir does not, Maay is often considered to be a separate language. Several other small languages spoken by clans in southern Somalia include Dabarre [iso:dbr], Garre [iso:gex], Jiiddu [iso:jii], and Tunni [iso:tqq]. While Somali has been fairly well-documented, at least in comparison with most other African languages, materials describing the language are often difficult to access for a variety of reasons. For instance, much of the early foundational documentation of Somali is found in books and monographs that have long since fallen out of publication. Other descriptive works are located in difficult to obtain conference proceedings. A further issue to tackle is that the literature on Somali is written in a wide variety of languages, including English, French, Russian, Italian, German, and Somali itself. A number of important articles on Somali are found in journals and other periodicals that are no longer published, and are therefore somewhat difficult obtain. Finally, some of the more sophisticated, contemporary work on the language that addresses longstanding controversies or anomalies about Somali are yet unpublished, being located in conference handouts and unpublished dissertations and theses. The sum total of this state of affairs makes it prohibitively difficult for a linguist or pedagogue with interest in descriptive, analytical, or theoretical topics in Somali to continue work on the language or to explore it further. Motivations and Scope This bibliography, to the best of our ability, compiles and accounts for the current state of knowledge on Somali, with a particular focus on characteristics of the ‘standard,’ northern variety of the language. The purpose of undertaking this work is to complement our own ongoing descriptive work on Somali with the goal of producing a comprehensive, contemporary reference grammar for the language. We include in this bibliography all published materials (e.g. journal articles, book chapters, conference proceedings) on standard Somali known to us, as well as a number of unpublished materials (e.g. conference talks, theses, dissertations) to which we have been able to gain access via the internet and university services such as interlibrary loan. In order to keep the scope of the bibliography and its contents relevant to the contemporary study of Somali, we begin our annotations with Armstrong’s seminal (1934) book on Somali phonetics and continue through the literature ending with materials so recent that some are still ‘to appear.’ We have, nonetheless, included citations for several older resources, for the reference of those interested. Our annotations cover resources in both English and French while setting aside (but still providing references for) what we find to be the most often-cited wo (...truncated)


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Christopher Green, Michelle E. Morrison, Nikki B. Adams, Erin Smith Crabb, Evan Jones, Valerie Novak. Reference and Pedagogical Resources for 'Standard, Electronic Journal of Africana Bibliography, 2014, Volume 15, Issue 1,