LIN 380: INTRODUCTION TO AFRICAN LINGUISTICS (BY M.O. NDIRIBE )

COURSE OUTLINE

(1) Definition of African Linguistics(2) Importance of studying African Linguistics (A.L)(3) Classification of African Linguistics (A.L)(4) Features of African Languages(5) Why languages look alike(6) Methods of determining the degrees of language relationship(7) Current issues in African Linguistics

TextbooksTheodora Bynon : Historical Linguistics. (1977)Andrew Spencer : Morphological Processses (1991)Childs, G. Tucker : An Introduction to African languages (2003)

(1)DEFINITION OF AFRICAN LINGUISTICSFor one to define African linguistics purely, reference has to be made to the definition of linguistics in general. Generally, linguistics is accepted to be the scientific study of language. A general definition of African linguistics is therefore the scientific study of African languages or some African languages but if one is to go into specifics, the study of African linguistics goes beyond merely studying African languages.

African linguistics is the process of studying African languages which has as its preoccupation the formulation of models, the theories and laws governing African languages grammatical structures in relation to the other languages of the world.

It is also worthy of note to emphasise that the main thrust of African linguistics is not different from that of general linguistics and also the study of African linguistics has become expedient (necessary) because of historical background of African languages as a result of the many African countries were colonised by the Europeans except Ethiopia that did not experience any colonial experience.

In an attempt to build such models, references have to be made to the structure of other languages of the world and a comparative and contrastive analysis are required in order to have a valid, adequate, reliable, descriptive and explanatory adequacy across and within languages. Thus, for any reasonable study of African languages to be made, attempt has to be made towards unification and a consistent analysis of African language structure. This is because the African languages are in pitiable state because of the rate of civilization, colonization and imperialism that continued to bedevil the Africans. This makes it imperative that African languages need to be studied not` only for to develop and analyse the features or the aspects but to relate them to what obtains else.

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QUESTION(i)Why is it imperative to study African languages? (ii) From what perspective or analytical basis would you want African languages to be studied?

(2) THE IMPORTANCE OF STUDYING AFRICAN LANGUAGES

In view of the foregoing discussion, we need to discuss why it is important to study African languages.

(a) According to Ife six- year project as was put forward by Professor Fafunwa, a former minister of Education. The project showed that children learnt faster and better in their mother tongue than other languages. Therefore, the study of African languages will enable linguists develop models that will help in teaching the African child.

(b) Quite related to the above is a recorded evidence of high school dropouts in African schools. An evidence showed that the above point is likely responsible for the drop-outs. Teaching in African languages make the students feel at home and better comported to learn.

(c) Following the Berlin Conference of Nov. 1884-Feb. 1885, the African continent was partitioned and scrambled for by the colonists. Because of their selfish ambition to acquire material and human resources, the colonists did not care any bit about the integrity of the African nationality. The result of this over-sight was that African languages were carelessly divided which accounted for a particular language to be found in 2 or more countries. The main objective of this division was to make sure that each country in Africa would have one or two languages. The study of African languages therefore becomes necessary to clearly delineate the boundaries of the African languages and lands. E.g. Hausa is spoken in Nigeria, Togo, Chad and Niger. Yoruba is spoken in Nigeria, Cote d’ivour and other neighbouring countries. It is therefore necessary that the Yoruba and Hausa nationalism be shown on the linguistic map.

(d) Because of slow development of African languages, Africans feel inferior to other countries of the world. This inferiority complex is especially seen with languages that have not been reduced to writing. When the culture and literature of African languages are widely published and read, recognition and intensified study will come to bear on the language and culture of African. Such an increase interest in African linguistics will help to boost the African image and engender studies by foreign nationalists.

(e) When African languages are studied, a contrastive and comparative picture will emerge and the relationships between and among African languages can be determined. It will also be possible to classify them in different typologies and families.

(f) Studying African languages can be an independent enterprise to carry out studies for a subject matter for its own sake. This type of study is usually encouraged by the desire

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either to make an inquiry or satisfy a yearning for some nagging academic problem. In type of study, the interest of studying languages for their own sake is paramount.

(g) Identification: when African languages are studied, they will be properly identified with the people that speak them. A linguistic map will be quite different from a political map. When people and their languages are identified and given a sense of cultural activities, they can work out policies towards their language restoration. Also this kind of identification does help the authorities in planning the languages and developing them. Thus the wrong impression and disassociation that usually characterised by the improper identification and stigmatisation as that of the dwellers in Cote d’viour can be overcome.

(h) The study of African languages will enable the African governments to reconcile a number of African languages existing or criss-crossing African boundaries and provide/ divide the type of language policy to adopt. The language policies could be endo-glossic or exo-glossic.When a government adopts the endoglossic language policy, it means that it chooses one language that indigenous to the country as the official / national language but if it adopts the exoglossic language, it adopts a foreign language as an official language. It is such a reconciliation that will enable Nigerian and some Africans to tend towards endoglossic, while Cameroun tends towards exoglossic because it uses English and French.

QuestionWhen African languages are studied a lot of scales that cover the eyes of Africans towards self actualisation are removed. Do you agree with this?

(3) CLASSIFICATION OF AFRICAN LANGUAGES(I) There are up to or over 3,000 languages spoken natively in Africa in several

language families: Afroasiatic is spread throughout the Middlr East North

Africa- the Horn of Africa and parts of the Sahel Nilo Saharan is centered on Sudan and Chad Niger-Congo (Bantu and non Bantu) covers West-

Central, Southeast and Southern Africa Khoe is concentrated in the desert of Namibia and

Botswana Austronesian is spoken i Madagascar Indo- European is spoken on the southern tip of the

continent.

Most languages spoken in Africa, according to Child (2003) belong to one of three large language families: Afroasiatic, Nilo Saharan and Niger Congo. Another hundred belong to small families such as Ubangian (sometimes grouped within Niger-Congo ) and the various families called Khoisan or the Indo-European and Austronesian language families which originated outside Africa.

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(a) Afroasiatic languagesAfroasiatic languages are spoken throughout North Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Middle East and parts of the Sahel. There are approximately 375 Afroasiatic languages spoken by over 350 million people. The main sub families of Afroasiatic are the Berber languages, Semitic languages, Chadic languages and the Cushatic languages. The semitic languages are the only branch of the Afroasiatic family of languages that is spoken outside of Africa. These include Arabic, Amharic and Hebrew among others.Some of the most widely spoken Afroasiatic languages include Arabic (semitic), Somali (Cushitic), Berber (Berber), Hausa (Chadic), Amharic (Semitic), and Oromo (Cushitic).

(b) Nilo-Saharan languagesNilo- Saharan is a controversial grouping uniting over a hundred extremely diverse languages from southern Egypt to northern Tanzania and into Nigeria and DR Congo with the Songhay languages along the middle reaches of the Niger River as a geographic outlier. Genetic linkage between these languages has not been conclusively demonstrated, and among linguists, support for the proposal is sparse. Some of the better known Nilo-Saharan languages are Kanuri, Songhay, Nubian, and the widespread Nilotic family which includes Luo, Dinka, and Maasai. The Nilo- Saharan languages are tonal.

(c) Niger-Congo languagesThe Niger-Congo language family is the largest group of Africa (and probably of the world) in terms of the number of languages. One of its salient features is an elaborate noun class system with grammatical concord. The vast majority of languages of this family are tonal such as Yoruba, and Igbo, Ashanti and Ewe language. A major branch of Niger-Congo is the Bantu family which covers a greater geographic area than the rest of the family put together.The Niger-Kordofanian language family, joining Niger-Congo with the Kordofanian languages of south- central Sudan was proposed in 1950s by Joseph Greenberg. Today, linguists often use “Niger-Congo” to refer to this entire family, including Kordofanian as a sub family. (see Child 2003; Greenberg 1983, Elugbe 1998)

Small families

The three small Khoisan families of southern Africa have not been shown to be related to the major families of Africa. In addition, there are various other families which have not been demonstrated to belong to one of these families.

Mande, some 70 languages, including the major languages of Mali and Guinea, These are thought to be divergent of Niger-Congo, but debate persists.

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Ubangian, some 70 languages, including the languages of the central African Republic. May also be Niger-Congo.

Khoe, about 10 languages, the primary family of Khoisan languages of Namibia and Botswana

Sundawe, an isolate of Tanzania, possibly related to Khoe

Kx’a, a language of southern Africa Tuu, or Taa-Ui, two surviving languages Hadza, an isolate of Tanzania Bangi-me, a likely isolate of Mali Jalaa, a likely isolate of Nigeria Laal, a possible isolate of Chad.

Khoisan is a term of convenience covering some 30 languages spoken by about 300,000—400,000 people. They are five Khoisan families which have not been shown to be related to each other, Khoe, Tuu, and Kx’a (these are found mainly in Namibia and Botswana) and Sundawe and Hadza of Tanzania, which are isolates. A striking feature of Khoisan languages and the reason they are counted together, is their use of click consonants.

Besides the former colonial languages of English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish, the following languages are official at the national level in Africa:Afroasiatic

Arabic in Algeria, Comoros, Chad, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Amharic in Ethiopia Berber in Morocco Somali in Somalia Tingrinya in Eritrea

Austronesian

Malagasy in Madagascar

Indo- European

Afrikaans

Niger Congo

Chichewa in Malawi Comorian in Comoros Kinyarwanda in Rwanda

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Sesotho in Lesotho and South Africa Shona, Sindebele in Zimbabwe Setswana/ Tswana in Botswana and South Africa Sepedi in South Africa Ndebele in South Africa Swahili in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda Swati in Swaziland and South Africa Tsonga in South Africa Venda in South Africa Xhosa in South Africa Zulu in South Africa

Creoles

Sango in Central Africa Republic Seychellois Creole in the Seychelles .

(II)

According to Grimmes (1996), African languages are about 2035. He divided African languages into four phyla:

Niger Congo- 1436 languages including the Bantu family which has 500 members. Afroasiatic-371 languages Nilo-Saharan Hamits -196 languages Khoisan family 35 languages

Niger Congo: Wolof spoken in Senegal, Fulfulde which has spread over most of west and central Africa, Manding: this has varieties of which are spoken in several west African countries under various names including Bambara, national language of Mali and Dyula of Cote d’vorie, a wide spread language, Akan- the largest spoken and Igbo, major language in Nigeria, Sango-the lingua franca of Central African Republic and number of Bantu languages, of which some of the best known are Ganda, the Gikugu, Kongo, Lingala, Iaba, Kasan, Mbunde, Northen Sotho, Nyanja, Rundi, Rwanda, Shona, Southern-Sotho, Sukuna, Swahili, Tsonga, Tswana, Umbundu, Xhosa and Zulu.

Note: the major language families in Niger-Congo are as follows

Mande Kwa Benue Congo West Atlantic Adamawa Eastern Kordofanian

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Languages are usually classified for two (2) main reasons

To determine the degree of their relationship and To establish the proto language

The criteria for languages classification are based on the features of the languages which could be:

Phonological Morphological Syntactic

The above classifications of African languages are based on some predominant linguistic factors:

(1) Among the languages that fall under Kwa they share the property of being tonal, verb serialisation and consecutivization. More so, most of them are also agglutinating (ability of language to string many morphs to form words) in the sense that they have lots of affixes which some authors have called extensional measure because their addition extends the meaning of the free morphemes or stir words to which they are attached.( E.g. Igbo: je—go; jeghi—not go )These languages also have the features of reduplication—this has to do with doubling of some aspects of word or words themselves to generate either another grammatical category or to extend the meaning of the original grammatical category. They also have feature of compounding. Most Kwa languages are also known for being syllabic in nature and have many more consonants than most European languages.

(2) The Afroasiatic: this has simplified phonological structure. More so, most of the languages in this class do not have the tonal features associated with Kwa group. They are also related to some Asian languages in the sense that they have a lot of influence from the Arabic languages.

(3) Bantu Languages: they are known for their noun class systems and a sophisticated morphological structure in addition to their click sounds. Most South African languages belong to this class.

(4) Benue Congo: language family runs through the Southern part of Nigeria to the Eastern and Central African Republic. They do not have the tonal system and the features of vowel harmony that some of the Kwa languages are known for.

Questions: African languages are broadly classified under three language families; name them and discuss at least three languages under each.(2) South Africa could be described as the Africa’s super hub of language pluralism. What is your assessment of this comment?

(4) FEATURES OF AFRICAN LANGUAGES

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Some widespread phonetic features include: Certain types of consonants, such as implosives (/ a/),

ejectives (/k’a), the labiodentals flap and in southern Africa, clicks (/a/). True implosives are rare outside Africa and clicks and the flap are almost unheard of.

Doubly articulated labial-velar stops like /kpa and /gba/ are found in a wide belt south of sahara.

Prenasalised consonants like /mpa/ and /ga/ are widespread in Africa but not common outside it.

Sequences of stops and fricatives at the beginning of words, such as /fsa/, /pta/ and /dtskx’a/, are notable throughout the continent.

Nasal stop which only occur with nasal vowels such as [ba] vs. [ma](but both [pa] and [pa], especially in West Africa.

Vowels contrasting an advanced or retracted tongue commonly called tense and lax.

Simple tone system which are used for grammatical purposes.

Sounds that are relatively uncommon in African languages include uvular consonants, diphthongs and fronted rounded vowels.

(b) Syntactic

Widespread syntactical structures include the common use of adjectival verbs and the expression of comparison by means of verbs. The Niger-Congo languages are famous for having very large numbers of gender (noun classes) which cause agreement in verb and other words. Case, tense and other categories may be distinguished only by tone.

(d) Semantic

Quite often, only one term is used for both animal and meat: the word nama or nyama for animal/meat is particularly widespread in otherwise widely divergent African languages.

African languages have some universal features:

They have basic phonological or phonotactic patterns which align in a specific order to produce morphological forms.

They have basic principles of word building which basically comprise the marriage between free and bound morphemes.

Syntactically, they have word order in sentences and phrasal formation. In any case however, the way they organise their linguistic forms sometimes differ radically from the basic universal form.

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The specific features of African languages are as follows:

(1) Compounding African languages compound grammatical categories to express different thoughts and create new images. Compounding consists of joining of two or more independent lexical items. Being independent on its own, each item has its full status. Based on the assertion of various scholars, compounding is a morphological process of forming new words by joining two or more free words to form a compound word. (see Spencer 1991).

Compounding in some African languages

IGBO

(i) Di (husband) ji (yam)== diji--- specialist in yam cultivation (yam cultivator).

(ii) Nwa (child) any[ (we)== nwaany[--- woman or female child

(iii) Nwa (child) oke (male)== nwoke (male or man)

(iv) Nne (mother) nna (father)== nnenna (mother of father or grandmother or simply a name of a female child.

YORUBA

(i) Eran (meat) ọrọ (farm) ==erankọ--- bush meat ?(ii) Iya (mother) ọkọ=== iyakọ--------(iii) Omi (water) tutu (cold)==omitutu--- coldwater.

SWAHILI

Gbana (little) lolo (child)== gbanalolo--- littlechild

HAUSA

White + house

Big + house

Long +life

Black + dog

(2) Reduplication

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This is the act or instance of doubling or reiterating; an often grammatically functional repetition of an element or a part of it at the beginning of and often accompanied by change of the vowel to form a new word. In other words, reduplication is possible by doubling a specified syllable or other portion of the primitive sometimes with fixed modification. Reduplication is often described phonologically in one or two different ways either as:

(a) Reduplicated segments (sequences of consonants or vowels or as(b) Reduplicated prosonic unit (syllables or moxas)

In addition to phonological distribution, reduplication often needs to be described morphologically as a reduplication of linguistic constituents [word, stems roos].In linguistics, reduplication is mostly associated with morphology, that is, a morphological process by which the root / stem of a word or part of it is repeated. There are two types of reduplication.

Complete reduplication and Partial reduplication

Complete Reduplication

This is where a word is repeated either for emphasis or plurality.

HAUSA

Maza—(quick) maza maza – quickly

Ruwa (water) ruwaruwa -- watery

YORUBA

Eja (fish)

Pa (kill)

Pa+ Eja (contraction)+ (regressive assimilation) =paeja =peja (kill fish)

peja peja (fisherman) fish killer

Kia (fast) kia kia (fast fast)

IGBO

Qsq (run) qsqqsq--- quickly

Aja (sand) ajaaja --- sandy

Mmiri (water) mmiri mmiri ----watery

Partial Reduplication

This is where a part of a word is repeated. E.g.

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IGBO

O+lu+lo – Olulo== to swallow

Q+gị +ga— Qgịga == to pass

O +ji +je – Ojije == going

Discover how partial reduplication is realised in at least three other African languages to include Yoruba, Hausa, Ibibio and Efik.

(3) Consecutivization / Serialization

This is the process where two or more verbs follow one another in a construction. In other words, serialization and consecutivization have to do with the stringing of words (verbs) in a sequence without interruption. Therefore verb serialization and consecutivization are processes in language where a number of verbs are stringed together sharing the same subject without intervening conjunction or preposition. This is a syntactic process common in many African languages where no verb is subordinated to the other.

(i) Ewe Language (GHANAKofi da nu di ---- Kofi cook eat something.

(ii) Nupe (NIGERIA)Musa be la ebi ---- Musa came took knife

(iii) Igbo (NIGERIA) Nne gaara ahia zxta ji, bacha sachaa sie rie ya—Mother went to market, bought yam, peeled, washed, cooked, ate it.

Verb serializations have functions in a sentence where they occur.

(4 ) Incoporating

This is a morphology and process whereby two or more grammatical categories re-analyse its forms, meanings and as such change the original features. E.g. gba, a verb with the meaning like run, shot, dance etc, and px- a verb meaning “out” gives gbap x which is now a preposition meaning run out. Therefore, px has reanalysed itself from a verb to being a form of preposition.

(5) AgglutinationA morphological process in which the word forms can be segmented into morphs each of which represents a single grammatical category. E.g. Swahili, Igbo, YorubaIGBOe-je-ghie—(participle)je— root (go)

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ghi – negative marker

(6) InflectionThis is when one word has more than one morpheme embedded in one word but these morphemes cannot be distinctively segmented.LATINAmo I love. You cannot break down the words and bring out the morphemes in it.ENGLISHWent—go + edIGBOỤMỤ – Children cannot be broken into nwa +nwa.

(7)InterfixationThis is a morphological process whereby an empty morph or an ordinary morph is inserted between two morphemes or between two identical roots. In other words, an interfix interrupts the sequence of two words. E.g.Igbo (NIGERIA)Ebe (l) ebe [ebelebe] ebelebe means that unimaginable has happened; whereas ebe means a place. Here ‘l’ becomes the interfix.person whereas anx means meat or animal. Here the ‘m’ becomes the interfix.Ekwu (r) ekwu [ekwurekwu] ‘talkativeness from talk. The ‘r’ interfixes.

Yoruba (NIGERIA)Qmọ (k) ọmọ [bad child] So the ‘k’ interfix produces bad child from child.Ile (k) ile [bad house] So the ‘k’ interfix produces bad house from house.Owo (d) owo [hand to hand ]

Edo (NIGERIA)Eghe (time), Eghe (ki) eghe (any time)Aga (child), Aga (ki) aga (any child)

(8) Tonal FeatureTone languages, according to Pike (1948) are languages that have lexically significant, contrastive but relative pitch on each syllable. In his own definition, Welmers (1959) suggests that a tone language is a language in which pitch phonemes and segmental phonemes enter into the composition of at least some morphemes. Nwachukwu, (1995) asserts that a tone language is the one that has a lexically, significant contrastive but relative pitch on each syllable where each syllable is a tone bearing unit (TBU)(a) Contour Tone Language

Here there are pitch changes during the course of production of the syllable. The distinguishing features of tone on contour system are their shifts in pitch such as rising, falling, fall rising, dipping etc. for instance, the Kru language of Niger-

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Congo use contour tone while their nouns are distinguished by contour tones. Also Yoruba of Kwa group of Niger-Congo has phonetic contours but it is worthy of note to point out these phenomena can easily be analysed as sequence of register tones. This is also present in Igbo language of the Niger-Congo. E.g. A da + Ugo

a daugo -- a dugo

(b) Register Tone LanguageThis is found mostly in Niger-Congo group of language family. A register tone is the tone during which production there is no perceptible change in pitch resulting in a fall or rise. (cf. Nwachukwu 1995). In other words, in register tone languages, there is no tone glide.

(c) Types of TonesIt seems that a great number of African languages have either two or three basic tone levels in their phonology while some have three. For instance, Ewe and Yoruba have three basic tone levels. In Yoruba, the three tones are distinctive and lexical in function which helps to distinguish one word from another. E.g.igba -- calabashigba -- climbing ropei gba -- garden eggi gba -- timeigba -- zoo

In the Igbo language also, three distinctive tone levels are present; namely: high, low and downstep. E.g.

isi -- head

i si -- blindness

isi-- isī --to cook

(d) Some African Languages and the types of tones

LANGUAGES NO OF TONES TYPES OF TONESHAUSA 3 High (unmarked)

Low ( )Fall ( )

BOKYI 4 High ( )Low (unmarked)Rise ( )Fall ( )

IZON 2 High ( )Low (unmarked )

IDOMA 3 High ( )Low (unmarked)Mid ( )

YORUBA 3 High ( )

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Low ( )Mid (unmarked)

IGBO 3 High ( )Low ( )Downstep ( )

EFIK 5 High (unmarked)Low ( )Downstep ( )Fall ( ) Rise ( )

(e) Functions of TonesTones perform the following functions:

(j) Lexical Function: The tone brings about meaning distinction between homographic words with the same morphological structure. E.g.

Yorubalo -- twist

Igbooke-- male

lo -- go oke -- sharelo -- grind oke -- rat

(ii) Grammatical Function:

This shows the difference between a declarative sentence and interrogative sentence. E.g.

Ọ gara akwụkwọ -- He went to school (declarative)

Ọ gara akwụkwọ – Did he go to school (interrogative)

(iii) It shows the difference between possessive and associative. E.g.ego ụzọ------ association

money road

ego ụzọ -------- possessionụzọ’s money

(iv) Differentiates between and among phrases of the same syntactic structure. E.g.osisi ụkwa ----- Breadfruit treeosisi ụkwa ----- Cooking of Breadfruitosisi ụkwa Measuring of breadfruit

Question (i) . What would you consider the basic features of African languages?(ii) Discuss in some details the concept of tones using at least three African

languages of your choice.

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(iii) Interfixation is grammatical in African languages. Discuss with at least three languages of your choice..

(iv) Reduplication is a powerful tool in describing African languages. How does it operate?

(5) WHY LANGUAGES LOOK ALIKE

Some grammatical features across languages look similar even though the languages exhibiting (these) such features may not be related. Because of these, it becomes pertinent to investigate and find out the reasons why languages resemble. It is always the case that when languages look alike, they are related. The reason for resemblance is not genetic.

(a) Accident : languages can resemble out of accident likewise humans. Features of languages may look alike purely as a result of accident. E.g. Tivs say ‘no’ for negativity while English language also uses ‘no’ for negative response. Linguistic factors have not reveal any relationship between Tiv and English as it concerns negative response is not genetic rather it is as a result of accident/ chance.

(b) Geneology. Two or more languages may be related or their features may look alike, sound alike because they share the same genetic features. In other words, they have the same proto-form and as such belong to the same language family.

(c) Limitation of possibility: language phonotactics have constraints in the way they order the arrangement or rearrangement of phonemes across languages. This arrangement/ rearrangement of phonemes consist in the alternate use of consonants and vowels in forming lexical item. It also consists, with regard to syntax, the limited grammatical slots that lexical items may occupy. When the phonemes/ lexical items are arranged in a grammatical configuration, they may look similar across languages. E.g. Igbo has a predominating use of CV structure but in English language, consonant cluster can be found. Other languages like Yoruba also have the CV syllable structure in combining words. Therefore, in combining consonants and vowels to form words, two or more languages may look alike or resemble.

(d) Onomatopoeia: Onomatopoeic words are often written across languages to link with phonological pattern of the sound. In doing this, two or more languages may write their speech sound the same way. E.g y /ᶮ/ Spanishny /ᶮ/ Igbo

(e) Borrowing : when languages come in contact they may tend to borrow words which express experiences absent in languages prior to the contact. For instance:bucket – English bọketị ---Igbobukutit ----Hausabọketi ---- Yoruba

In such borrowing, the popular linguistic option is to render the borrowed word in the borrowed language according to its phonological pattern. When the borrowed word has been reduced to writing in the target language, it often looks similar to the original word of the

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source language. Though the source and the target languages may not look alike due to borrowings

(6) METHODS OF DETERMINING THE DEGREE OF LANGUAGE RELATIONSHIP

The study of different methods of determining the degree of language relationship falls within the branch of linguistics known as Historical and Comparative linguistics. (Bynon 1977)

(1) Historical Linguistics

This is also called diachronic linguistics and it is the study of language change. It has five major concerns:

(a) To describe and account for observed changes in a particular language.(b) To reconstruct pre-history of languages and determine their relatedness, grouping and

then put them into language families.(c) To develop general theories about how and why languages change.(d) To describe the history of speech communities and (e) to study the history of words (ethymology).

(2) Comparative Linguistics ( Comparative Philology)

This is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their historical relatedness. In historical and comparative linguistics, there appears to be the need to determine how two or more languages are related. This is necessary so as to classify them and determine their proto-form. In historical and comparative linguistics, certain methods have been deviced in determining the degree of language relatedness. The methods are as follows:

(a) Glottochronology – this is the first and primordial method of determining the degree language relatedness. This is the method in linguistic used to estimate the rate at which languages change, based on the assumption that the basic vocabulary of a language change a roughly constant rate. This assumption originally put forward by Morris Swadesh is based on an analogy with the use of carbon dating (try to trace the time, period, age, origin of the artifacts)For measuring the age of organic material, in which a lexical half life is estimated- which is assumed to be average time that any one word is in existence in a particular language. The method therefore estimates the length of time since two or more languages diverged from a common earlier proto- language, by seeing how many words have changed. These then yields an estimated date of origin of these languages. In other words, glottochronology attempts to determine the point in time when two languages separated as a common language. In doing that it makes use of certain assumption:

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(i) When the percentage of cognate relationship is 70% or above, the varieties are dialects of the same language rather than different languages.

(ii) The percentage of retention is 85% across languages.(iii) Basic vocabularies are used in determining the point in time when two

languages are separated.

Note: Basic vocabularies are lexical items that are utilitarian in nature. By this we mean that they do not change so much but when they do, they change across languages. They include:

(a) Satellite bodies(b) Parts of the body(c) Domestic utensil

The reason why Basic Vocabulary are used are as follows

They do not change over time, when they change; they do so in the same direction. They form the everyday experience of the human society.

(a1) Methodology of Glottochronology

As we have said earlier, the original method presumed that the core / basic vocabulary of a language is replaced at a constant rate across all languages and cultures, and can therefore be used to measure the passage of time. The process makes list of lexical terms compiled by Morris Swadesh assumed to be a resistant against borrowing (originally designed as a list of 200 items; however the reduced 100 word list is much more common among the modern day linguists). The core vocabulary was designed to encompass concept common to every human language as we said earlier. The basic vocabularies include the personal pronouns, body parts, heavenly bodies, verbs of basic actions, minerals etc, eliminating concepts that vary by culture and time. Words that vary and do not stand the test of time are also avoided.

Besides, glottochronology uses the percentage of cognate (words that have common origin) in basic cognate. The larger the percentage of cognate, the more recently the two languages being compared are presumed to have separated. The basic formula for glottochronology:

Percentage of cognate relationship x 100

2 Log % of retention 1

As we said earlier, it is held that the % of retention is 85% universally.

(a2) on the use of glottochronology

(1) Since its original incarnation, glottochronology has been rejected by many linguists who view it as having been falsified by man’s counter examples. Many claim that there is enough evidence to support the idea that languages change at varied rate. For instance, a language and literature may have a stabilizing effect on literate culture languages.

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(2) Another argument is that language change arises from socio-historical events which are unforeseeable and uncomputable and since this change takes time, they might appear at varying rate.

(3) It can be pointed out that there are no basic or qualitative differences between features of different rank in the word list. It is highly likely that chances of being replaced are in fact different from every word of feature.

(b) lexical statistics

This is a technique which attempts to provide dates for the earlier stages of languages. Much as Carbon 14 dating provides dates for archaeological findings, this contrasts with previous linguistic method, which although able to reconstruct to some extent, the history of the languages, has been unable to provide date apart from written historical records. Lexical statistics is a statistical method that employs lexical items in calculating the degree of relationships across languages. When lexical items are used to calculate the percentage of the relationship, the similar ones either tonally, phonetically phonologically, syntactically, semantically are used to be cognates. Cognate relationship is determined as follows:

Number of cognates x 100

Total number of tokens of words used 1

Examples:

English Igbo Yoruba

Eye anya eju

Hand aka owo

Leg ụkwụ ere

Goat ewu ewure

If the cognate relationship is 70%, then the varieties are dialects. In other words, if the % of cognate relationship is 69% or less, then the varieties are distantly related and are regarded as tokens of different languages.

(b1) Techniques of Lexical Ststistics

Collecting of comparable word list from the relatively stable core vocabulary Determining the probable cognates Computing the depths Computing the range of error and Optimally computing the data to determine the final result.(d) GEOGRAPHY OF LANGUAGE AND POPULATION DISPERSAL

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This method presumes the fact that societies are homogenous but are dispersed in different places which were once the abode of people of a common geographical area. It also assumes that some events both natural and man-made caused the dispersal of the society that was once formally homogenous in time and space. The proponent of this theory is Lenneberg and he says that the natural factor can be famine, erosion, drought etc. The man- made factors include wars, terrorism, riot etc and such events displace population of different areas. The displaced population gets influenced by their new environment so that over time the formally homogenous community will be heterogeneous to the extent that it will be hard to believe that they were once homogenous.

Thus, linguistics plots the causes in relation the geography or dispersal in order to determine the original homeland of the displaced population.

(C) TOPONYMY(Scientific study of places names)

Topos- (the origin, the meaning, use and typology) Toponymy is a word that was derived from Greek words Topos meaning place and onoma meaning name. Toponymy is itself a branch of Onomastics- the study of names of all kinds. Toponymy is often confused with etymology which is the study of the origin of words and it is worthy of note to state that the person who studies toponymy is Toponymist. So toponymy is the linguistics method which uses places names to determine the original inhabitants of an area. This method is related to the geography of language and population dispersal. It is different from it in the sense that toponymy involves instinct and efface; e.g names such as Bariga, Badagry, and many other names in Lagos are Brazilian names which were introduced when some Brazilians occupied the area during the slave trade era. After their departure, the names remained behind. Other names in Britain that end in the suffixes-ester, -bough, -borough are not English names. We have names like Manchester, Malborough, Middlesborough, Edinburgh, Pitsbourgh, are not English names. They are Celtic names as a pointer to the fact that the Celtic originally inhabited such places.

Toponymy tries to determine the relationship between the original owners of the land, the cause(s) of movement, their present location and the relationship between the languages(the old and the new). Toponymy like basic vocabulary hardly changes, if they do so at all, they do in the same direction. That is why they are reliable source of linguistic comparative method according to some linguists.

Questions

1. How should the knowledge of geography enhance our concept of language relatedness and etymology?

2. Glottochronology and Lexical statistic are both tools in determining language relatedness. How do they relate and differ?

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3. Using glottochronology and lexical statistic formulae calculate the relationship of two African languages. Are they really a cognate of one proto language or are they dialects of different languages?

4. Both natural and man-made disaster can lead to language dispersal; what are they and how?

5. A lot of things can lead to language resemblance. Name them and explain why it is so.6. An accident, as far as linguistics is a good omen. Discuss.

(7) CURRENT ISSUES IN STUDY OF AFRICAN LINGUISTICS

Presently, the study of African languages is trying to fix in the disciplines and other related disciplines and readopt linguistics knowledge to such related disciplines. That is the reason why most linguistics analysis presently tends to be interdisciplinary in approach. We have computational linguistics, Neuro-linguistics, Mathematical-linguistics, forensic application (using someone’s voice, picture, finger print in analysis of crime) are being studied in relation to the core areas of linguistics. Of all these related disciplines, computational linguistics, mathematical linguistics and logical semantics appear to be most popular. Linguistics is relevant in these areas in the sense that the computer technological scientists or statistician would need the dictionary of the language grammar and its phonotactics to develop programs and softwares to command constructions. Also logical semantics is popular because all disciplines tend to theorise their postulation and hypothesis. In this regard, semantic symbols which are logical in nature are indispensable and the statistician must be involved in providing the statistical notations. Similarly, interlanguage translations are also constants such that a linguist easily adopts himself to all manner of translation in language he studies SCIENTIFICALLY.

QUESTIONS

Tthe assumption that linguistics as a field of study has no practical applicability is true; how truthful is that assumption?

2. How do you see the knowledge of linguistics in global advancements?

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