Download Language ecology and genetic diversity on the African

Language ecology and genetic
diversity on the African continent
Gerrit J. Dimmendaal
University of Cologne
We Africanists as lumpers as against
“them folks”
• The Greenbergian position (Greenberg 1963)
– Afroasiatic
– Niger-Congo
– Nilo-Saharan
– Khoisan
• The state of the art 45 years after:
• Total number: 19
• Accretion (residual) zones: southwestern Ethiopia,
Southern Africa, Nuba Mountains
• Technological innovations leading to Spread zones: Bantu,
Nilotic, Surmic, Eastern and Southern Cushitic
• Pastoralism in the case of Nilotic and Surmic
Blench (2006) on West Africa:
The Bellwood-Renfrew model is problematic when applied
to Africa in general, because no terms unambiguously
related to agriculture have been successfully reconstructed
in the protolanguage of any of the African language phyla.
Climatological changes
• The expansion of the Niger-Congo family
presumably is related to both climatological
and technological changes (Blench (2006)
• Linguistic isolates like Banga me, Dompo,
Jalaa, Laal, and Mpra, but also larger units like
Songai and Mande most likely constitute
remnants of an earlier diversity that must
have characterized West Africa, as well as
other parts of the continent.
Northeastern Africa: The spreading of
Nilo-Saharan
• Accretion (residual) zones:
– Southwestern Ethiopia
– Southern Africa
– Nuba Mountains (Sudan)
• Nettle (1999:150):
– The ethnolinguistic map is a product of people’s
social behaviour. But the same social behaviour is
motivated by the economic necessities of
subsistence. The latter in turn are linked to the
ecological setting.
But let us not forget the social
dimension
Language and social identity: Three types of
language contact phenomena causing (further)
genetic differentiation
•
Shift-induced interference and structural borrowing from Bantu into
Luo (Nilotic):
• Development of noun classes:
Singular
ja-luo
a-guok
plural
jo-luo
i-guok-i
‘Luo person/people’
‘puppy’
• Development of tense marking on verbs:
na-a-lUwO rEc
nya-a-lUwO
nyoc-a-lUwO
before yesterday’
yand-a-lUwO
•
‘I was catching fish earlier on’
rEc ‘I was catching fish yesterday’
rEc ‘I was catching fish the day
rEc ‘I caught fish a few days ago’
Result:
Luo deviates considerably from closely related Lwoo languages.
Metatypy in Baale (Surmic)
Didinga-Murle
Phonology
Baale
Tirma-Chai Me’en
Didinga-Murle Baale
Tirma-Chai
words ending only vowel-final
in consonants words
vowel-final words
Lexicon
heavy borrowing
from Tirma-Chai
little borrowing
from Baale
Lexical idioms
Ota UtU
‘nipple (lit. breastmouth)’
way
tugo
'nipple (lit.
breast-mouth)’ .
Constituent order V-initial
SVO, VSO, OVS,
SOV
SVO, VSO, OVS,
SOV
Result:
Baale deviates considerably from the closely related Didinga-Murle
languages.
Genetic Diversity in the Nuba
Mountains
Esoterogeny in Tima (Katla; early
Niger-Congo descendant)
• Lexically close to Katla plus Julud, but grammatically rather deviant:
– Relatively free constituent order in Tima (SVO, OVS, VSO, SOV etc.
strongly governed by pragmatic principles) versus SVO structure in
Katla.
– Ergativity (no evidence for ergativity in Katla-Julud)
– Verb morphology strongly governed by constituent order
• Oral tradition among the Tima and neighbouring groups:
“Tima is extremely difficult to learn.”
• Probably not a case of esoterogeny (in spite of the oral tradition),
but rather of shift-induced interference.
• Result:
Tima deviates considerably from the closely related Katla-Julud group
• Oral tradition of deliberate language change probably a post hoc
rationalisation, in order to explain why their language is so
different.
Emblematic role of language for ethnic
identity
•
Nettle (1999:59):
Where individuals have large and dispersed social networks, one may
expect linguistic uniformity; where social networks are small and
tightly self-contained, many distinct languages will ultimately evolve.
• Compare Hill (2001) on “localist” strategies of closed agricultural
language communities in Central America.
• Some conclusions:
– Higher degree of genetic diversity than assumed by Joseph Greenberg
– Spread zones absorbing languages of earlier inhabitants. Therefore,
probably even more genetic diversity in the past
– Accretion zones
– Climatological factors
– Technological factors
– Social attitudes towards language