Sandawe language

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Sandawe is a tonal language spoken by about 40,000 people in the Dodoma region of Tanzania. Language use is vigorous among both adults and children, with people in some areas monolingual. Sandawe has generally been classified as a Khoisan language since Albert Drexel in the 1920s, due at first just to the presence of clicks in the language, though later several morphological similarities with the Khoisan languages of southern Africa were proposed. A recent discussion of Sandawe's linguistic classification can be found in Sands (1998).

SIL International began work on Sandawe in 1996 and to date (2004), Daniel and Elisabeth Hunziker and Helen Eaton continue to work on the analysis of the language. They have so far produced a phonological description, a dialect survey report and several papers on aspects of grammar. Sandawe is also currently (since 2002) studied by Sander Steeman of Leiden University.

Contents

[edit] Sounds

[edit] Vowels

Sandawe has five vowel qualities:

i u
e o
a

All five vowel qualities may be found as short oral, long oral and long nasal vowels. There are therefore fifteen vowel phonemes. In word-final position, devoiced u and i vowels occur frequently.

[edit] Consonants

[edit] Non-click consonants

The glyphs in italics are the practical orthography developed by Hunziker and Hunziker, followed by approximate equivalents in the IPA.

Labial Alveolar Post-
alveolar		 Palatal Velar Labialized
velar		 Glottal
Plosive Aspirated p [pʰ] t [tʰ] k [kʰ]
Tenuis bp [p] dt [t] gk [k] ’ [ʔ]
Voiced b [b] d [d] g [ɡ]
Ejective k’ [kʼ]
Nasal stop m [m] n [n]
Affricate Aspirated tch [ʧʰ]
Tenuis tc [ʧ]
Voiced dz [ʤ]
Ejective tsʼ [ʦʼ]
Lateral tenuis tl [tɬ]
Lateral voiced dl [dɮ]
Lateral ejective tlʼ [tɬʼ]
Fricative Central f [f] s [s] kh [x]
Lateral lh [ɬ]
Approximant l [l]; r [ɾ] y [j] w [w] h [h]

[edit] Clicks

(source: Wright et al. 1995)

Word-initial clicks Word-medial clicks
Laminal
Denti-alveolar		 Lateral
alveolar		 Apical
postalveolar		 Laminal
Denti-alveolar		 Lateral
alveolar		 Apical
postalveolar
Nasal nc [ŋǀ] nx [ŋǁ] nq [ŋǃ] Nasal [ŋǀ] [ŋǁ] [ŋǃ]
Voiced gc [ɡǀ] gx [ɡǁ] gq [ɡǃ] Prenasalized [ᵑɡǀ] [ᵑɡǁ] [ᵑɡǃ]
Tenuis c [kǀ] x [kǁ] q [kǃ]
Aspirated ch [kǀʰ] xh [kǁʰ] qh [kǃʰ]
Glottalised c’ [kǀˀ] x’ [kǁˀ] q’ [kǃˀ] Glottalized nasal [ŋʔǀ] [ŋʔǁ] [ŋʔǃ]

The clicks in Sandawe are not particularly loud, when compared to more famous click languages in southern Africa. The lateral click [kǁ] can be confused with the ejective lateral affricate [tɬʼ]. With the postalveolar clicks, the tongue often slaps the bottom of the mouth, and this slap may be louder than the actual release of the click. Wright et al. transcribe this slapped click with the ad hoc symbol [kǃ¡], although this is not the standard Extended IPA usage of that symbol.

Only three of the five click effluxes occur between vowels, and all are nasalized. (Nasal clicks are the easiest to pronounce; in Dahalo and Damin, for example, all clicks are nasal.) The glottalized click efflux is something like creaky voice; it is not an ejective. In initial position, the glottis is closed during the entire occlusion of the click, but not opened until after the burst of the [k], which is after the click release [ǃ]. In medial position, the glottis is closed after the velar closure [ŋ] and before the forward closure, but opened before the click release. Such clicks are not always nasalized all the way through; in some tokens they are simply prenasalized glottalized clicks, [ŋkǃˀ], bearing in mind that the superscript [ˀ] implies coarticulation (that is, that it is pronounced together with the [k], not after, as explained above).

The practical orthography is based on Xhosa and Zulu.

[edit] Grammar

[edit] Pronouns

Sandawe English
1 sg. -és I
2 sg. -i you
3 sg. male -à he
3 sg. female -sà she
1 pl -wà we
2 pl -è you
3 pl -ʔà they

[edit] Syllable structure

Sandawe syllables are usually of the form CV; in monosyllabic words, word-final nasals are not uncommon, CV(N). Sometimes other consonants are found in word-final position, but this is most probably the result of deletion of word-final voiceless vowels. A syllabic nasal m is found in Swahili loanwords. The most common word structure is disyllabic with or without long vowels (CV(ː)CV(ː)), according to De Voogt (1992).


[edit] Nouns

A noun consists generally of a stem and a suffix which indicates gender (masculine, feminine, neuter) and number (singular, plural).

[suffixes to be added]

[edit] Adjectives

Adjectival concepts are mostly expressed as verbs in Sandawe according to Kagawe (1993:ix).

[edit] Syntax

Basic word order in Sandawe is SOV according to De Voogt (1992). However, word order in the Sandawe sentence is very flexible due to the presence of several 'subject identification strategies'.

Sample sentence (mid tones are not marked):

úte-s kxʼaré-és hàʔǃà
yesterday-I boy-I called
Yesterday I called a boy
(source: De Voogt 1992:19 adapted from Tucker 1977)

[edit] Tone

Elderkin (1989) analyzes Sandawe as having two level tones (High, Low) and two contour tones (Falling, Rising). His thesis considers the behavior of tone at word-, sentence- and discourse-level. De Voogt (1992) and Kagaya (1993) list three level tones (High, Mid, Low) and two contour tones (Falling, Rising).

[edit] Classification

The most promising candidate as a relative of Sandawe are the Khoe languages of Botswana and Namibia.

Greenberg (1976) gives the following arguments for its classification as Khoisan, in addition to about 50 Sandawe-Khoisan vocabulary similarities. Most of these involve Sandawe and Khoe:

  • Personal pronouns: tsi "I" (cf. Nama, Naro ti, Tsoa či; sa "she" (cf. Nama -s, Naro -sa); e "it" (Nama -i nominative, -e accusative), ha-we "he" (cf. Naro xa-ba); ha-su, he-su "she" (cf. Naro xa-sa)
  • Demonstratives: ha "that" (cf. ǀXam, ǁXegwi ha, Naro xa, Tsoa ho); he "this" (Korana he); na "there" (common Taʼa-ǃKwi, Nama ǁna); ne "here" (Nama ne)
  • Plural suffixes: -si feminine plural (Naro -si, Nama -ti, Ju languages, ǃXóõ -si common plural); -ko masculine plural (Nama -ku, ǀXam -gu personal plural)
  • Adjective formant -se (cf. ǂKxʼauǁʼein -si, Nama -se, Naro -sə.)
  • Verbal suffixes: reciprocal -ki (cf. Naro, Nama -ku)

The evidence linking the southern Khoisan families suggests that Sandawe is no more distantly related to them than they are to each other, despite the geographic distance. Although the Khoisan hypothesis is regarded with scepticism by many linguists, Sands provides additional arguments that the inclusion of Sandawe (but not Hadza) is likely to be correct.

[edit] Further reading

[edit] References

  • Dobashi, Yoshihito (2001) 'Agreement and Word Order in Sandawe' In Cornell Working Papers in Linguistics, 2001, 18, pp 57-74.
  • Eaton, Helen C. (2002) 'A Grammar of Focus in Sandawe' (Unpublished Ph.D thesis, University of Reading).
  • Elderkin, Edward D. (1989) 'The Significance and Origin of the Use of Pitch in Sandawe' (Unpublished D.Phil thesis, University of York).
  • Kagaya, Ryohei (1993) 'A Classified Vocabulary of The Sandawe Language', Asian & African Lexicon vol 26. Tokyo: Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa (ILCAA).
  • Sands, Bonny E. (1998) 'Eastern and Southern African Khoisan: evaluating claims of distant linguistic relationships.' Quellen zur Khoisan-Forschung 14. Köln: Köppe.
  • Voogt, A.J. de (1992) Some phonetic aspects of Hatsa and Sandawe clicks (Unpublished MA thesis in African Linguistics, Leiden University).
  • Wright, Richard, Ian Maddieson, Peter Ladefoged, Bonny Sands (1995). 'A phonetic study of Sandawe clicks', UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics, No. 91: Fieldwork Studies in Targeted Languages III.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

Khoisan languages  (classification)

 Edit
ǁAni | Gǁana | Gǀwi | Hadza | ǂHõã | Juǀʼhoan | Korana | ǃKung (ǃXũũ) | Kwadi | ǂKxʼauǁʼein | Kxoe |

Nama | Naro | Nǀu | Sandawe | Seroa | Shua | Tsoa | ǀXam | ǁXegwi | Xiri | ǃXóõ
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