Prehistoric Bantu-Khoisan language contact

International audienc

Prehistoric language contact in the Kavango-Zambezi transfrontier area: Khoisan influence on southwestern Bantu languages

In this article, we show that the influence of Khoisan languages on five southwestern Bantu click languages spoken in the Kavango-Zambezi transfrontier area is diverse and complex. These Bantu languages acquired clicks through contact with both Khwe and Ju languages. However, they did not simply copy these Khoisan clicks words. They adapted them phonologically, resulting in a reduction of the click inventory and also integrated them into Bantu morphosyntax through the unusual process of paralexification. What is more, clicks do not only occur in words of Khoisan origin, but also spread to native vocabulary as a language-internal change, among other things through sound symbolism. Finally, calques and head-final nominal compounds in a number of these Bantu languages point to structural influence, most likely from Khwe. We argue that the contact-induced changes observed in the southwestern Bantu languages can be partly accounted for by the language shift of native Khoisan speakers who imposed certain features from their native language on the Bantu language they acquired. In addition, Bantu speakers may have used clicks and other Khoisan-derived elements as an emblem for marking a separate identity, as they were not only maintained, but extended to native structures as well

Bringing together linguistic and genetic evidence to test the Bantu expansion

The expansion of Bantu languages represents one of the most momentous events in the history of Africa. While it is well accepted that Bantu languages spread from their homeland (Cameroon/Nigeria) ~5,000 years ago (ya), there is no consensus about the timing and geographic routes underlying this expansion. Two main models of Bantu expansion have been suggested: The “early-split” model claims that the most recent ancestor of Eastern languages expanded north of the rain forest towards the Great Lakes region ~4,000 ya, while the “late-split” model proposes that Eastern languages diversified from Western languages south of the rain forest ~2,000 ya. Furthermore, it is unclear whether the language dispersal was coupled with the movement of people, raising the question of language shift versus demic diffusion. We use a novel approach taking into account both the spatial and temporal predictions of the two models and formally test these predictions with linguistic and genetic data. Our results show evidence for a demic diffusion in the genetic data, which is confirmed by the correlations between genetic and linguistic distances. While there is little support for the early-split model, the late-split model shows a relatively good fit to the data. Our analyses demonstrate that subsequent contact among languages/populations strongly affected the signal of the initial migration via isolation by distance

Ancient west Eurasian ancestry in southern and eastern Africa

The history of southern Africa involved interactions between indigenous hunter-gatherers and a range of populations that moved into the region. Here we use genome-wide genetic data to show that there are at least two admixture events in the history of Khoisan populations (southern African hunter-gatherers and pastoralists who speak non-Bantu languages with click consonants). One involved populations related to Niger-Congo-speaking African populations, and the other introduced ancestry most closely related to west Eurasian (European or Middle Eastern) populations. We date this latter admixture event to approximately 900-1,800 years ago, and show that it had the largest demographic impact in Khoisan populations that speak Khoe-Kwadi languages. A similar signal of west Eurasian ancestry is present throughout eastern Africa. In particular, we also find evidence for two admixture events in the history of Kenyan, Tanzanian, and Ethiopian populations, the earlier of which involved populations related to west Eurasians and which we date to approximately 2,700 - 3,300 years ago. We reconstruct the allele frequencies of the putative west Eurasian population in eastern Africa, and show that this population is a good proxy for the west Eurasian ancestry in southern Africa. The most parsimonious explanation for these findings is that west Eurasian ancestry entered southern Africa indirectly through eastern Africa.Comment: Added additional simulations, some additional discussio

The genetic legacy of the expansion of Bantu-speaking peoples in Africa.

The expansion of people speaking Bantu languages is the most dramatic demographic event in Late Holocene Africa and fundamentally reshaped the linguistic, cultural and biological landscape of the continent1-7. With a comprehensive genomic dataset, including newly generated data of modern-day and ancient DNA from previously unsampled regions in Africa, we contribute insights into this expansion that started 6,000-4,000 years ago in western Africa. We genotyped 1,763 participants, including 1,526 Bantu speakers from 147 populations across 14 African countries, and generated whole-genome sequences from 12 Late Iron Age individuals8. We show that genetic diversity amongst Bantu-speaking populations declines with distance from western Africa, with current-day Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo as possible crossroads of interaction. Using spatially explicit methods9 and correlating genetic, linguistic and geographical data, we provide cross-disciplinary support for a serial-founder migration model. We further show that Bantu speakers received significant gene flow from local groups in regions they expanded into. Our genetic dataset provides an exhaustive modern-day African comparative dataset for ancient DNA studies10 and will be important to a wide range of disciplines from science and humanities, as well as to the medical sector studying human genetic variation and health in African and African-descendant populations

Public access to research data in language documentation: Challenges and possible strategies

The Open Access Movement promotes free and unfettered access to research publications and, increasingly, to the primary data which underly those publications. As the field of documentary linguistics seeks to record and preserve culturally and linguistically relevant materials, the question of how openly accessible these materials should be becomes increasingly important. This paper aims to guide researchers and other stakeholders in finding an appropriate balance between accessibility and confidentiality of data, addressing community questions and legal, institutional, and intellectual issues that pose challenges to accessible dat

Kejmetinova_XA_various

XAK first told about herself and her parents, and about her older brother who fought and was injured in WWII. Then she briefly told what people used to do when they met bears, and lastly she gave a very brief description of the tradition of nimat, the sharing of meat