Bamana tales recorded by Umaru Ɲanankɔrɔ Jara: A comparative study based on a Bamana–French parallel corpus

Abstract

The paper presents an analysis of the distribution of autosemantic (meaningful) parts of speech in Bamana and French texts of Bamana tales recorded by Umaru Ɲanankɔrɔ Jara. It is carried out using a Bamana–French parallel corpus. The focus is on part-of-speech frequencies in the two languages. List of words common to all the texts of the tales are compiled. Details of the representation of size adjectives in Bamana are analyzed. An application of the theory of complex networks is also briefly discussed.

Keywords

• parallel corpus
• Bamana
• French
• autosemantic parts of speech
• frequency analysis
• complex networks