{"title":"The Talking Balafon of the Sambla: Grammatical Principles and Documentary Implications","authors":"Laura McPherson","doi":"10.1353/anl.2019.0006","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"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.","PeriodicalId":35350,"journal":{"name":"Anthropological Linguistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2019-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1353/anl.2019.0006","citationCount":"14","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Anthropological Linguistics","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/anl.2019.0006","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"Arts and Humanities","Score":null,"Total":0}
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.
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.
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