View bantu linguistics research papers on academia. The sounds of the bantu languages request pdf researchgate. It is unfortunate, tragic and regrettable, that the. Subsequent studies of other languages nguni languages zulu and xhosa, sotho languages sesotho henceforth sotho and tswana, malawian chewa and the gabonese language sangu, have examined various aspects of childrens language acquisition. Tswana aka setswana is a southern bantu language spoken in. The african rain forest main characteristics of changes in vegetation. Twelve bantu languages are spoken by more than five million people, including rundi, rwanda, shona, xhosa, and zulu. The bantu languages have provided a rich source of data for the development and evolution of formal linguistic theory, primanly in the area of phonology but increasingly in other areas as well.
Pdf this is a syntactic contribution to bantu dp as analysed from a minimalist approach. A note on bantu extensions and syntactic word formation. That approach is best tested by an examination of the relevant vocabulary in bantu languages because the historical study of those languages is further advanced than that of any other language family in end page 321 africa nursephillipson. The module offers a comprehensive introduction to the structure of the bantu languages. Relative clause formation in the bantu languages of south africa jochen zeller linguistics programme, faculty of human sciences, university of kwazulunatal, king george v avenue, glenwood, durban 4041, south africa email. All members of a given class share the same prefix.
There are about 520 languages in the bantu family, 670 languages in the southern bantoid branch which includes bantu, and 1,532 in nigercongo. It is designed primarily for service providers and others assisting somali bantu refugees in their new communities in the united states. 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. One is a kind of v2 effect found in relative clauses, but not in main clauses, which in. Lodhi department of asian and african languages uppsala university abdulaziz. The following section defines the characteristics and functions of all four php expressions.
It is estimated that some 300 to 350 million people, or one in three africans, are bantu speakers. Like many languages, bantu languages express some tense and aspect relations via a. 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. Bantu expansion article about bantu expansion by the. Brief history of the bantu migration into south africa. Articles on this topic in other wikimedia projects can be found at. The bantu language most often taught in american universities is swahili, but there are many others. It is of particular interest to linguists because it is isolated from the other bantu languages, surrounded by languages from other families, such as the cushitic languages iraqw and gorowa to the west and south respectively, and the nilotic maasai language to the east. The bantu languages are spoken in a very large area, including most of africa from southern cameroon eastward to kenya and southward to. 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. Moreover, its peculiar characteristics have been of considerable. New developments in the classification of bantu languages. The syntax of agreement in bantu relatives brent henderson 1 the typology of bantu relatives many linguists have found bantu relative clauses interesting for two reasons.
The third section suggests a ppt treatment of negation in mokpe. The riots, 1976 and later, stem from the black peoples rejection of bantu education. Brief history of the bantu migration into south africa the great southward bantu migration in africa took place in subsaharan africa south of the sahara desert, over some 2,000 years. The nguni languages are unique among bantu languages in that they have imploded clicking phonemes. The bantu expansion an overview for college students the word bantu the word bantu which means people in many bantu languages refers to a group of about 500 african languages and to their speakers, today numbering about 90 million people. With the development of the iron blade, reaping became easier for the bantu people and agriculture took on a whole new meaning.
The expansion of bantu languages represents one of the most momentous events in the history of africa. The somali bantu lutheran family services rocky mountains. This chapter surveys the main phonological phenomena found in bantu languages. There is disagreement about the routes taken by populations speaking bantu languages as they expanded to cover much of subsaharan africa. Cultural phylogeography of the bantu languages of sub. Linguistic and archaeological evidence suggests that the original bantu speakers began their migration from a region in the north some 2,300 years ago the 19thcentury european explor ers of africa who outfitted their expeditions at zanzibar or the ad. Introduction the inflectional morphology of the bantu verb has been the subject of many previous comparative and descriptive studies. The consequences of the contacts between bantu and nonbantu languages around lake eyasi in northern tanzania amani lusekelo1a abstract in rural tanzania, recent major influences happen between kiswahili and english to ethnic languages rather than ethnic languages, which had been in contact for so long, influencing each other. Rainfall variability and drought characteristics in two agroclimatic zones. Project muse linguistic evidence for the introduction of. To appear in the oxford guide to the bantu languages. The bantu languages or narrow bantu languages are a branch of the nigercongo languages. According to the most recent estimate grimes 2000 the world has 6,809 languages, of which 2,058, approximately 30%, are spoken in africa an additional 44 are described as extinct.
The principal writers are daniel van lehman and omar eno. The spread of the bantu language bantu is spoken by million people in southern africa. Bantu languages, or narrow bantu languages, are a family of 522 nigercongo languages in subsaharan africa. The book is divided into a thematic section of 12 chapters, and a second part comprising 17 grammatical sketches of selected bantu languages or language groups. Morphologythe most distinctive morphological feature of bantu languages is the grouping of nouns in different classes, marked by a prefix. Each word must end in a vowel though in some modern dialects in eastern equatorial, west and south africa the terminal vowel may be elided in rapid pronunciation, or be. In bantu languages outside the area in which khoisan languages are distributed. In favour of the tree model, bantu languages are thought to have spread and diversi. There is no mistaking a bantu language, which perhaps is what renders the study of this group so interesting and encouraging. While it is well accepted that bantu languages spread from their homeland cameroonnigeria approximately 5000 years ago ya, there is no consensus about the timing and geographical routes underlying this expansion. This article discusses verbal relative clauses in the bantu languages spoken. The somali bantu iii preface this booklet is a basic introduction to the people, history, and cultures of the somali bantu.
Relative clause formation in the bantu languages of south. Bantu languages root, prefix, prefixes, vowel and language. There is a category of expressions that combine phasal and polarity values, briefly outlined. Nguni languages of southern africa, which include zulu and xhosa, are believed to have borrowed their clicks from khoisan languages. The bantu inhabit most of the continent s of the congo river except the extreme southwest.
Introduction, purpose and definition this short paper attempts to provide an introductory description of the phenomenon of verbal extensions in bantu languages with special. The acquisition of bantu languages katherine demuth brown. Some languages have limited syllabic nasals and coda syllable. List of bantu language names in order by guthrie number. 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. The classification is primarily linguistic, and there are almost a hundred bantu languages, including luganda, zulu, and swahili.
There is an abundant literature on gender in the bantu languages see. There are about 250 bantu languages by the criterion of mutual intelligibility, though the distinction between language and dialect is often unclear. The acquisition of bantu languages macquarie university. Pdf the phylogeny of the bantu languages is reconstructed by application. The systematic study of bantu language acquisition began with lwandle kunenes 1979 dissertation on the acquisition of swati. About one sixth of the bantu speakers, and about one third of bantu languages, are found in the democratic republic of congo alone c.
The linear ordering of tamneg markers in the bantu. Bantu languages, a group of some 500 languages belonging to the bantoid subgroup of the benuecongo branch of the nigercongo language family. The acoustic phonetic characteristics of the eight and ninevowel systems of some. The consequences of the contacts between bantu and non. 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. Bantu languages article about bantu languages by the. Moreover bantuspeakers occupy a large portion of the continent. See also khoisan languages, which contains several audio clips. A note on bantu extensions and syntactic word formation jochen zeller, university of kwazulunatal, durban. Combinations of nasal plus consonant are also frequently subject to various modifications. Thus, the category of adnominal modifiers is a heterogeneous category in bantu languages if based on syntactic characteristics. 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. Bantu languages simple english wikipedia, the free.
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. Most bantu languages have typologically unremarkable consonant. 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. Verbal extensions in bantu the case of swahili and nyamwezi. Bantu languages are largely spoken southeast of cameroon, throughout central africa, southeast africa and southern africa. Bantu languages are spoken largely east and south of the present day country of cameroon. Introduction the present work builds on the work of carstens 2001 as well as henderson to appear in examining the syntax of compound tense ct structures in bantu. Hyman university of california, berkeley to appear in the oxford guide to the bantu languages 1. 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. Negation in mokpe and two related coastal bantu languages of cameroon 203 of nfaw and oroko. Bantu education act, 1953 1 bantu education act, 1953 bantu education act, 1953 act to provide for the transfer of the administration and control of native education from the several provincial administrations to the government of the union, and for matters incidental thereto. Our basic observation is that bantu languages have few genuine quantifiers.
The areas in which are spoken bantu languages of typical structure and archaic form are somewhat widely spread. 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. The structure of bantu languages soas university of london. The homogeneity of this family is so striking, as compared with the inexplicable confusion of tongues which reigns in africa north of the bantu borderland, that the close relationships of these dialects have perhaps been a little exaggerated by earlier writers. Verbal extensions in bantu the case of swahili and nyamwezi abdulaziz y. Wikimedia commons has media related to bantu languages.
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