Bantu Linguistics

Cuwabo (Bantu P34, Mozambique) illustrates a relativization strategy, also attested in some NorthWestern and Central Bantu languages, whose most salient characteristics are that: (a) the initial agreement slot of the verb form does not express agreement with the subject (as in independent clauses), but agreement with the head noun; (b) the initial agreement slot of the verb form does not express agreement in person and number-gender (or class), but only in number-gender; (c) when a noun phrase other than the subject is relativized, the noun phrase encoded as the subject in the corresponding independent clause occurs in post-verbal position and does not control any agreement mechanism. In this article, we show that, in spite of the similarity between the relative verb forms of Cuwabo and the corresponding independent verb forms, and the impossibility of isolating a morphological element analyzable as a participial formative, the relative verb forms of Cuwabo are participles, with the following two particularities: they exhibit full contextual orientation, and they assign a specific grammatical role to the initial subject, whose encoding in relative clauses coincides neither with that of subjects of independent verb forms, nor with that of adnominal possessors.

An international conference bringing together geneticists, historians and archaeologists for an open exchange about the possibilities, limitations and risks of the emerging new discipline "Genetic History" (the use of DNA as a historical source). Convened by Joerg Feuchter and Stefanie Samida (Archaeology/Public History, Potsdam) and funded by Fritz Thyssen Foundation. For more information please click on the link to the program or go to the conference website (www.genetic-history.com)

Mauritian Creole displays an alternation between a short and a long form of the verb, which is reminiscent of the conjoint–disjoint alternation found in some eastern Bantu languages. Based on comparison with other French-based creoles and socio-historical evidence, we conclude that the Bantu substrate must have had an impact on the grammatical system of Mauritian Creole. We compare the synchronic properties of the alternations in Mauritian Creole and the most likely substrate Bantu languages of northern Mozambique and examine two possible scenarios for the influence of Bantu on the Mauritian verbal alternation, concluding that probably only the (syntactic) basics of the Bantu alternation motivated the persistence of the alternation in Mauritian Creole.

By Robert Cancel -- It is surprisingly difficult to tell a good story about storytelling. It is harder still to make the storytellers themselves come alive, helping their in situ oral performances flourish in text on a printed page. Robert Cancel achieves both of these goals, and more still. Storytelling in Northern Zambia is a masterful book in which Cancel grapples with collection, representation and fieldwork ethics, and a work that showcases the agency of his interlocutors (from the Foreword).

The study described in this paper grew out of a particular concern in a project of translation and literature development for the Rangi language. It had been observed that the project’s Rangi translators, when encountering rhetorical questions (RQs) in the source text, often translated these as RQs into Rangi, claiming that RQs were both natural in Rangi and common in all contexts. To verify that claim, an investigation of RQs in the project corpus was undertaken which includes a primer, a story booklet, 71 texts collected during writer’s workshops in 2005/2006, and 15 texts collected for a discourse workshop in 2010.
A survey of the literature on RQs reveals a gap that should be filled: RQs are often defined only negatively as “question[s] for which the speaker does not request an answer from the addressee” (Hackstein 2004: 167), a definition whereby various functionally quite dissimilar phenomena are joined into a single category. Most existent typologies of RQs do not seem to comprehensively differentiate RQ functions. Correspondingly, studies of RQs in Bantu languages (e.g. Zerbian 2006) also do not sufficiently distinguish the functions of RQs. This paper aims to contribute both to a functional typology of RQs and to the application of such a typology to Bantu languages.
In addition to a primary distinction between RQs with discourse functions and RQs with social functions (Hackstein 2004), all RQs in the Rangi corpus have been categorised with regard to medium, length and genre of the text in which they occur, speaker and addressee(s), and question form and question words used.
RQs are indeed not an infrequent feature in Rangi; 37 of 106 texts contain at least one RQ. However, the functional range of RQs found in the corpus is not as broad as claimed by the Rangi translators in general. The absolute majority of RQs occurring in dialogue expresses rebuke (cf. example 1) whereas most RQs occurring in monologue express uncertainty or doubt (cf. example 2).
1. sà tɕɛ́ ʊ̀lʊ́ːgʊ́ɾî:ɾʲɛ̀ íbǎːⁿdɛ̀ ráːnɪ́
for what 2sg:burn:PRF:CAUS 5:grasshopper 5:1sg:POSS
‘Why have you burned my grasshopper?’ implying: You should not have burned it.
2. kɔ̀ːnɪ̀ sìːbà jʊ̌ːdʑìɾɛ̀ ⁿdʊ̀ːsɛ́ tɕɛ́
when 9:lion 9:come:PRF 1sg:say:SBJV what
‘When the lion comes what should I say?’ implying: I don’t know what to say.
Apart from showing this typologically relevant distinction between RQs in dialogue and RQs in monologue, the paper also discusses the role of the speaker (e.g. narrator versus participant) and the role of genre (narrative versus hortatory). The paper concludes with an outline of distinguishing factors for a functional typology of RQs and with a summary which of the established categories occur specifically in Rangi.

References
Hackstein, O. 2004. Rhetorical questions and the grammaticalization of interrogative pronouns as conjunctions in Indo-European. In A.Hyllested, A.R. Jørgensen, J.H. Larsson & T. Olander (eds.). Per Aspera Ad Asteriscos. Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft, 167-186.
Zerbian, S. 2006. Questions in Northern Sotho. ZAS Papers in Linguistics 43: 257-280.

Despite its inaccessibility (it remains untranslated and copies are hard to obtain), Vinigi Grottanelli’s Pescatori dell’Oceano indiano (1955) is generally agreed to be one of the best studies of a rural Swahili-speaking community. It’s our principal ethnographic source on the Bajuni (aka Gunya, aka Tikuu), whose traditional territory comprised a long string of coastal settlements and islands between Kismayu (Somalia) in the north and the Lamu archipelago (Kenya) in the south. And the political turmoil of recent decades in Somalia has turned it into a valuable historical document, a record of a way of life that for thousands of Bajuni has been shattered by persecution and conflict.

Abstract

The article discusses the cult of spiritual dolls which is an integral part of Cuban spiritism. It describes ceremonies of making a Mama Francisca doll, explains its place in the spiritual pantheon, and its connection to religious and magical traditions of Palo and Ocha. Drawing on my own field research and an array of ethnographic data, I argue that spiritual dolls play an important part in preserving the ethnic-cultural memory in the context of ethnic and religious diversity in Cuba. I further examine
connections between spiritual and magical practices of peoples from Central Africa and Afro-Сubans. The tradition of espiritismo cruzado itself may be seen as the bridge between different religious traditions existing in the island.

Аннотация.

Статья посвящена такому важному элементу кубинского спиритизма, как культ
спиритических кукол. В ней приводится церемония, в ходе которой создается кукла Мама Франсиска, объясняется ее место в спиритическом пантеоне, ее связь с религиозно-магическими традициями оча и пало. На основании полевых исследований и этнографических данных делается вывод о значении спиритических кукол для сохранения этнокультурной памяти в условиях этнического и религиозного разнообразия Кубы. Также прослеживаются связи в духовно-магических практиках народов Центральной Африки и афро-кубинцев. Сама же рассматриваемая традиция спиритизм крусадо предстает мостом между бытующими на острове религиозными направлениями.

The early history of nautical technology in the western Indian Ocean and adjoining parts of the African coast is poorly understood. In the absence of evidence from shipwrecks, it has hitherto been based largely on the uncertain interpretation of a few documentary references and speculation surrounding technological parallels and assumed lexical resemblances. This paper examines some of the linguistic evidence in a more rigorous way, by undertaking a cross-dialectal comparison of names for watercraft and terms for outriggers in Swahili (Kiswahili), a Bantu language spoken on the islands and in scattered communities along the western seaboard of the Indian Ocean. The resulting analysis provides a new outline of the development of Swahili nautical technology and maritime culture, highlighting the key role played by particular boat forms, and the relative importance of indigenous innovation and different external influences, including the elusive impacts of Austronesian seafaring.

Work on copula systems has been a rich field of inquiry in syntax and semantics, with a particular interest in languages with multi-copula systems. In such languages, different forms are used for specific syntactically and/or semantically distinct copula constructions. To date, however, there is no discussion of the copula system in Kin-yarwanda, a Bantu language spoken in Rwanda. In this paper, I provide a description of the distribution of the two copulas in Kinyarwanda, showing that their use does not fit previous typologies of copula constructions. I argue that the choice of copula hinges on both the predication of a location as well as the semantics of central coincidence, which is tied to the neutralization of the contrast of the two copulas in the first-and second-person.

Bantu languages, which are spoken throughout most of sub-Saharan Africa, permit wh-questions to be constructed in multiple ways, including wh-in-situ, full wh-movement, and partial wh-movement. Shona, a Bantu language spoken by about 13 million people in Zimbabwe and Mozambique, allows all three of these types. In this dissertation, I conduct the first in-depth examination of Shona wh-questions, drawing on fifty hours of elicitation with a native speaker consultant to explore the derivational relationships among these strategies.

Wh-in-situ questions have received a wide variety of treatments in the syntactic literature, ranging from covert or disguised movement to postsyntactic binding of the wh-phrase by a silent question operator. In Bantu languages, wh-in-situ questions are often taken to be derived via a non-movement relation (e.g., Carstens 2005 for Kilega, Diercks 2010 for Lubukusu, Muriungi 2003 for Kîîtharaka, Sabel 2000 for Kikuyu and Duala, Sabel & Zeller 2006 for Zulu, Schneider-Zioga 2007 for Kinande), but alternatives have rarely been considered. I demonstrate how movement-based analyses that have been proposed for wh-in-situ in non-Bantu languages make the wrong predictions for Shona wh-in-situ, which lacks word order permutation, extraction marking, island effects, and intervention effects. These properties provide support for the traditional Bantuist view that the relation between the pronunciation site of an in-situ wh-phrase and its scopal position in the left periphery is not movement; I claim that in Shona it is unselective binding.

Many Bantu languages, including Shona, prohibit wh-phrases from appearing in the canonical preverbal subject position. Wasike (2007) demonstrates that this restriction applies to topicalized non-subjects as well as preverbal subjects. I replicate these results for Shona and argue that they cast doubt on Sabel & Zeller's (2006) attempt to characterize the ban with an appeal to improper movement. I argue instead that restrictions on the distribution of wh-in-situ in Bantu are tied to restrictions on the domain for focus licensing. This claim is further bolstered by an examination of crosslinguistic variation within Bantu with respect to whether the ban on in-situ preverbal wh-subjects applies in embedded clauses. I observe a previously unnoticed generalization: languages that universally ban in-situ preverbal wh-subjects (like Zulu) have immediately after the verb (IAV) focus effects; languages that do allow in-situ preverbal wh-subjects in embedded clauses (like Shona, Lubukusu, and Kîîtharaka) also lack IAV effects.

Full wh-movement in Shona gives rise to questions that bear a certain similarity to English wh-questions. However, using a range of diagnostics including extraction marking, island effects, reconstruction effects, and the distribution of temporal modifiers, I argue that what appears to be full wh-movement in Shona actually has a cleft structure: the wh-phrase moves to become the head of a relative clause, which is selected by a copula in the matrix clause. Just as in wh-in-situ, an ex-situ wh-phrase is pronounced lower than its scopal position, and the relation between these two positions is established via unselective binding. Additional evidence for this proposal comes from the sensitivity of partial wh-movement to island boundaries below but not above the pronunciation site of the wh-phrase, a pattern that has been predicted by previous analyses (e.g., Abels 2012, Sabel 2000, Sabel & Zeller 2006) but for which empirical support has been lacking until now. I therefore unify full and partial wh-movement under a single analysis for cleft-based wh-in-situ that involves a step of relativization (independently needed for relative clauses) and a step of unselective binding (independently needed for wh-in-situ).

An introduction to African languages is a somewhat atypical work that serves, on the one hand,
as a kind of extended scholarly review of a selection of significant linguistic research on African
languages from as for back as Koelle (1854) to the present day, while, on the other hand,
adopting a tone and format more along the lines of an introductory textbook than a book for
specialists.

This overview paper aims to present general approaches to variation in Swahili, both from a structural/typological and from a sociolinguistic angle. Recently, building upon earlier dialectological studies of Swahili, varieties in the periphery have been the focus of scholarly attention, as well as urban dialects from East Africa and Swahili in the diaspora. This introductory paper intends to summarize some of the approaches and directions that address the geographical and sociolinguistic diversity of Swahili, studied from different angles. These include both traditional approaches (descriptive sketches, dialectological and dialectometrical analyses, lexicostatistics etc.) and more recent directions in Bantu studies, such as micro-parametric analysis in the field of microvariation. Moreover, current (socio)linguistic trends are discussed, which mostly deal with language contact, diversity and change in touristic settings, in relation to new media, and in regard to youth language practices, or with new approaches to urban fluidity such as metrolingualism and translanguaging. In this contribution, we aim to give an overview of current trends in the study of Swahili by analyzing processes of linguistic and scholarly diversification and variation in the Swahili-speaking world.

Swahili Forum 26: 1-45. ed. by Daisuke Shinagawa & Nico Nassenstein.

The Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society (CASAS) initiated this project to harmonise and standardise orthographic/spelling conventions of cross-border languages of Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Zambia. Considering the relatedness of Bantu languages, adapted versions of this orthography have been done for Bantu languages across borders of Southern, Central and Eastern Africa. This publication marks an important milestone in the development of African languages for the mass education and development of Africans by coming up with a single spelling system for cross-border languages of Africa. Even speakers of smaller and non-official languages can use this orthography/spelling system or adapt it for their own local use by adding sounds, consonants in particular, that have not been captured in this volume.

The conjoint/disjoint alternation is a phenomenon in Eastern and Southern Bantu languages whereby two verb forms exist with the same tense/aspect semantics, but a difference in the relation between the verb and a following element. The forms are distinguished by their morphological and phonological marking, and their clause-final distribution: the conjoint form needs to be followed by a postverbal element. The interpretational difference between the forms lies in the associated information structure: postverbal focus takes a conjoint verb form, whereas predicate-centred focus requires the disjoint verb form, although in some languages this interpretation is only indirectly encoded in the constituency. The alternation provides an insight into the interfaces of information structure with syntax, morphology, and prosody.

L’ancien royaume Kongo a non seulement donné son nom au fleuve et aux deux pays modernes dont ce cours d’eau constitue une frontière naturelle, mais aussi à la langue bantoue qui fut et est toujours parlée sur son territoire. Ce qui est généralement appelé le kikongo renvoie en fait à un ensemble de plusieurs langues étroitement apparentées, plutôt qu’à un seul et unique parler.

de Luna, Kathryn M. “Bantu Expansion.” In Oxford Bibliographies in African Studies. Ed. Thomas Spear. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

An entry in the Oxford Online Bibliography for African Studies; includes 130+ annotated citations about the study of the Bantu Expansion and Bantu languages from the 19th century through the 21st century. Citations cross the disciplines of linguistics, history, archaeology, and genetics and include works in English and European languages.

URL (subscription service): http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199846733/obo-9780199846733-0165.xml?rskey=yOyylA&result=1

This book is about the rich tourism potential of Busoga, the epicenter of Uganda. Like the promised land, Busoga is endowed with lots of touristic sites that you should not miss. The on-going stand off in the Kyabaziga institution should not deny you of a life time enjoyment of the Nile Cradle's spectacular spectacle. There is more than you have read or heard. Come and see for yourself.

The present paper provides a cognitive-grammaticalization analysis of the morpheme NA in Xhosa, discussing the categorial status of NA as a con-junctive coordinator (CC) and its range of polysemy and/or polyfunctionality. First, the study demonstrates that, when used in a coordinating function, NA approximates the CC prototype to a significant extent, as it complies with most of the features associated with CCs cross-linguistically. Second, the analysis of polysemy/polyfunctionality shows that NA spans large parts of the typological map posited for CC constructions. The conceptual and diachronic center of the map of NA corresponds to a prepositional comitative sense from which the other values (e.g. 'carry', possessive, temporal, modality, 'even', concessive, 'also, as well' and 'illness') and functions (e.g. predicative and adverbial) have emerged through a series of semantic extensions connected via family resemblance. In this map, the uses of NA as a nominal coordinator, comitative preposition, possessive predicator, and focal-adverbial 'also, as well' are the most prototypical. The results of the research contribute to the typological theory of CCs and their semantic-map modeling.*

Resumo

Neste texto  propomo-nos  a  descrever  os  processos envolvidos  na transformação de um verbo em um nome na língua Shimakonde, que ostenta a codificação P23, de acordo com Guthrie (1967-1971).
O processo de transformação de verbos em nomes pode ser encontrado em diversas línguas do mundo, facto que não torna o Shimakonde ou as línguas Bantu excepção nesse processo de formação de palavra. Aliás, de acordo com Cunha e Cintra (1984) pode-se transformar em nomes palavras de outras categorias gramaticais, tais como: adectivos, alto – altura (nominalização adjectival); substantivos, alface – Alface(nominalização adnominal); ou mesmo de verbos,  acentuar – acento  (nominalização deverbal).
Neste trabalho ocupar-nos-emos no estudo e análise deste último processo, porém na língua Shimakonde, como já
nos referimos acima.

Gender in Chichewa is described as a complete system.
First the basic data on gender agreement are presented
and it is shown how the available agreement markers correlate
with the noun genders (and how the system has
changed in the recent past). There follows a discussion
of interesting phenomena which do not fit easily into the
main gender system. Next structures involving conjoined
noun phrases headed by nouns from various genders are
analysed in detail. The rules required to account for
the Chichewa system prove particularly complex; rules
proposed for other Bantu languages do not cover all the
Chichewa facts. The data are important for comparative
work within Bantu and for typological claims which go beyond.

Tense and Aspect are morphological features and in some languages like English, they are marked mainly by inflection on the verb. In Bantu languages, the verbal element is characteristically conflated to mark tense and aspect and more often than not, the morphemes marking tense and aspect cannot be isolated. In many instances, they are tonally marked. Thus, a lexical verb may mark three or even more distinctions whose semantic realization is only through tonal variation. Similarly, Case realization is unique compared to for example English that marks possession on the noun and gender distinction on pronouns. This study will examine these features in Lulogooli, a Bantu language spoken in Western Kenya. Lulogooli has only two gender distinctions; male and female but does not use pronouns to mark them. This study proposes to sample data from the Lulogooli bible translation to show why and how improper use of these three grammatical categories leads to mistranslation. The analysis will also contribute to the significance of understanding language typology to translators so as to aid accuracy and effectiveness in translation. The study posits the significance of aspects of linguistic analysis to translation.

The article contains a first systematic description of the consonant phonemes in Changana/Tsonga, based mainly on standard grammars and dictionaries (Baumbach 1987, Cuenod 1967,
Ribeiro 1965, Sitoe 1996). The number of distinctive phonemes is extremely high, around 125. The systems of stops and affricates are shown to be very complex. Several sounds are quite
unusual or unique, in particular the prenasalised voiced aspirated stops and affricates. Phonological and orthographic differences between the standard forms in South Africa and in
Mozambique are discussed

This dissertation offers a grammatical description and analysis of Manda (N.11), a Bantu language spoken
along Lake Nyasa (Lake Malawi) in southern Tanzania. The study focuses on the “wider” TAM domain,n how tense, aspect, mood but also modality and negation are expressed in the language, offering a
description of the form and function of the various markers employed. In addition, this work sets out to
unravel the historical background of these markers and the diachronic processes of change - particularly
grammaticalization - through which they have evolved. As Manda is a basically undescribed language,
the thesis also includes a brief socio-historical account - focusing on the issues of contact - as well as a
grammar sketch describing the fundamentals of the language.
This study draws on a combination of methods consisting of both more prototypical field work as well as
methods facilitating grammatical reconstruction. The vast bulk of the Manda data have been collected in
the field. Hypotheses of change – but also of retention – are based on the synchronic variation found in
this data, in comparison to the data of existing older sources as well as from neighboring languages.
Furthermore, the Manda data has been compared to Proto-Bantu reconstructions and cross-Bantu as well
as cross-linguistic generalizations on functional and formal change.
The study shows that Manda in many ways adheres to the general traits of an (Eastern) Bantu language.
Fundamentally, the language is highly agglutinative, with e.g. an elaborate noun class system and a rich
set of both prefixes and suffixes on the verbal word, marking nominal indexation, derivations as well as
TAM. With regard to TAM, the study argues that much of the synthetic linguistic material found in
Manda can be traced to Proto-Bantu and thus most likely is inherited. In contrast, many innovations and
indications of ongoing change are displayed in the periphrastic constructions of the language. These
include a set of auxiliary constructions used for expressing aspect, modality but also (non-standard)
negation, a borrowed persistive marker and two particles being employed as standard negators.

The Bantoid languages are a body of some 150-200 languages positioned geographically between Nigeria and Cameroun. They do not form a genetic group, but all are in some way related to Bantu more closely than other branches of Benue-Congo. The most well-known branches are Dakoid, Mambiloid, Tivoid, Beboid, Grassfields, and Ekoid. Bendi, formerly Cross River, may be Bantoid, while Jarawan is certainly Narrow Bantu.  The paper discusses the characteristics of verbal extensions in Bantoid and their possible relation to the better-described extensions in Narrow Bantu. One branch of Benue-Congo, Kainji, retains systems of verbal extensions in some branches, which argues strongly that these were a feature of the proposed proto-language. Some Plateau languages retain more eroded systems, while they have disappeared in Cross River and Jukunoid. However, some Bantoid languages also have no trace of extensions. The paper argues that in the light of their attestation at higher levels, they must have been lost. The paper then reviews the literature on verbal extensions in the various branches of Bantoid and presents case studies of individual languages. It concludes that a rich system similar to Bantu can be reconstructed for proto-Grassfields and must be posited for the other Bantoid branches, where it is now lost or much reduced. Only the causative in -si is attested in a significant number of branches. Bantoid extensions show few segmental similarities to Narrow Bantu, arguing that Bantoid extensions must have been subject to extensive re-analysis.

The goal of this paper is to demonstrate how the Southern Bantu
languages are related to each other historically. The method used is analysis of phonological changes. The work is organized as follows. First, a short survey of previous research and the present state of knowledge is given. Then follows a presentation of the evidence for relations among the four main groups of languages in the southern region, followed by comments about the separate developments within the groups. In a short section it is explained why Shona is not included in the group. After that, a fairly detailed explanation of the reasons for the proposal that Makua,
including Emakhuwa and Elomwe, belongs to the Southern Bantu group is offered. The final part is a discussion of the historical implications of the findings.

This essay attempts to define the ancient Egyptian word txn "Tekhen" (Obelisk) through an analysis of the Kalenjiin language of East Africa. It also explores alternate pronunciations for the object (i.e., bnbn and mn) using other African languages such as Yoruba, ciLuba, and Hebrew (Semitic). As a result of our analysis, we gain deep insights into the ancient Egyptian conceptualization of creation, first principles, and philosophy concerning man's participation in the ongoing evolution of the universe.

In the course of the first half of the 1990s, while still working at the University of Illinois, we worked relatively intensively on Shingazidja, the Comorian languages spoken on the Grand Comoros island. Our consultants were two young men who were studying English at the University of Illinois in preparation for seeking undergraduate degrees in the United States. One of the consultants was particularly adept at recognizing different possible prosodic realizations of sentences and pronouncing the variants in a fashion that was helpful to our non-native ears. This permitted us to particularly focus on the accentual structure of the language. Although we published a number of articles on the topic, much of the material we assembled remained unpublished. The departure of our consultants and our own move to Tel Aviv, effectively ended our data collection. Over the subsequent years, we analyzed a fair bit of the material we had assembled and started to prepare a lexicon of Shingazidja, but one that focus on the tonal structure. Each entry identified the tonal structure of a word in isolation and then illustrated its use in a variety of phrases and sentences, all of which were tonally marked. The present "Contribution to the Study of Shingazija" contains a draft of this project as it existed in 2010. By then, the second author had retired from Tel Aviv University and returned to the United States permanently, but he found himself soon immersed in returning to projects that had been begun in the 1970s: the study of Chimiini and Emakhuwa. There seems little likelihood that we will do new work on Shingazidja, so we are making this 210 draft lexicon available. We have made no corrections or additions to the draft.