Swahili Grammar and Workbook provides a practical and comprehensive companion to Swahili grammar, filling in gaps left by other textbooks. Presenting the essentials of Swahili grammar in a highly accessible fashion, it reduces complex language topics to helpful rules and mnemonic aids, enabling maximum grammar retention and accurate usage. Grammar points are followed by multiple examples and exercises, allowing students to consolidate and practice their learning. No prior knowledge of linguistic terminology is required. Key features include: Twenty five language notes covering key topics such as: personal pronouns; the Swahili noun class system; special class combinations; the imperative, the subjunctive, and the conditional moods; the use of comparatives; the use of monosyllabic verbs; the passive form and various other forms of verb extensions; the relative clause Clear, detailed and jargon-free grammatical explanations supported by an assortment of helpful diagrams, charts and tables and many relevant and up-to-date examples A wide range of communication-oriented exercises to reinforce learning and develop students’ ability to use Swahili actively Audio files to support pronunciation practice, clearly linked to relevant sections of the book and available for free download at http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9781138808263/ Four appendices, Swahili-English and English-Swahili vocabulary lists, a bibliography and an index presented at the back of the book for easy access to information. Written by a highly experienced instructor, Swahili Grammar and Workbook will be an essential resource for all students and teachers of Swahili. It is suitable for use both as a companion reference text in language courses and as a standalone text in independent grammar classes.

Modern Swahili Grammar is an important contribution to the study of Swahili grammar from pedagogical and lingustic perspectives, and thus relevant to both students of Swahili and scholars of linguistics and sociolinguistics. At a descriptive level, the book covers phonology, morphology and syntax. The following areas of Swahili grammar are also covered in detail: affixes, derivation, inflection, parts of speech, relatives, tenses, demonstratives of reference, pronominalisation, phrases, clauses and sentences. Grammatical explanations are always followed by exercises and comprehensive vocabulary lists are also included.

This monograph is the first study of the acquisition of Swahili as a first language. It focuses on the acquisition of inflectional affixes, with a particular emphasis on subject agreement and tense. Other inflectional affixes are also investigated, including object agreement and mood. The study surveys the adult dialect in question, Nairobi Swahili, discussing social, phonological, morphological and syntactic properties. Data, analyses and copious examples are presented of the naturalistic speech of four Swahili speaking children. The data are tested against six influential theories of child language, and the results show that processing and metrical theories of telegraphic speech fail to account for the observed patterns, while grammatical theories of child language fair significantly better. The data and analyses presented in this book are indispensable for linguists and psychologists interested in the acquisition of inflectional material and other cross-linguistic properties of child language.

No detailed description available for "Swahili Syntax".

This is a comprehensive manual intended to teach students the basics of communicating in Swahili at an elementary level. It is designed to teach major communicative skills such as speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Moreover, the text strives to impart fundamental knowledge about East African and Swahili culture.

This Handbook represents the development of research and the current level of knowledge in the fields of syntactic theory and syntax analysis. Syntax can look back to a long tradition. Especially in the last 50 years, however, the interaction between syntactic theory and syntactic analysis has led to a rapid increase in analyses and theoretical suggestions. This second edition of the Handbook on Syntax adopts a unifying perspective and therefore does not place the division of syntactic theory into several schools to the fore, but the increase in knowledge resulting from the fruitful argumentations between syntactic analysis and syntactic theory. It uses selected phenomena of individual languages and their cross-linguistic realizations to explain what syntactic analyses can do and at the same time to show in what respects syntactic theories differ from each other. It investigates how syntax is related to neighbouring disciplines and investigate the role of the interfaces especially the relationship between syntax and phonology, morphology, compositional semantics, pragmatics, and the lexicon. The phenomena chosen bring together renowned experts in syntax, and represent the consensus reached as to what has to be considered as an important as well as illustrative syntactic phenomenon. The phenomena discuss do not only serve to show syntactic analyses, but also to compare theoretical approaches with each other.