View bantu linguistics research papers on academia. A brief summary of the bantu acquisition literature by language is provided below. The specific slot system for any given individual language looks different from case to case. The principal writers are daniel van lehman and omar eno. Towards machinereadable lexicons for south african bantu. Over 500 languages are classified in this family, including swahili, xhosa, and zulu. Articles preceding the noun, personal pronouns preceding the verb, auxiliary verbs in verbal inflection. New developments in the classification of bantu languages. The riots, 1976 and later, stem from the black peoples rejection of bantu education. Written by an international team of experts, this comprehensive volume presents grammatical analyses of individual bantu languages, comparative studies of their main phonetic, phonological and grammatical characteristics and overview chapters on their history and classification.
Bantu languages still widely used even by those who dissent strongly fiom his methods and conclusions. Meeussen 1967 was particularly instrumental in reconstructing what is thought to be the noun class system of proto bantu see also guthrie 196771 and welmers 1973. The bantu languages are attractive to the explorer not only from the harmonious adjustment of vowels and consonants, but from the logic of their grammatical structure, which, in the majority of these tongues, provides for a wide range and a nice. There are about 520 languages in the bantu family, 670 languages in the southern bantoid branch which includes bantu, and 1,532 in nigercongo. Bantu languages, a group of some 500 languages belonging to the bantoid subgroup of the benuecongo branch of the nigercongo language family.
Verbal extensions in bantu the case of swahili and nyamwezi abdulaziz y. Bantu education has produced the worst kind of frus trat ion. A note on bantu extensions and syntactic word formation jochen zeller, university of kwazulunatal, durban. 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. Most bantu languages have tones which serve to make lexical andor grammatical distinctions. Grammatical and lexical comparison of the greater ruvu. Bantu languages are usually divided into west and east bantu. Bantu languages are spoken largely east and south of the present day country of cameroon. Nigercongo, voltacongo, benuecongo, eastern benuecongo, south bantoid, bantu. According to several scholars, including blench, there can be no coherent concept of bantu as long as many of the zone a and perhaps zone b languages are included. Bantu languages simple english wikipedia, the free. Problems of citation forms in dictionaries of bantu languages john g.
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. Second, distinct from the template, bantu languages sometimes show a tendency for specific suffixes to be ordered according to semantic compositionality, or scope. The linear ordering of tamneg markers in the bantu languages. It is unfortunate, tragic and regrettable, that the. A note on bantu extensions and syntactic word formation. The southern bantu languages, also known as bantu zone s, are a group of languages in the bantu language family. Most languages employ initial, medial as well as final markers, though individual languages can favour one or the other type. You can find most of them living around southern africa, central africa and african great lakes region.
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. From a comparative perspective, it is in fact the medial. Welcome to all bantu netizens speakers, students, researchers. Sesotho sa leboa english online northern sotho english dictionary pukuntsu ya sesotho sa leboa seisimane. First, it is a form which the user will first look up in the dictionary before reading other phonological, morphological, syntactic. Meeussen 1967 was particularly instrumental in reconstructing what is thought to be the noun class system of protobantu see also guthrie 196771 and welmers 1973.
The west bantu languages were paraphyletic, that is, they did not share a unique common ancestor. Mwenyi k352 yukawa 1987b, use a high amount of initial markers, while languages of the northwest and central north, e. One bantu language, swahili, is used as a lingua franca in east africa by about 50 to 100 million people. To appear in the oxford guide to the bantu languages. Bringing together linguistic and genetic evidence to test the bantu expansion. 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. Twelve bantu languages are spoken by more than five million people, including rundi, rwanda, shona, xhosa, and zulu. The definition of the bantu cornes from a variety of sources, most. Lodhi department of asian and african languages uppsala university abdulaziz. Scholars of bantu languages have long posited a common protobantu pb source from which modernday bantu languages have evolved. At the time, african languages were classified into five families.
The bantu languages descend from a common protobantu language, which is believed to have been spoken in what is now cameroon in central africa. Grammatical and lexical comparison of the greater ruvu bantu. The southern bantu languages are a large group of bantu languages, largely validated in janson 199192. It is estimated that some 300 to 350 million people, or one in three africans, are bantu speakers.
Bantu language is a crossword puzzle clue that we have spotted over 20 times. Bantu languages 80 languages based on lexical evidence, but also on phonological and morphological features. Verbal extensions in bantu the case of swahili and nyamwezi. There are many typological features that bantu languages have in common, not least concerning the noun class system. West bantu includes zones h, j, k, l, r, parts of d and usually m. Having been used as a trade language, it has been in intensive contact with arabic, and more recently english. 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, group of african languages forming a subdivision of the benueniger division of the nigercongo branch of the nigerkordofanian language family see african languages. This volume provides a set of theoreticallyinformed descriptive and typological statements about bantu. 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. Semitic, hamitic, sudanic, bantu and bushman newman 1995. 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 by torrend, j. Tanzanian newspapers newspapers in bantu languages on the web.
The bantu languages or narrow bantu languages are a branch of the nigercongo languages. Zones k and r are also included in this group on most trees. The southern bantu languages, however, are also a valid linguistic group the southern bantu languages are a group of languages in. Swahili, one of the languages that receive closer inspection in this article, is an eastern bantu language and the official language of kenya and tanzania. 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 dropped, or absorbed in the terminal.
Greenbergs first major work was the genetic classification of the languages of africa, published in serialized form in the southwestern journal of anthropologyein 194950. Computational modeling of bantu natural language from very early studies of bantu languages that. A comparative grammar of the south african bantu languages. Pagibete c401 reeder 1998, tend to favour final markers. Hyman university of california, berkeley to appear in the oxford guide to the bantu languages 1. Morphologythe most distinctive morphological feature of bantu languages is the grouping of nouns in different classes, marked by a prefix. English to xhosa translation page a website that translated words and phrases to and from xhosa by martha r. Bosch, laurette pretorius and jackie jones university of south africa po box 392, unisa 0003, pretoria, south africa email.
The results of this classification have divided the ruvu languages into three groups. Mwenyi k352 yukawa 1987b, use a high amount of initial. Intensive chichewa pdf files a 1969 grammar published by likuni press of malawi distributed for noncommercial use only. 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. Apr 27, 2020 the bantu languages are a large family of languages spoken primarily in the southern part of africa.
The somali bantu iii preface this booklet is a basic introduction to the people, history, and cultures of the somali bantu. Since kwere is a bantu language, the analysis of data is based on not only typological universals but also on features that generally occur in bantu languages. Bantu languages, or narrow bantu languages, are a family of 522 nigercongo languages in subsaharan africa. This site provide you with information relevant to bantu languages and linguistics on the net. The largest group within the west bantu languages includes zones c and h, bira d32 and kumu d37. Guthrie classification of bantu languages wikipedia. Guthries divisions of the bantu languages were based on geography, not on language characteristics. Jul 03, 2003 geographically, bantu languages are spoken in the southern half of africa. New developments in the classification of bantu languages and. Pages in category bantu languages the following 32 pages are in this category, out of 32 total. All members of a given class share the same prefix.
The linear ordering of tamneg markers in the bantu. Guthrie 1967, 1970a, 1970b, 1971 subdivided the bantu languages into 15 distinct zones on the basis of a set of typological and geographical criteria. Swahili, which is spoken by five million people as a mother tongue and some 30 million as a second language, is a bantu lingua franca important in both commerce and literature. As seen, both in proto bantu pb and in most bantu languages which have these suffixes, the default suffix ordering is causativeapplicativereciprocalpassive, or carp. Towards machinereadable lexicons for south african bantu languages sonja e. The relatively few exceptions include a discontinous band of languages. Genetically, they form part of benuecongo, itself a part of the huge nigercongo phylum. Bantu languages root, prefix, prefixes, vowel and language. The exact place of bantu in this framework is controversial, and there is no comprehensive overview of bantu.
Bantu languages simple english wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Ever since the introduction of the practice of compiling dictionaries of bantu languages, the tradition of alphabetizing headwords in the dictionary has been one of the problematic methods in bantu lexicography. The word bantu is used to attribute around 300 to 600 african people who speak bantu language. If you want to know the history of bantu people, you have to check facts about bantu. 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. Proceedings of the royal society of biological sciences 279. Among inflecting languages, two kinds are distinguished, synthetic and analytic. Geographically, bantu languages are spoken in the southern half of africa. These languages are spoken in the equatorial forest, modern zambia and southwest africa. 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.
At long last here is something that has been lacking for nearly a century. 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. Introduction this paper investigates the structure of negation in mokpe and two related coastal bantu languages of cameroon. The bantu languages are a large family of languages spoken primarily in the southern part of africa. Congobrazzaville national languages online dictionary, bantu web site. The somali bantu lutheran family services rocky mountains. It is designed primarily for service providers and others assisting somali bantu refugees in their new communities in the united states. Medial markers are used by the large majority of bantu languages. East bantu comprises languages of zones e, f, j, n, p and s. Scholars of bantu languages have long posited a common proto bantu pb source from which modernday bantu languages have evolved. Southern bantu languages simple english wikipedia, the. Some languages have limited syllabic nasals and coda syllable. 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.
It is used as a lingua franca in the whole of east africa. Kiango university of dar es salaam, tanzania abstract the headword of a dictionary entry serves different functions. The word bantu means the people and is made up of the stem ntu person and the plural prefix ba. Bantu contains hundreds of languages that are spoken by 120 million africans in the congo basin, angola, the republic of south africa, mozambique, zimbabwe, zambia, malawi, tanzania, and kenya. All nouns are assigned to a noun class, where the number of noun classes varies between 12 and 20. It is unfortunate, tragic and regrettable, that the authorities look for the causes of the riots elsewhere. They are nearly synonymous with guthries bantu zone s, apart from the exclusion of shona and the inclusion of makhuwa. Southern bantu languages simple english wikipedia, the free. The name of the family of languages was coined by wilhelm bleek in 1857 in his manuscript entitled zulu legends, since it is a word in a large portion of these languages meaning people abantu a. 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. 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. Other major languages of the group, each with 10 million speakers or more, are rwanda, luba, nyanja, shona, and zulu. There are approximately 500 bantu languages, spoken by around 240 million people in 27 subsaharan african countries.
African linguists have a poor record in distinguishing typological. Of all the african language groups, the bantu languages have the longest tradition of scholarly linguistic. The southern bantu languages, however, are also a valid linguistic group. As seen, both in protobantu pb and in most bantu languages which have these suffixes, the default suffix ordering is causativeapplicativereciprocalpassive, or carp.
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