The Languages and Linguistics of Africa

1010 Pages·2018·8.4 MB·English

by  Tom Güldemann

The Languages and Linguistics of Africa
WOL 11
The World of Linguistics
Editor
Hans Henrich Hock
Volume 11
De Gruyter Mouton
The Languages and
Linguistics of Africa

Edited by
Tom Güldemann
De Gruyter Mouton
ISBN 978-3-11-042606-9
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-042166-8
e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-042175-0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018935449
Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;
detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.
© 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Cover image: Byrdyak/iStock/Thinkstock
Typesetting: Dörlemann Satz GmbH & Co. KG, Lemförde
Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck
www.degruyter.com
Preface
It is more than ten years ago that Larry Hyman asked me whether I was interested
in editing a comprehensive volume on the languages of Africa in the series “The
World of Linguistics.” At the time I accepted the offer with enthusiasm without
anticipating that this project could cause anything else than eagerness and joy in
bringing the publication to fruition. Now that it finally sees the light of the day,
the uneasiness felt at times in preparing it is gone, having made way to a feeling
of some hope that Larry need not regret his decision to have handed over this pub-
lication project to me.
From the outset, this book was not planned as a fully representative and com-
plete survey of the linguistic situation on the African continent, not only due to
the enormous task but also because the field is currently highly dynamic, so that
any attempted overview may soon become outdated. Accordingly the book hardly
provides full lists of typical structures of African languages, judgments about fre-
quency and distribution of individual features across areas and language families
and the like. Instead, the contributors were asked to tackle their topic particularly
from two perspectives that relate to the interplay between African linguistics and
our general discipline. One focus of this book is the past and expected future
contributions of African languages to related scientific fields. In particular, what
phenomena in Africa have informed, challenged or even shaped general linguistic
research and our present theoretical thinking, or are likely to do so in the near
future? The other focus goes in the opposite direction. Inevitably, there are certain
linguistic topics which have so far been debated on the basis of language data
from other parts of the world or with approaches different from those prevalent
in Africa, so that linguistics focusing on this continent may partly lag behind.
Hence, it is useful to ascertain where and how African linguistics can, or even need
to, take general disciplinary approaches and their results into account in order to
profit better from them. In this sense, the aim of this book is to highlight interest-
ing linguistic challenges and thus provoke new ideas and prepare novel research
agendas rather than serving as a comprehensive guide.
This intended focus also entailed breaking at times with certain common prac-
tices. In particular, this is related to the present conceptualization of Africa as a
linguistic region. There is a certain tendency to restrict Africa in a linguistic sense
to its sub-Saharan parts and deal with large parts of the Afroasiatic family, and
certainly the Semitic languages of Western Asia, in a different areal context. This
volume sees Africa as a linguistic whole in considering Afroasiatic as an integral
part of this continent, even though individual contributions to this volume may
not reflect this idea to an equal extent; Part 2 of Chapter 3 even argues on various
kinds of evidence that Asian Semitic, and thus the Arabian Peninsula, should be
added to the wider African region.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110421668-201
vi Preface
The fact that the book project has taken so long is attributable to the usual
problems encountered when pursuing a project like this – finding knowledgeable
colleagues who are willing to contribute, making sure that they actually do con-
tribute, making alternative plans when things go wrong, and parallel to all this,
coping with many other concurrent responsibilities of a busy academic career.
Unfortunately, the invited contributors for two important areas – Part 1 of Chapter
3 planned to deal with “Language contact and contact languages” and Chapter 7 on
“Anthropological and cognitive linguistics” – were unable to meet their deadlines.
To make sure that the appearance of the chapters of the remaining contributors
would not be delayed further, I had to make the regretful and admittedly unusual
decision to only adumbrate the planned treatment of such important linguistic
areas in the table of contents and go ahead without them. I certainly hope that the
other chapters, adding up to an already sizable volume, not only make up in quan-
titative but also qualitative terms for these, and possibly other, gaps.
That the volume appears at last is due to the support and collaboration of
various people and institutions. I would first of all thank all co-authors of the
volume for their initial interest and subsequent effective participation in this pub-
lication project, including the trust in its final realization. I am grateful, too, to
Bernard Comrie and Russell Gray by hosting me at the Department of Linguis-
tics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology Leipzig and the
Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution at the Max Planck Institute for
the Science of Human History Jena, respectively – in both places I received impor-
tant logistical support and could undertake parts of the work for this book in an
inspiring academic environment. My thanks also go to the staff of De Gruyter
Mouton, in particular Barbara Karlson, and the editor of this series Hans Henrich
Hock for their cooperation and patience attesting to their understanding that daily
responsibilities of authors are notoriously in the way of production schedules. Two
people, Heather Weston and Ali Hatcher, deserve my special thanks as editorial
assistants – without them this book would not yet exist. Last but not least I owe an
immense debt of gratitude to my family for putting up with my excuses of work
plans and publication deadlines while they had their own projects with and for me.
I dedicate this book in particular to my parents.
Berlin, 20 July 2018
Tom Güldemann
List of contributors
Denis Creissels Professor Emeritus; [email protected]
Jeff Good University of Buffalo; [email protected]
Tom Güldemann H umboldt Universität zu Berlin;
[email protected]
Harald Hammarström Uppsala Universitet; [email protected]
Larry M. Hyman University of California Berkeley; [email protected]
Florian Lionnet Princeton University; [email protected]
Ian Maddieson Professor Emeritus; [email protected]
Ekkehard Wolff Professor Emeritus; [email protected]

Table of contents
Preface ..........................................................v
List of contributors ................................ .........vii
1. A survey of African languages · Harald Hammarström ..........1
1.1. Introduction ...............................................1
1.2. Survey by region ...........................................8
1.2.1. North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula ..................11
1.2.1.1. The greater Nile area ........................13
1.2.1.2. Northwest Africa ............................14
1.2.2. The greater Saharan area ..............................15
1.2.2.1. Northeast Bilād as-Sūdān .....................15
1.2.2.2. Sahara and Sahel ............................17
1.2.3. Ethiopic sphere .....................................20
1.2.4. Sudanic West Africa ..................................23
1.2.5. Central Sudan and Cameroon Grassland ..................26
1.2.5.1. Central Sudan ..............................26
1.2.5.2. Cameroon Grassfields ........................27
1.2.5.3. The Central African area ......................27
1.2.6. Equatorial rain forest .................................28
1.2.7. Eastern savanna .....................................32
1.2.8. Madagascar ........................................34
1.2.9. Southern tip ........................................35
1.3. Summary and outlook ......................................37
Acknowledgements ............................................38
References ...................................................38
2. Historical linguistics and genealogical
language classification in Africa · Tom Güldemann . . . . . . . . . . .58
2.1. African language classification and Greenberg (1963a) ............58
2.1.1. Introduction ........................................58
2.1.2. The pre-Greenbergian background ......................60
2.1.3. The evolution of Greenberg’s classification ...............62
2.1.4. The history of Greenberg’s final classification .............65
2.2. Evidence supporting genealogical classifications .................69
2.2.1. Introduction ........................................69