The Journal of West African Languages has been published by the West African Linguistic Society since 1964, in volumes of two issues a year, and remains the Society’s principal outlet for descriptive work on the languages of the region. Its green covers carry a line drawing of a West African drum, unchanged from issue to issue. Articles appear in English and French, each with abstracts in both, and the notes to contributors ask for linguistic examples in IPA.
The issues held here are from Keir L. Hansford’s editorship, with Ngessimo M. Mutaka of the University of Yaoundé I as assistant editor, Steve Pillinger as associate editor and John Bendor-Samuel as consulting editor, over a board that includes Beban S. Chumbow, Felix K. Ameka and H. Ekkehard Wolff. Subscriptions are handled through the Summer Institute of Linguistics at Horsleys Green, and the rate for members and for institutions and individuals permanently resident in Africa is set well below the others — a revision the editor draws attention to in his note to Volume XXIX.
Nigerian scholarship is heavily represented. Vol. XXIX No. 2 alone carries Emmanuel O. Ezeani on teaching the sciences in Igbo, Rose Aziza on nasality in Urhobo, P. E. Ejele on Esan verbs and Inyang Udofot on the intonation of Nigerian English; M. M. Munkaila writes on Hausa double object constructions in Vol. XXX No. 1; and Kay Williamson of the University of Port Harcourt closes Vol. XXX No. 2 with typical vowel systems and processes in West African Niger-Congo languages. That last issue is a special number drawn entirely from the Leipzig Symposium on Areal Typology 2000, edited by Bernard Comrie and H. Ekkehard Wolff.
These issues come to the Library through the donation of Professor Ronald P. Schaefer, and are destined for the Department of Linguistics at the University of Ìbàdàn. This is a first batch; further issues will be catalogued as they are scanned.
