Kingdom of Mankon

Aspects of History, Language, Culture, Flora and Fauna

Publication Year: 2010

This book is a descriptive and documentary analysis of the Mankon I-language and E-language mirrored through aspects of history, geography, flora and fauna. These aspects manifest in the taxonomic nomenclatures attributed to referents in society. Because these referents were hitherto transmitted orally from generation to generation, the author has painstakingly analysed and documented aspects of Mankon culture for posterity. The work focuses in particular on Mankon proverbs for insights into the structure and function of the language. As a vehicle of communication, language plays a primordial role in encoding and decoding ëmetalinguisticí data. Through thorough scientific linguistic universals and principals, Chi Che has proposed orthography for Mankon pedagogy that is simple, tenable and practicable. This book is the answer to the international clarion call for societies to analyse and document their endangered indigenous cultures. Schools, linguists, sociolinguists, anthropologists, historians and others will find this book especially useful.

Published by: African Books Collective

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This book is a scientific and methodical showcase of language as a medium of cultural transmission. My intention is to poke and provoke thought among researchers: historians, geographers and especially linguists and sociologists to examine and analyse the Mankon sociolinguistic and cultural situation. ...

Introduction

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pp. xv-xxxvi

Kingdom of Mankon: Aspect of History, Language, Culture, Flora and Fauna is a documentary and analytic showcase of the Mankon socio-politico-economic and linguistic landscape. A wealth of cultural, historical, religious, political, geographical, linguistic, etc wisdom exists in Mankon but which hitherto is being passed on ...

Chapter One: Mankon geographical location and history

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pp. 1-20

Whatever the case, the two Mankon cultural epitomes above share the view that “Mankon” originated from the large wave of movement behind Fo Ndemagha’a I during one of their migrations. It should be noted here that “Mankon” is also called “Bandoe, Bande, or Bandeng” (Leroy 1977), as spelt variously by colonisers. ...

Chapter Two: Mankon political, economic and social structure

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pp. 21-48

The farming methods are various, the most prominent being the bush fallow type where the men clear the grass and allow it to decay; the women then gather it and line it inside the ridges which they hoe and then plant with crops. Another method is a short-term productive, but a long-term destructive system through the practice ...

Chapter Three: Mankon Phonology

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pp. 49-130

Speech sounds constitute the basis of all human languages. Human anatomical parts (See Fig.3) are central in phonetics. In the production of speech sounds, air is emitted from the lungs when they contract. The emitted air is modified at different points in different ways (as it passes through the mouth and/or the nose) ...

Chapter Four: Mankon Orthography

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pp. 131-154

In the previous chapter, we studied the Mankon sound systems: their realisation, distribution, function, distinctive as well phonetic features. We also analysed the role of tones in changing meaning to a word or grammatical construct or simply as a source of melody. In the hierarchical structure of language study, ...

Chapter Five: Morphology

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pp. 155-218

Morphology in biology is the scientific ‘study of forms’ of plants and animals (matter). Nevertheless, in linguistics, it is the analysis of language elements. In our earlier analysis, we examined the phonological (sound) level of language investigation. At the morphological level, our analysis is based on ‘words and phrases’ ...

Chapter Six: The proverb in Mankon

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pp. 219-258

The proverb plays an important role in the society from which it is drawn and developed. A store of cultural wisdom can be passed from a locutor to an interlocutor by the use of proverbs. Apart from this communicative function, the proverb is also noted for its aesthetic, witty, concise and figurative ways of passing on information. ...

Chapter Seven: Mankon proverbial syntax

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pp. 259-284

After examining the phonological composition and meaning of the individual words that make up the proverb, it is worth the salt looking at the way these words are structured and organized in higher grammatical order - the sentence. Moreover, since the proverb is in sentence form, ...

Chapter Eight: Functional analysis

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pp. 285-300

A proverb can only be understood when our fluid and imaginative mind goes deep into the context in which it is used and probe the complexity of its meaning. This is because the language of the proverb is metaphorical and the physical words that convey the proverb stand for various concepts in life. ...

Chapter Nine: Nʤì aláʔa (stories)

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pp. 301-312

Jick (2006: 8) states: “Myths and legends are usually etiological explaining the origins of geographical features and sociological practices...” Yes, in myths and legends, man attempts to explain the unknowable cosmogony with the aim of moralising (educating) and entertaining society. ...

Appendix

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pp. 313-328

References

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pp. 329-333

E-ISBN-13: 9789956579747
Print-ISBN-13: 9789956578092

Page Count: 372
Illustrations: B/W
Publication Year: 2010