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New publication: A Grammar of Digo

This volume, the result of seven years of fieldwork, is the only comprehensive grammar of the underdocumented Digo (Chidigo) language to date…It gives particular emphasis to semantic and discourse relations of elements which are not always analyzed from this perspective in grammatical descriptions…This book will be of interest to linguists concerned with Bantu languages, typology, morphosyntax, and semantics. The entire Mijikenda cluster is underdocumented, and this grammar makes a significant contribution to understanding of languages of that area.

-SIL International Publications

(June 2013) SIL International Publications is announcing the release of a new volume in the Publications in Linguistics Series. A Grammar of Digo: A Bantu Language of Kenya and Tanzania is the first major effort to provide a description of the language.

Digo (also known as Chidigo) is part of the East African Mijikenda cluster of Bantu languages. The Ethnologue indicates that in both Kenya and Tanzania, Digo is categorized in the higher levels of vitality as measured by the EGIDS scale, a tool for measuring language endangerment.

Topics covered in the book include:

  • Morphology and syntax, with many illustrative examples from natural speech and an emphasis on semantic and discourse relations
  • The complex system of demonstratives
  • Information structure and non-verbal clauses
  • A description of more than thirty tense, aspect and movement markers
  • Several texts (two narratives, one hortatory text and one expository text) glossed in English
  • SIL’s standard 1,700-item wordlist for comparison across languages
  • A list of over one hundred botanical names for regional plant species

A Grammar of Digo was authored by linguistics and translation consultant Dr. Steve Nicolle. Nicolle has written numerous articles on African languages and linguistics, including co-compiling a Digo-English-Swahili dictionary.


Click here to see the full table of contents or to purchase A Grammar of Digo from SIL International Publications.


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