ChiShona neMufaro. Introduzione alla grammatica shona con elementi di storia della lingua e analisi contrastiva shona/swahili

Elena Bertoncini Zúbková; Roberto Gaudioso

doi:10.6093/978-88-6719-246-5

ChiShona neMufaro. Introduzione alla grammatica shona con elementi di storia della lingua e analisi contrastiva shona/swahili

Authors

Elena Bertoncini Zúbková

University of Naples L'Orientale

Roberto Gaudioso

University of Naples L'Orientale

DOI: https://doi.org/10.6093/978-88-6719-246-5

Keywords:

grammar, Bantu, Shona, Swahili

Synopsis

Publisher: UniorPress

Series: Shared knowledges

Pages: 190

Language: Italian

NBN: h ttp://nbn.depositolegale.it/urn:nbn:it:unina-28380

Abstract: This volume is a posthumous publication by Prof. Elena Bertoncini Zúbková of which Roberto Gaudioso is editor and co-author. It is an introductory grammar to the Shona language, with contrastive elements to Swahili, which belongs to the same Bantu language family. The contrastive nature makes this work particularly suitable for students of Swahili. The volume, with the contribution of the co-author, enriches the part of Shona/Swahili contrastive grammar with a historical-linguistic introduction that reconstructs contacts and exchanges between these two worlds and situates the two languages in the broad family of Bantu languages. This extensive introductory section makes the book a useful tool for those who are approaching the study of Bantu languages for the first time. Before the morphological description of the Shona language, the co-author has also included an in-depth study of the various Shona spelling reforms, in order to give the reader the tools to approach the texts printed before the last (third) spelling reform in 1967. The grammatical description of the Shona language is mainly based on the morphological aspects of the language, some of which are described in detail such as the chapter on nominal classes and the chapter on the verb. Finally, the grammar is enriched by several summary tables and illustrations of ancient and modern Zimbabwe, the main country in which the Shona language is spoken.

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Author Biographies

Elena Bertoncini Zúbková, University of Naples L'Orientale

Elena Bertoncini Zúbková (1939-2018), scholar of Swahili language and literature, critic, literary translator and tireless teacher, founded the teaching of Swahili language and literature at the University of Naples L'Orientale (then Istituto Universitario Orientale) in 1968, teaching until 2009. She has extensively carried out research in the field of Swahili language and literature, producing general works, essays and numerous articles that have become an essential reference for all scholars in the national and international field. We mention here Kiswahili kwa Furaha (Aracne 2009), Vamps and Victims. Women in modern Swahili literature (Köppe 1996), Outline of Swahili Literature. Prose Fiction and Drama (Brill 2009), referring, for the complete bibliography of the scholar, to the volume Lugha na Fasihi. Scritti in onore e memoria di Elena Bertoncini Zúbková, edited by F. Aiello and R. Gaudioso (UniorPress 2019; http://www.fedoa.unina.it/12341/).

Roberto Gaudioso, University of Naples L'Orientale

Roberto Gaudioso, currently a German language teacher at the IC Ibsen in Casamicciola Terme, carried out his PhD at the University of Naples L'Orientale, in co-tutorship with the University of Bayreuth, on the poetics of the Swahili writer and philosopher Euphrase Kezilahabi, proposing a comparative analysis with both European and African authors and with Kerewe oral literature. The monograph The voice of the text and its body. The continuous reform of Kezilahabi's poetics(Köppe 2019) is the fruit of this research. He has carried out post-doctoral research at the University of Naples L'Orientale on Swahili verbal arts in the Democratic Republic of Congo, focusing on the city of Lubumbashi and the Congolese musical diaspora in Dar es Salaam. His research interests include African language literatures, comparative literature and textual approaches, translation theories and practices, text aesthetics and verbal arts, concentrating on poetry and song in Shona and Swahili.