| 释义 |
Niger–Congo|ˈnaɪdʒəˈkɒŋgəʊ|
[f. the names of the rivers Niger and Congo.]
A group of languages which includes those spoken by most of the indigenous peoples of western, central, and southern Africa.
1955J. H. Greenberg Studies in African Linguistic Classification 8 To the entire family consisting of the West Sudanic nucleus inclusive of Bantu, plus this eastward extension, I have preferred to adopt a new name of a non-committal geographic nature, Niger–Congo, from the two great rivers in whose basins these languages predominate. 1961F. G. Cassidy Jamaica Talk iii. 31 The Niger–Congo languages are characterised by differences of meaning which depend upon pitch—or ‘tone’—and stress. 1970R. Finnegan Oral Lit. in Africa iii. 55 In the opinion of some recent scholars, even this large Bantu group is only one subdivision within a much larger family, the ‘Niger–Congo’ group, which also includes most of the languages of West Africa. 1972Language XLVIII. 273 Accounting for the various kinds of syntactic evidence in the Bantu languages, such as the consistent use of prefixes which often correspond to suffixes of the Niger–Congo languages, will require considerable historical study. |