Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics.pdf

A-Z 1283West AtlanticBranch of the Niger-Congo languages with forty-three languages spoken in areas ofWest Africa extending, in the case of Fula, to Lake Chad. Other large languages areWolof and Serer (Senegal).Characteristics: complex noun class systems are typical, with up to twenty-fiveclasses; classes are marked by prefixes or suffixes, often connected to a change of theinitial consonants of roots, agreement and a rich voice system (in Fula including middlevoice).ReferenceSapir, J.D. 1971. West Atlantic: an inventory of the languages, their noun class systems andconsonant alternations. In T.A.Sebeok (ed.), Current trends in linguistics. The Hague. Vol. 7,45–112.West GermanicGermanicWest Germanic consonant geminationgeminationwh-island constraintA hypothesis of transformational grammar by which indirect questions introduced byquestion pronouns are islands for movement transformations. ( also propositionalisland constraint)ReferencesReinhart, T. 1981. A second COMP position. In A. Belletti, L.Brandi, and L.Rizzi (eds), Theory ofmarkedness in generative grammar. Pisa. 517–57.Rudin, C. 1981. ‘Who what to whom said’: an argument from Bulgarian against cyclic whmovement.PCLS 17.353–60.