Languages In the World (51 page)
Read Languages In the World Online
Authors: Julie Tetel Andresen,Phillip M. Carter
The vast, dry savannah that stretches across a wide swath of Southern Africa is known as the Kalahari Desert. The large lowland part of the desert that covers
most of present-day Botswana and a large part of neighboring Namibia is known as the Kalahari Basin. It is the historical homeland of a linguistic and cultural Sprachbund, comprising the pre-European and pre-Bantu people of Africa. Linguists have traditionally referred to these people as Khoisan. Most of the languages in the Sprachbund are endangered; the most widely spoken is Khoekhoe, which has about 250,000 speakers. Most of the languages are historically unwritten, though orthographies have been devised, largely for the purpose of making bilingual dictionaries.
The southernmost part of the Kalahari Basin, located in the south and west of Botswana and the eastern part of Namibia, is home to speakers of the Taa language. The Taa, historically hunter-gatherers, are today experiencing pressure by national governments to abandon their nomadic lifestyles and settle on permanent farms outside of the desert. As this change happens, the number of Taa speakers is dwindling. In Botswana and Namibia, Taa is of low prestige, and many speakers are switching to European, Bantu, or other languages. This trend applies to Khoisan languages in general. There are between 3000 and 4000 Taa speakers in Botswana, and no more than a few hundred more in Namibia. Speakers of Taa come from a variety of ethnic groups, collectively known as San. Taa language varieties are in the Tuu branch of the Khoisan language family. Some linguists have called the validity of Khoisan as a singe language family into question, as there is some evidence that the languages of the Kalahari Basin are not all genetically related.
The Taa language can more accurately be described as a great dialect chain running east to west from Botswana to Namibia. Adjacent varieties are mostly mutually intelligible with one another, but varieties separated by great distances are not. The two major varieties are West !Xoon, spoken in Namibia, and those known as 'NÇohan, spoken on the border region, and East !Xoon spoken in Botswana. The established boundaries are being erased, as Taa speakers from across regions come into contact with one another on account of resettlement by national governments and patterns of assimilation.
If you learned English as a child, you likely learned to imitate the clip-clop sound that a horse makes when it walks along a hard surface by varying the pitch as you made a clicking noise with your tongue. If you were naughty, your caretaker may have made a similar sound that English speakers have decided to spell
tsk-tsk
. These sounds are known as click consonants, and unlike in English, they are phonemic in all the languages of the Khoisan family and many Bantu languages spoken in sub-Saharan Africa.
Unlike the other consonants we have described thus far, clicks are not made by expelling air from the lungs. Instead, they are formed when the tongue creates two points of contact within the oral cavity, creating a pocket of air that, when released, creates a loud clicking noise. The anterior point of contact may be bilabial /Ê/, dental /Ç/, lateral /Ç/, alveolar /!/, or palatal /Ç/. The posterior point of contact, which is not customarily transcribed phonetically, is either the uvula or the pharynx.
In Taa language varieties, the precise number of clicks is debated, but a fair estimate is between 80 and 120, though the number varies from variety to variety. Click consonants are extremely frequent in Taa; well over half of all Taa words begin with a click, and some 70% of all words contain a click (Traill 1994). The Taa click inventory includes all of the anterior places of articulation described above. The following examples illustrate each of the five basic click anterior places of articulation in word-initial, prevocalic position:
| bilabial | ÊoÉÂ | eye |
| dental | Çà a | move away |
| lateral | ÇÉÌÉÂ | camelthorn tree |
| alveolar | ÇÉÌËÂ | to wait for |
| palatal | ÇÉbÉÌÂ | peg |
We have said that there are more than 80 click consonants in Taa. This number is based on the fact that each of the five basic clicks can be coarticulated with a preceding or following consonant. Each combination yields what is in effect a unique click sound. The following examples show each click in the context of a preceding voiced velar stop and illustrate how unique clicks are created with coarticulation:
| C+bilablial | É¡Êhòõ | sour berry |
| C+dental | É¡ÇhÉÌË | stale meat |
| C+lateral | É¡ÇhÉÌÉÌ | bone arrow |
| C+alveolar | É¡ÇhÉÌÉÌ | thorn |
| C+palatal | É¡Çx Ê ÉÌË | sneeze |
With the exception of the click consonants we have just seen, all of the other speech sounds we have examined in this book involve what phoneticians call a pulmonic airstream mechanism, which means the air comes from the lungs. We have seen that in describing the speech sounds of the world, voicing, place of articulation, and manner of articulation vary, yielding consonant sounds from the voiced bilabial stop [b] found in many languages from Armenian to Zapotec, to the voiceless pharyngeal fricative /ħ/ of Arabic and Somali. As different as these sounds are from one another, they are all produced with air that ascends from the lungs. Most of the sounds in the languages of the world are produced with the pulmonic airstream mechanism.
In addition to clicks, speakers of Taa produce a number of sounds in which the airstream begins at the glottis rather than at the lungs. These sounds are known as ejectives. To produce an ejective consonant, the glottis is raised, and the oral articulation â the tongue tip and the alveolar ridge, for example â is tightly held. This causes air pressure to build up greatly in the mouth. When the oral articulation is released, an audible burst can be heard. All ejective consonants are voiceless, and all of them are obstruents, which are a class of consonants with a constricted airflow (stops, fricatives, and affricates).
The varieties of Taa differ in the number of ejective consonants they produce, but the following four or five are fairly common: /p'/, /t'/, /ts'/, /k'/, /q'/. The ejective /ts'/ is released as an affricate; all others are released as stops.
| t'qÉÌÉ | thigh muscle |
| dtÍ¡s'qÉÌÉ | to be very wet |
Ejectives can occur with other consonants, as illustrated above, but they also very commonly occur in clusters with clicks. These clusters, which begin with a click and transition to an ejective, are known as ejective-contour clicks. They are common in Taa languages and are characteristic of Khoisan languages in general. The following examples illustrate velar (/k'/) and uvular (/q'/) ejectives in ejective-contour clicks:
| Çq'ÉÌn | small |
| Çk'qÉÌÉÌ | grass |
| Çk'É¡ÉÌË | to spread out |
| Çq'ÉmÉ | species of grass |
| É¡Çk'qà na | tobacco |
When producing the word âpat,' most speakers of English, depending on where in the world they are from, articulate the word as [p
h
æt], with a small puff of air after the [p]. The same speakers are unlikely to produce the same puff of air when they articulate the word âspat' as [spæt]. This is because these sounds â [p] and [p
h
] are in complementary distribution with one another in English. [p
h
] occurs at the beginning of words, [p] in other environments.
The puff of air that occurs with âpat' is known as aspiration, a topic we introduced in the context of Grimm's Law in Chapter 3. Aspiration occurs on voiceless consonants, which are produced with the vocal folds in the open position, when the vocal folds remain open after the release of the consonant. Because the vocal folds are in vibration during the production of voiced sounds, they typically close at the release of the consonant, and aspiration does not occur.
In Taa language varieties, aspirated voiceless stops /p
h
, t
h
, k
h
, q
h
/ occur in words such as
p
h
aÌlìtÊèÂ
âmaize meal,'
t
h
aÌliÂ
âskin for carrying child,' and
É¡Çq
h
èeÌ
 âbreast milk.' In concert with the voiced and voiceless unaspirated, these consonants form part of what Maddieson (2011) estimates may be the largest consonant inventory in the world, namely 122. The large number of consonants is driven by the large number of click consonants, which may also be aspirated, such as in the following words listed from the front of the mouth to the back:
| ÅÊ h ái | ask |
| ÅÇ h aÌbe | hunting bow |
| ÅÇ h ábe | to deviate |
| ÅÇ h aÌÅkâ | backwards |
| ÅÇ h à ã | ahead |
At least some of the aspirated consonants listed here create meaningful phonological contrasts with their unaspirated pairs. In the following minimal pair, the meaning
difference between âstick' and âcarry with a strap' is contrasted by the presence or absence of aspiration on the lateral click /Ç/.
| ÅÇ h áa | carry with a strap over the shoulder |
| ÅÇáa | stick |
Khoisan-speaking groups were traditionally nomadic hunter-gatherers who roamed the Kalahari Desert in search of game, berries, fruit, and roots. The nomadism of the people affected not only how the language diverged into separate languages and varieties, but also the ways speakers named themselves and their languages. The study of the origin and use of naming practices is a field known as onomastics.
The language that we have called Taa has many other names depending on whom you ask. ÇXoon is one of the two major dialect groups, and its speakers refer to their language as
!Xóõ
,
ÇxÅ
,
ÇkÉÌË
,
Çkõ
,
Khong
, or one of many other linguonyms, or language names. Speakers in the 'NÇohan group refer to their language as
NgÇuÇen, Nguen, NÇhuÇéi, ÅÇuÇẽin, ÅÇuÇẽi,
or
ÅÇuÇen
. The naming is of course not haphazard but rather reflects the fact that Taa is actually a dialect chain running from central Botswana in the east to central Namibia in the west. The name of the language family itself, Khoisan, derives from the ethnonyms of two of the largest groups who speak Kohisan languages, namely, the Khoe and the San.
The names that Khoisan-speaking groups have used to refer to themselves also gives us a sense of Khoisan cultures. The Khoe and the San have traditionally referred to themselves with terms that mean âpeople' or âhuman.' In !Xóõ and other Taa languages, the word
taa
means âhuman,' and in fact most Taa speakers refer to their common language as
Taa-Çaan
, where
Çaan
means âlanguage.' Linguists have used the word
tuu
as the name of the subgroup of Khoisan languages into which Taa falls, but in general Khoisan,
tuu
simply means âpeople.' The !Kung are another traditional San hunter-gatherer society who live in the Kalahari. They speak a language also called !Kung, but refer to themselves as
Ju'hoansi
, meaning âpeople.' Khoikhoi is the name used by another San group to refer to themselves.
Khoi
means âpeople,' and
khoikhoi
means something like âthe real people.' This naming practice is not incidental, but instead reflects the cultural belief that the indigenous people of the Kalahari are âthe people' who promote peace with the self, others, and the environment (Chebanne 2010:88).
The beliefs of outsiders about Khoisan people and their languages are also reflected in the names they have given them. The Khoikhoi, who speak a language of the same name, were once called Hottentots by the Dutch, who believed
hot
,
en
, and
tot
to be common words in Khoikhoi language. Outside of Africa, the San are known as Bushmen, a term that entered English in the late eighteenth century from the Afrikaans term
boschjesman
âman of the bush.' While some San find this term to be derogatory, some others have embraced it. Today, the Botswana government uses the English name Remote Area Dwellers to refer to all nomadic Khoisan groups. This technical term does not acknowledge the language and culture of the Khoisan groups and is a
part of a program of resettlement in which nomadic peoples are encouraged to give up their nomadic folkways and become pastoralists.
Chances are you speak a language with a relative frame of reference rather than an absolute one. As such, you speak, think, and orient yourself in terms of up and down, left and right. As an experiment, try and spend an afternoon, or at least a couple of hours, living with an absolute system. Use the Sun or the compass on your smart phone to help you track north, south, east, and west. As you go about your afternoon, keep a log of your movements â
I walked northwest from the Gold Garage to the Student Center. I ordered a smoothie, and placed my books on the table to the south of me. A stranger asked for directions to the library; I told her to head due west from the library â¦
” At the end of your afternoon, reflect on your movements. Was it hard to adjust? Did you find yourself slipping into relative language and frames of mind?
In this chapter, we discussed pitch and vowel quality. Linguists can measure both of these instrumentally, and so can you. For this exercise, you will need to download the free phonetics software, known as PRAAT, on your computer. Then, using the voice memo on your smart phone or some other recording device, you will record your own voice at a variety of pitches in order to discover the relationship between pitch and vowel quality. Start with the vowel [a] â record it at three separate pitches: low, medium, and high. Then, do the same thing for the vowels [u] and [i]. Next, open each of your recordings in PRAAT. Place the cursor over the middle of each vowel. Click the tab that says “Formant Listing” and write down the first two formants (F1 and F2) â these are the vowel qualities. Then, click on the tab that says “Pitch listing.” Write down the number. Do this for each of the vowels you recorded in each of the pitches. Then, write your observations â do you think pitch affects vowel quality?
What is the most interesting thing you learned about the primate brain from reading this chapter? How does this inform your perspectives on language?
In this chapter, the authors write that by 100â200 kya, humans were “now cognizing the world in a way markedly different from that of their nonhuman primate counterparts.” Thinking back on Chapter 2, what does it mean to “cognize the world?”
What does it mean to speak of human cognition as “hybrid” cognition? Is this a new expression for you?
We have noted that race is not a biologically meaningful category, but we know from Chapter 4 that it is nevertheless socially very powerful. How do you explain
the disconnect between what is known scientifically and the ways in which we have organized society around race?What do you make of the discussion of structural complexity toward the end of this chapter? What was the main point? Why do you think people are drawn to questions about the complexity of language?
What is the takeaway message from the story about Ishi in the final note?