Publisher's Synopsis
This collection of original research papers is inspired by the life and work of Russell Galen Schuh (1941-2016), Distinguished Professor of Linguistics and one of the longest-serving faculty members (1975-2016) in the UCLA Linguistics Department. With a focus on descriptive and comparative/historical linguistics, Schuh became one of the world's foremost specialists on the Chadic languages of Africa. He spent nearly five decades conducting research in West Africa, principally northern Nigeria, but also in Ghana, Niger, Senegal, Togo, and the far flung neighborhoods of Los Angeles. He published extensively on Hausa, Ngizim, Bole, Tangale, Bura, Podoko, Miya, Ngamo, and other languages, and his fieldwork experience extended to many more. Russ once mused that an ideal grammar should be rich in its content, covering "every generalization and idiosyncrasy of everystructure that exists in the language," and broad in its relevance and accessibility, making it "useful" to both anyone with linguistic training and anyone regardless of their theoretical positionings. The papers in this volume are a testament to theseideals, and the extensive influence not of a single grammar, but of Russ' life work.
