Clicks, genetics, and “proto-world” from a linguistic perspective

”Why genetics and linguistics need each other: genes and clicks from a linguistic perspective” Knight et al. (2003) have argued, largely from a genetic perspective, that clicks “may be more than 40.000 years old” (p.470) and thus “are an ancient element of human language” (p.471). This has nourished the hypothesis, expressed especially in popular science, that clicks were a feature of the ancestral mother tongue. The claim by Knight et al. (2003) is based on the observation that two populations in Africa speaking languages with click phonemes, namely Hadza in eastern Africa and Ju|’hoan in southern Africa, are maximally distinct in genetic terms: both Y chromosome and mtDNA data suggest that the two “are separated by genetic distance as great [as] or greater than that between any other pair of African populations” (p.464). It is also claimed that the only explanation for the presence of clicks in the two groups is inheritance from an early common ancestor language, hence the alleged, very great age of clicks in general. Other explanations for the clicks of Hadza and Ju|’hoan, in particular independent development and language contact, are explicitly excluded by the authors. This paper seeks to demonstrate on the basis of purely linguistic evidence that this view cannot be accepted: both independent innovation and contact-induced transmission of clicks are attested. The click system of Hadza in particular will be shown to have a profile which is quite compatible with an explanation in terms of language contact. The linguistic evidence thus does not imply that clicks go back to a language spoken at the dawn of human evolution; there is no good reason to exclude the possibility that the emergence of clicks in Africa represents a far later episode in the diversification of human speech. More reliable hypotheses about the early development of language can be reached only by truly interdisciplinary research in the disciplines concerned, here genetics and linguistics

The state of documentation of Kalahari Basin languages

The Kalahari Basin is a linguistic macro-area in the south of the African continent. It has been in a protracted process of disintegration that started with the arrival of Bantu peoples from the north and accelerated dramatically with the European colonization emanating from the southwest. Before these major changes, the area hosted, and still hosts, three independent linguistic lineages, Tuu, Kx'a, and Khoe-Kwadi, that were traditionally subsumed under the spurious linguistic concept "Khoisan" but are better viewed as forming a "Sprachbund". The languages have been known for their quirky and complex sound systems, notably involving click phonemes, but they also display many other rare linguistic featuresa profile that until recently was documented and described very insufficiently. At the same time, spoken predominantly by relatively small and socially marginalized forager groups, known under the term "San", most languages are today, if not on the verge of extinction, at least latently endangered. This contribution gives an overview of their current state of documentation, which has improved considerably within the last 20 years.National Foreign Language Resource Cente

Restructured Niger-Congo gender systems as another type of concurrent nominal classification

Recent research looks increasingly at languages with more than one system of nominal classification and first systematic typological assessments of so-called “concurrent noun classification” exist with a focus on cases involving classifiers and gender. We elaborate on this work by dealing with Niger-Congo languages that have restructured their inherited noun classification in a particular way. The inherited system entailing a strong parallelism between agreement-based gender and affix-based noun inflections shifted toward one where the gender system is reduced to an animacy-based opposition while nominal inflection maintains a considerable amount of original complexity with semantic criteria beyond those of the innovative gender distinction. While the phenomenon as such is not a new discovery, its typological relevance has gone unrecognized so far. We argue that such cases of restructured gender systems in Niger-Congo prima facie suggest themselves as candidates for a new type of concurrent noun classification, both from a synchronic and diachronic perspective. We present a detailed description of the phenomenon in the Guang language Gonja and determine whether or how it can be integrated in the available typology. We also survey its wider distribution and discuss some recurrent historical aspects of its emergence in the family.Deutsche ForschungsgemeinschaftPeer Reviewe

More diversity enGENDERed by African languages: an introduction

We give an overview of current research questions pursued in connection with an ongoing project on nominal classification systems in Africa, with a particular focus on Niger-Congo. We first introduce our cross-linguistically applicable methodological approach which provides new insights into the design of a range of gender systems on the continent. We then apply these ideas to the “noun class” systems of Niger-Congo. We focus on non-canonical phenomena of poorly known languages, which attest to an unexpected systemic diversity beyond the well-known Bantu type and promise to change the synchronic and diachronic perspective on the gender systems of this family.Peer Reviewe

Prosodische Markierung als sprachliche Strategie zur Hierarchisierung verknüpfter Prädikationen am Beispiel des Shona

Die Untersuchung widmet sich am Beispiel des Shona dem sprachlichen Phänomen der sententiellen Subordination, bei der letztere primär durch regelhafte prosodische Mittel, die die Verbalform verändern, signalisiert wird

Studies in Tuu (Southern Khoisan)

The first article proposes a new name for the Southern Khoisan family, based on the fact that all sufficiently attested languages show some reflex of the noun *tuu 'people'. This is a more suitable alternative to previous terms, because it not only unambiguously identifies the genealogical unit and is in line with established conventions for classificatory nomenclature, but also avoids several drawbacks of other terms, among them the heretofore unproven idea of a genealogical unit Khoisan. The second article gives more substantial and systematic evidence that Tuu alias Southern Khoisan itself is in fact a coherent genealogical entity. It first outlines basic structural features of Tuu languages showing that they constitute a robust and typologically fairly distinct language type. It goes on to show that this is associated with a sufficient amount of sound-meaning correspondences, in both grammar and lexicon, in order to warrant an interpretation in terms of inheritance from a common ancestor language. Both studies are the result of work carried out in the project 'Genetic and typological profile of the Tuu language family (alias Southern Khoisan): cataloguing and linguistic analysis of existing sources'. My sincere thanks to the 'Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft' for having sponsored this project with a research grant

The two concurrent gender systems of Mba

This paper describes the gender system of the Ubangi language Mba, which can be characterized by the co-existence of two different classification systems. The ‘formal agreement’ system is tightly bound with the nominal deriflection system, while the ‘semantic agreement’ system, by contrast, emanates from a tripartite distinction in the language made between masculine humans, other animates, and inanimates. Whereas formal agreement is manifested on different elements that modify the head noun, the semantic agreement system operates in the pronominal domain, mostly outside the noun phrase.Peer Reviewe

Grammatical gender and linguistic complexity I: General issues and specific studies

The many facets of grammatical gender remain one of the most fruitful areas of linguistic research, and pose fascinating questions about the origins and development of complexity in language. The present work is a two-volume collection of 13 chapters on the topic of grammatical gender seen through the prism of linguistic complexity. The contributions discuss what counts as complex and/or simple in grammatical gender systems, whether the distribution of gender systems across the world’s languages relates to the language ecology and social history of speech communities. Contributors demonstrate how the complexity of gender systems can be studied synchronically, both in individual languages and over large cross-linguistic samples, and diachronically, by exploring how gender systems change over time. In addition to three chapters on the theoretical foundations of gender complexity, volume one contains six chapters on grammatical gender and complexity in individual languages and language families of Africa, New Guinea, and South Asia. This volume is complemented by volume two, which consists of three chapters providing diachronic and typological case studies, followed by a final chapter discussing old and new theoretical and empirical challenges in the study of the dynamics of gender complexity

Grammatical gender and linguistic complexity I: General issues and specific studies

The many facets of grammatical gender remain one of the most fruitful areas of linguistic research, and pose fascinating questions about the origins and development of complexity in language. The present work is a two-volume collection of 13 chapters on the topic of grammatical gender seen through the prism of linguistic complexity. The contributions discuss what counts as complex and/or simple in grammatical gender systems, whether the distribution of gender systems across the world’s languages relates to the language ecology and social history of speech communities. Contributors demonstrate how the complexity of gender systems can be studied synchronically, both in individual languages and over large cross-linguistic samples, and diachronically, by exploring how gender systems change over time. In addition to three chapters on the theoretical foundations of gender complexity, volume one contains six chapters on grammatical gender and complexity in individual languages and language families of Africa, New Guinea, and South Asia. This volume is complemented by volume two, which consists of three chapters providing diachronic and typological case studies, followed by a final chapter discussing old and new theoretical and empirical challenges in the study of the dynamics of gender complexity

Grammatical gender and linguistic complexity I: General issues and specific studies

The many facets of grammatical gender remain one of the most fruitful areas of linguistic research, and pose fascinating questions about the origins and development of complexity in language. The present work is a two-volume collection of 13 chapters on the topic of grammatical gender seen through the prism of linguistic complexity. The contributions discuss what counts as complex and/or simple in grammatical gender systems, whether the distribution of gender systems across the world’s languages relates to the language ecology and social history of speech communities. Contributors demonstrate how the complexity of gender systems can be studied synchronically, both in individual languages and over large cross-linguistic samples, and diachronically, by exploring how gender systems change over time. In addition to three chapters on the theoretical foundations of gender complexity, volume one contains six chapters on grammatical gender and complexity in individual languages and language families of Africa, New Guinea, and South Asia. This volume is complemented by volume two, which consists of three chapters providing diachronic and typological case studies, followed by a final chapter discussing old and new theoretical and empirical challenges in the study of the dynamics of gender complexity