All nouns are assigned to a noun class, where the number of noun classes varies between 12 and 20. The 2016 revision key findings and advance tables pdf. It was pointed out as early as 1886 that a wide range of. All members of a given class share the same prefix. Within this perspective, bantu cm no longer be defined by.
The bantu speaking people of southern africa are believed to have migrated into the region roughly 2,000 years ago from western and central africa. Thus, a comparison of the acquisition of bantu languages offers an extremely rich area for research, providing insights not only into how language is. Bantu language speakers and their languages share similarities in structure, grammar, and key words. Bantu speakers, although diverse in culture and lifestyle, seem to share a common origin. In the process, the hypothesised proto bantu speaking settlers displaced or absorbed preexisting huntergatherer and. Twelve bantu languages are spoken by more than five million people, including rundi, rwanda, shona, xhosa, and zulu. Congobrazzaville national languages online dictionary, bantu web site. In africa today there are more than 400 bantu languages all linked. While there are typological characteristics common to these and other bantu languages, there are also different linguistic details that influence the course of acquisition in important ways. Bantu languages root, prefix, prefixes, vowel and language. The different bantu speaking groups are culturally similar since they speak similar languages and language is a big part of culture but germanic speaking groups e.
A common characteristic of bantu languages is that they use words such as muntu or mutu for human being or. Section 5 concludes the discussion of quantification across bantu languages. 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. Consider, for example, bantu languages in southern.
Challenges to the promotion of indidegous languages in sou. The largest group within the west bantu languages includes zones c and h, bira d32 and kumu d37. Apr 30, 2020 bantu is neither a racial or ethnic classification. Scholars of bantu languages have long posited a common proto bantu pb source from which modernday bantu languages have evolved. The classification of the bantu languages malcolm guthrie, international institute of african languages and cultures international african institute, 1948 bantu languages 91 pages. Indoeuropean languages and others too usually show gender differences, singularplural, and agreement by means of suffixes. Bantu languages are conventionally classified into zones designated by letters a through s, following criteria and an enumeration of languages in guthrie 196771. There are over 650 different bantu languages and dialects.
Guthrie classification of bantu languages wikipedia. Morphological typology languages have a wide variety of morphological processes available e. The word bantu mainly refers to the linguistic classification of more than 200 different african languages. Challenges to the promotion of indigenous languages in south africa. Listen for this listed feature being used in conversation and on television and describe the speaker using the feature, the context in which the feature was spoken, and any additional details. The acquisition of bantu languages katherine demuth brown. The classification is primarily linguistic, for the cultural patterns of bantu speakers are extremely. West mrican languages exhibited nounclass features analogous to those classified. First, it is a form which the user will first look up in the dictionary before reading other phonological, morphological, syntactic. The ensuing years witnessed efforts by major south african role players either to endorse or to oppose the. There is a high resemblance between all of the eastern bantu languages, which can be explained by a common ancestor and relatively recent splitting up, or to a period of physical contact, or, presumably to both nurse and philippson 1975.
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. Bantu is a mixture of nearly 600 different ethnic groups combined. Linguistic evidence regarding bantu origins the journal of. This article discusses lexical and grammatical comparison and subgrouping in a set of closely related bantu language varieties in the morogoro region, tanzania 1. The bantu languages in africa may be classified as nigercongo languages too. 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 form a family in the sens that they share features in common. The definition of the bantu cornes from a variety of sources, most. The impact of bantu languages on english pronunciation paulo hadi e.
The comparison is based on 27 morphophonological and. In this lecture, well look at differences in morphology among a variety of languages and learn to categorize these languages based on their morphological. In most africian cultures, including bantu cultures veneration of the dead plays a prominient role. The bantu languages, from the nigercongo language family, blend with arabic, creating a new language called swahili which become a widely spoken language among the peoples of east africa. A comparative study of the bantu and semibantu languages. These languages are clearly related to neighboring language groups also termed bantu, such as jarawan, mamfe, grassfields, and ekoid, and constitute a node on a highly. Today over 60 million people in central and southern africa speak bantu based languages and share some part of bantu culture. The proto language split up into two or more dialects, which gradually. This spiritual existence is usually not considered enternal. 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 migration of the proto bantu language group started around 3000 years ago. A note on bantu extensions and syntactic word formation. Mandarin sinotibetan has five words that consist of the syllable ma.
This study intends to explore the different calls for. In the literature on southern bantu languages, a distinction is sometimes drawn between so. The bantu migrations agriculture, ironworking technology spread throughout africa because of migration number of groups in africa spoke related languages originated from language called protobantu developed in what is now cameroon, nigeria over time more than 2,000 bantu languages developed. This common ancestor is referred to as a proto language. Disambiguation of morphological analysis in bantu languages. How much lexical similarity is there in the bantu languages. We use the uppercase letters h, m, and l, to stand for high, mid, and low tones.
They are spoken mostly east and south of presentday cameroon, that is, in the regions commonly known as central africa, southeast africa, and southern africa. Relative clause formation in the bantu languages of south. Given that there are approximately 400 of these closely related languages, it should come as no surprise that these people are incredibly diverse, and that societies and governments among bantus can be radically different. The bantu languages routledge language family series pdf. First, featurevaluation under closest ccommand permits a unified treatment of bantu operator agreement and west germanic complementizer agreement with. 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. Pdf study of bantu languages morphology of lingala. Talking about the bantu language, there are around 650 languages. The bantu suf x ile, common across bantu, has intricate interpretive patterns in many languages, and especially in the languages in the group known as bantu botatwe. It is thought to have originally been spoken in westcentral africa in the area of what is now cameroon. Bantu words in american english montclair state university. First, nouns are grouped into more than ten marked noun classes. Language can have scores of characteristics but the following are the most important ones. Bantu languages, lexical comparison, morphosyntactic comparison, automated cognate judgement, subgrouping.
The west bantu languages were paraphyletic, that is, they did not share a unique common ancestor. Proto bantu is the reconstructed common ancestor of the bantu languages, a subgroup of the benuecongo family. Researchers in bantu languages have identified syntagmatic features that occur in most bantu languages, which include nominal classes and concords. One of the bestknown features of the bantu languages is their noun class system.
The sources of the information used are listed at the end of the linguistic description of each of the groups of languages dealt with. Thus, a comparison of the acquisition of bantu languages offers an. Characteristics and features of language neoenglish. The bantu migration was one of the largest movements of people in africas history.
Bantu is usually known more as a language than an ethnic group. In most bantu languages with a large set of changeofstate verbs, there appear to be differences in how these verbs interact with imperfective forms, as seen for southern ndebele in 16. It is in language that culture is transmitted, interpreted and configured. Dec 16, 2010 language is human so it differs from animal communication in several ways. Bantu words in american english terms you should know for week 11 part 02 are. There are five principal factors in bantu languages which contribute to ambiguous analysis of word tbrms. However, languages vary with respect to what morphological processes are available, how frequently they are used, and what types of information can be encoded in these processes. Although tanda is a common verb in zulu, it has not in zulu all these variations, and in some other language where it may by chance exhibit all the variations its own form is changed to londa or randa. Postpositions dominate, but prepositions are also present. These were assigned letters as and divided into decades groups a10, a20, etc. New developments in the classification of bantu languages and their.
All he did in fact was to point out that the specific languages he was examin had certain features in common, which were, to quote his words the italics being. A comparative study of the bantu and semibantu languages by johnston, harry hamilton, sir, 18581927. 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. Since there are so many languages to be covered it would be impracticable to give even an outline of the main features of each of them, so an outline is given of the main characteristics of each separate group. It is not known how many of them exist today, but ethnologue counts 535 languages. Kiango university of dar es salaam, tanzania abstract the headword of a dictionary entry serves different functions. Bantu philosophy, the philosophy, religious worldview, and ethical principles of the bantu peoplestens of millions of speakers of the more than 500 bantu languages on the african continentas articulated by 20thcentury african intellectuals and founders of contemporary african philosophy and. It is probably the origin of rap and has its own origin in the bantu languages of africa where competitive poetry is also common. Most bantu languages have tones which serve to make lexical andor grammatical distinctions. Apparently in the parent language this particle had already these alternative forms, which resemble those in some west african negro languages. An estimated 2,5003,000 years ago bc to 500 bc, although other sources put the sta rt of t he bantu expansion closer to 3000 bc, 19 speake rs of the proto bant u language began a series of. Bantu peoples, the approximately 85 million speakers of the more than 500 distinct languages of the bantu subgroup of the nigercongo language family, occupying almost the entire southern projection of the african continent. It is probably the origin of rap and has its own origin in the.
New developments in the classification of bantu languages. The bantu expansion is a postulated series of major migrations of the supposed original ntuspeaking group, who, under this view, are thought to have spread from an original nucleus around west africacentral africa across much of subsaharan africa. Obviously languages like zulu and xhosa have a high level of lexical similarity but thats because theyre arguably dialects of the same language. The bantu languages are a large family of languages spoken by the bantu peoples throughout. The term bantu people is used to describe the roughly 60 million africans who speak languages in the bantu language family. National party government introduced the bantu education act. Many of the african peoples who became participants in the slave trade shared a common cultural bond in their linguistic origins. The 250 or so narrow bantu languages are conventionally divided up into geographic zones first proposed by malcolm guthrie 19671971. However, languages vary with respect to what morphological processes are available, how frequently they are used, and what types of information can be encoded in these. It is commonly found in bantu languages that the morphological stem that is. Introduction as in other parts of the grammar, bantu segmental phonology can be characterized as a theme and variations.
It offers a bench mark for future study and research in soundmeaning relationships between words of common origin shared in the ancient egyptian and bantu languages of africa. There is no mistaking a bantu language, which perhaps is what renders the study of this group so interesting and encouraging. The bantu language with the largest number of speakers is swahili. Grammatical and lexical comparison of the greater ruvu. By theend of thecourse you willbe able to think of a lot of other syntactic and morphological commonalities on your own. Relative clause formation in the bantu languages of south africa jochen zeller linguistics programme, faculty of human sciences, university of kwazulunatal. While there are typological characteristics common to these and other bantu languages, there are.
Bantu languages use prefixes and the harmonic concord. Problems of citation forms in dictionaries of bantu languages john g. New developments in the classification of bantu languages and. As far as i can see lexical similarity doesnt seem that high amongst most bantu languages. The title of this short working paper is called the bantu rosetta stones and its main purpose is to draw attention and awareness in the field of afrolinguistic egyptology. Pdf ile and the pragmatic pathways of the resultative. Sesotho sa leboa english online northern sotho english dictionary pukuntsu ya sesotho sa leboa seisimane.
Their ironage weaponry and pastoralist way of life enabled them to dominate and displace the original inhabitants of the region, the stoneage hunterforagers collectively known as the khoisan. Examples are found in asia sinotibetan languages, japanese, africa bantu languages, khoisan languages, nilosaharan languages, and many languages in the americas yip, 2002. This chapter provides an overview of the common syntactic features as well as the syntactic microvariation found in the bantu languages. Bantu languages, a group of some 500 languages belonging to the bantoid subgroup of the benuecongo branch of the nigercongo language family. These languages have some prosodic features different from english, not widely discussed in the literature.
Despite the large number of languages and great geographic expanse that they cover, the most noteworthy properties concerning bantu syllable structure, consonantvowel inventories, and phonological. Grammatical and lexical comparison of the greater ruvu bantu. It particularly highlights the importance of information structure for the analysis of morphosyntax in this language family. Middle passage bantu languages slang black english africanamerican vernacular english play the dozens. The bantu languages are a group of some 500 languages, primarily spoken in africa, that belong to the benuecongo branch of the nigercongo language. The timne and cognate languages of sierra leone and the north guinea coast use pronominal prefixes and a system of concord, the employment of the latter being precisely similar to the same practice in the bantu languages. The population who lives in sub saharan african speaks this language.
The bantu identities are found in languages such as bemba, ingala, isizulu, ambo, bemba, ndebele, shona, swazi, xhosa, venda, khoikhoi, luhya, makonde, hutu, tutsi and so on. The widespread migration of the bantu peoples is amazing and breathtaking. A note on bantu extensions and syntactic word formation jochen zeller, university of kwazulunatal, durban. It is a universal feature of human languages that they change through time, in diffe. Morphologythe most distinctive morphological feature of bantu languages is the grouping of nouns in different classes, marked by a prefix. We are told that the most that has been achieved is a more or less complete statement of the characteristic features of bantu languages, scarcely any one of which is found to apply to all the languages which everyone has accepted as bantu. Some salient features of southern cushitic common west rift. Despite this i argue that a closest ccommand based account chomsky 2000 is superior to a spechead agreement analysis, for two reasons. Zones k and r are also included in this group on most trees. English to xhosa translation page a website that translated words and phrases to and from xhosa by martha r. The bant u langua ges descend fro m a c o mmon proto bantu language, which is believed to have been spoken in what is now cameroon in central africa.
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