A comparative grammar of the south african bantu languages. Morphologythe most distinctive morphological feature of bantu languages is the grouping of nouns in different classes, marked by a prefix. Southern bantu languages simple english wikipedia, the. Meeussen 1967 was particularly instrumental in reconstructing what is thought to be the noun class system of protobantu. Guthrie, the classification of the bantu languages 1948, repr. Grammatical and lexical comparison of the greater ruvu bantu. Pdf sentential negation and verb movement in bantu languages. See also khoisan languages, which contains several audio clips. The somali bantu lutheran family services rocky mountains.
This paper uses historicalcomparative approaches in combination with quantitative methods to analyse data from a survey of varieties of the bantu languages herero and kuvale spoken by ethnically. A note on bantu extensions and syntactic word formation. They are nearly synonymous with guthries bantu zone s, apart from the exclusion of shona and the inclusion of makhuwa. Bantu languages root, prefix, prefixes, vowel and language. It is designed primarily for service providers and others assisting somali bantu refugees in their new communities in the united states. Jul 07, 20 the results clearly support the pathway through the rainforest scenario for the expansion of bantu through much of subsaharan africa. Sentential negation and verb movement in bantu languages 28.
Despite this i argue that a closest ccommand based account chomsky 2000 is superior to a spechead agreement analysis, for two reasons. The southern bantu languages, however, are also a valid linguistic group. This collection brings together most of the worlds leading bantuists, as well as some of the most promising younger scholars interested in the history, comparison, and description of bantu languages. Agreement, locality, and ovs in bantu sciencedirect. African linguists have a poor record in distinguishing typological. Nguni languages of southern africa, which include zulu and xhosa, are believed to have borrowed their clicks from khoisan languages. Essentially an affirmative positive form is used to express the validity or truth of a basic assertion, while a negative form expresses its. Middle passage bantu languages slang black english africanamerican vernacular english play the dozens. Moreover, there are different kinds of semantic opposition. English to xhosa translation page a website that translated words and phrases to and from xhosa by martha r. Bantu languages such as swahili, zulu, chichewa or bemba are spoken by an estimated 240 million speakers in 27 african countries, and are one of the most important language groups in africa in terms of geographical and demographic distribution. Southern african bantu languages, like bantu languages more generally, show an asymmetry in their tone system.
Introduction the inflectional morphology of the bantu verb has been the subject of many previous comparative and descriptive studies. Twelve bantu languages are spoken by more than five million people, including rundi, rwanda, shona, xhosa, and zulu. They include all of the major bantu languages of south africa, botswana, lesotho, swaziland, and mozambique, with outliers such as lozi in zambia and namibia, and ngoni in. Grammatical and lexical comparison of the greater ruvu. A dynamic approach to bantu clause structure uses the tools of the dynamic syntax framework to explore morphosyntactic phenomena in a number of bantu languages. Bantu words in american english terms you should know for week 11 part 02 are. In the discussion that follows, we seek to investigate these issues and then. It is probably the origin of rap and has its own origin in the. Although these sounds are less frequent in bantu languages, they do occur in northwest bantu as well as in east bantu, both on the northeastern coast and in the southeast maddieson 2003. The areas in which are spoken bantu languages of typical structure and archaic form are somewhat widely spread. There is a category of expressions that combine phasal and polarity values, briefly outlined. This revised analysis has the advantages of accounting for the observed variationwithin particular bantu languages and providing amore unified account of extraction constructions across the bantu languages examined.
As seen, both in protobantu pb and in most bantu languages which have these suffixes, the default suffix ordering is causativeapplicativereciprocalpassive, or carp. The bantu languages or narrow bantu languages are a branch of the nigercongo languages. While animal languages are essentially analog systems, it is the digital nature of the natural language negative operator, represented in stoic and fregean propositional logic as a oneplace. Negation in mokpe and two related coastal bantu languages of cameroon 203 of nfaw and oroko. Bantu languages article about bantu languages by the free. Most bantu languages have tones which serve to make lexical andor grammatical distinctions. This paper explores a wellknown asymmetry between negation marking main clauses and subordinate clauses in bantu languages gilldemann 1999. The bantu languages descend from a common protobantu language, which is believed to have been spoken in what is now cameroon in central africa. First, featurevaluation under closest ccommand permits a unified treatment of bantu operator agreement and west germanic complementizer. Medial markers are used by the large majority of bantu languages. An estimated 2,5003,000 years ago bc to 500 bc, although other sources put the start of the bantu expansion closer to 3000 bc, speakers of the protobantu language began a series of migrations eastward and southward, carrying agriculture.
Examines word order alternations, inversion constructions and negation in bantu, showing the incremental nature of the buildup of meaning in context highlights crosslinguistic parallels, drawing. Bantu language of northwest cameroon presents a case close to hausa but different in. Most languages employ initial, medial as well as final markers, though individual languages can favour one or the other type. Apr 27, 2020 the bantu languages are a large family of languages spoken primarily in the southern part of africa. Introduction verb stems in bantu languages may include a number of derivational suffixes called extensions that express various functions, such as causative, applicative, reciprocal or passive. Bantu languages simple english wikipedia, the free. View bantu linguistics research papers on academia.
All members of a given class share the same prefix. There are languages in the world in which the normal negation neg. The only other language family is bantu, but only in areas of contact and intermarriage with khoisan populations, indicating the borrowing of consonantal clicks into bantu languages herbert, 2002. The genesis of verbal negation in bantu and its dependency on functional features of clause types.
This database contains 4,254 lexical items from 10 bantu languages. Negation in mokpe and two related coastal bantu languages of cameroon 205 ii there seem to be four different morphemes for negation in this language namely, zre, zro, zri and zra iii sometimes, the negative morpheme in. Congobrazzaville national languages online dictionary, bantu web site. Pdf phonetics of intonation in south african bantu languages. The principal writers are daniel van lehman and omar eno. Phonetics of intonation in south african bantu languages. Bantu languages, a group of some 500 languages belonging to the bantoid subgroup of the benuecongo branch of the nigercongo language family.
The southern bantu languages are a large group of bantu languages, largely validated in janson 199192. Bantu language article about bantu language by the free. The bantu languages are spoken in a very large area, including most of africa from southern cameroon eastward to kenya and southward to the southernmost tip of the continent. Parts of the bantu area include languages from other language families see map. Mwenyi k352 yukawa 1987b, use a high amount of initial markers, while languages of the northwest and central north, e.
The legends and traditions of the bantu peoples themselves in variably point to a northern origin, and a period, not wholly re moved from their racial remembrance, when they were strangers in their present lands. Surrogate imperatives in bantu languages with postverbal negative. Accounts of surrogate negative imperatives in other languages have attributed. Bantu languages still widely used even by those who dissent strongly fiom his methods and conclusions. They are spoken by nearly onethird of the population of the continent, approximately 330 million people. Bantu languages, group of african languages forming a subdivision of the benueniger division of the nigercongo branch of the nigerkordofanian language family see african languages african languages, geographic rather than linguistic classification of languages spoken on the african continent. Negation in ginantuzu kusekwa mabondo masters thesis speech science linguistics. Each language in our database has around 430 words associated with it. In the majority of instances, contact with african languages is implicated. In bantu languages, negation has been receiving attention from different linguists rugemalira. The specific slot system for any given individual language looks different from case to case.
Verb roots can be either hightoned or lowtoned, independent of the number. Second, distinct from the template, bantu languages sometimes show a tendency for specific suffixes to be ordered according to semantic compositionality, or scope. Each word must end in a vowel though in some mod ern dialects in eastern equatorial, west and south africa the ter minal vowel may be elided in rapid pronunciation, or be dropped, or absorbed in the terminal. List of bantu language names in order by guthrie number. A minimalist program ongayo francis onyango department of linguistics, languages and literature, school of arts and social sciences. Students of bantu languages have a great deal of material to work with, since the family is so large and speakers are widely scattered across africa. Guthrie 1967, 1970a, 1970b, 1971 subdivided the bantu languages into 15 distinct zones on the basis of a set of typological and geographical criteria. Zones k and r are also included in this group on most trees. Bantu words in american english montclair state university. There is disagreement about the routes taken by populations speaking bantu languages as they expanded to cover much of subsaharan africa. Over 500 languages are classified in this family, including swahili, xhosa, and zulu.
The comparison is based on 27 morphophonological and. Morph syntactic analysis of verb inflections in igikuria language. Pdf this paper explores a wellknown asymmetry between negation marking main clauses and subordinate clauses in bantu languages. Cycles of negation in rangi and mbugwe abstract the tanzanian bantu languages rangi and mbugwe both employ a double negation marking strategy. Intensive chichewa pdf files a 1969 grammar published by likuni press of malawi distributed for noncommercial use only. Negation is in the first place a phenomenon of semantical opposition. There are about 520 languages in the bantu family, 670 languages in the southern bantoid branch which includes bantu, and 1,532 in nigercongo. An attempt at a full list of bantu languages with various conflations and a puzzlingly diverse nomenclature can be found in the bantu languages of africa, 1959. Tanzanian newspapers newspapers in bantu languages on the web. As such, negation relates an expression e to another expression with a meaning that is in some way opposed to the meaning of e. The nguni languages are unique among bantu languages in that they have imploded clicking phonemes. Bantu languages, lexical comparison, morphosyntactic comparison, automated cognate judgement, subgrouping. Selected proceedings of the 43rd annual conference on african linguistics, ed. Tell a friend about us, add a link to this page, or visit the webmasters page for free fun content.
Bantu noun class systems in comparative and diachronic perspective scholars of bantu languages have long posited a common protobantu pb source from which modernday bantu languages have evolved. But the general deduction to be drawn from a study of the bantu languages, as they exist at the present day, is that at some period not more than 3000 years ago a powerful tribe of negroes speaking the bantu motherlanguage, allied physically to the negroes of the southwestern nile and southern lake chad basins yet impregnated with the. All nouns are assigned to a noun class, where the number of noun classes varies between 12 and 20. Bantu language is a crossword puzzle clue that we have spotted over 20 times. From a comparative perspective, it is in fact the medial. A note on bantu extensions and syntactic word formation jochen zeller, university of kwazulunatal, durban.
Bantu languages are spoken largely east and south of the present day country of cameroon. There is no support in these analyses for an early, deep split between east and west bantu languages and a movement by one branch north of the rainforest. Negation is a sine qua non of every human language, yet is absent from otherwise complex systems of animal communication. Strategies of double negation in spanish and portuguese. This relation may be realized syntactically and pragmatically in various ways. Included are those languages that constitute at least 1% of the population and have at least 10% the number of speakers of the largest bantu language in the country. The bantu language with the largest total number of speakers is swahili. Negation, jespersens cycle, bantu languages, language contact. The approximately 500 presentday bantu languages extend from cameroon in the northwest to southern somalia in the northeast and into southern africa and the limits of the african continent in the south map 1. The bantu languages are a large family of languages spoken primarily in the southern part of africa. In rangi, verbal negation is achieved through the presence of a preverbal negative marker and a negative marker which appears either postverbally or in a clausefinal position.
Pdf the genesis of verbal negation in bantu and its. Thus, a comparison of the acquisition of bantu languages offers an extremely rich area for research, providing insights not only into how language is learned, but also into the possible impact that language learning may exert on processes of historical change. Bantu languages simple english wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Bantu languages definition bantu languages are a subset of nigercongo languages mostly spoken in the center and south part of africa english oxford living dictionary, n. Southern bantu languages simple english wikipedia, the free. The singular form of a noun belongs to a di erent noun class than the plural form of that noun does. The southern bantu languages, also known as bantu zone s, are a group of languages in the bantu language family.
Iav, from agreement with sc to 3sg, from optional to obligatory, standard negation recent innovation contrastive focus negative marker. Cultural phylogeography of the bantu languages of subsaharan. Cultural phylogeography of the bantu languages of sub. The bantu languages are a very large group, belonging to the benuecongo family of the nigercongo phylum, which comprises between 250 to 500 members spread over most of subsaharan africa. The largest group within the west bantu languages includes zones c and h, bira d32 and kumu d37. Mwenyi k352 yukawa 1987b, use a high amount of initial. A comparative grammar of the south african bantu languages comprising those of zanzibar, mozambique, the zambesi, kafirland, benguela, angola, the congo, the ogowe, the cameroons, the lake region, etc. This article discusses lexical and grammatical comparison and subgrouping in a set of closely related bantu language varieties in the morogoro region, tanzania 1. This module offers a comprehensive introduction to the structure of the bantu languages. Guthries divisions of the bantu languages were based on geography, not on language characteristics. The somali bantu iii preface this booklet is a basic introduction to the people, history, and cultures of the somali bantu. Pagibete c401 reeder 1998, tend to favour final markers.
The bantu languages, numbering as many as 500, have been at the center of cuttingedge theoretical research in phonology, morphology, syntax and. The definition of the bantu cornes from a variety of sources, most. Grammatical gender as it features in dp syntax is primarily a categorizing feature that groups nouns according to their morphological shape andor syntactic behavior. The linear ordering of tamneg markers in the bantu. New developments in the classification of bantu languages and. These words correspond to basic items of vocabulary, such as simple verbs like to hear, or to. Jespersen cycles and negation in bantu languages a jespersen cycle. As the source of bantu languages is generally argued to be in southwest adamawa, new data on bantu and related languages is important to the. Morph syntactic analysis of verb inflections in igikuria. Bantu languages article about bantu languages by the. New developments in the classification of bantu languages. Here, we build phylogenetic trees of bantu languages and map them onto geographical space in order to assess the likely pathway of expansion and test between dispersal scenarios. A brief summary of the bantu acquisition literature by language is provided below. Our basic observation is that bantu languages have few genuine quantifiers.
In linguistics and grammar, affirmation and negation abbreviated respectively aff and neg are the ways that grammar encodes negative and positive polarity in verb phrases, clauses, or other utterances. Chapter pdf available january 1999 with 227 reads how we measure reads. The west bantu languages were paraphyletic, that is, they did not share a unique common ancestor. Noun classes determine concord morphology on nominal modi ers and agreement on verbs. Cycles of negation in rangi and mbugwe accepted version. Strategies of double negation in spanish and portuguese john m. Cycles of negation in rangi and mbugwe abstract the tanzanian. The acquisition of bantu languages katherine demuth brown. Sesotho sa leboa english online northern sotho english dictionary pukuntsu ya sesotho sa leboa seisimane. Given the large number of bantu languages and the vast area they occupy, such a coding system is very useful for comparative purposes since it allows one to situate a bantu language.
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