Sandave (language)

Starting with the works of Albert Drexel in the 1920s , Sandavas have been classified as the Khoisan language to which it was attributed due to the presence of clicking consonants . Several morphological similarities with the Khoisan languages ​​of South Africa were later proposed. A recent discussion of the linguistic classification of sandavas is given by Sands (1998).

The Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL International) carried out work on the study of Sandavas from 1996 to 2004 . Now the study of the language is continued by Daniel and Elizabeth Hanziker and Helen Eaton. Currently, they have published a description of phonology, a review of dialects, and several articles on aspects of grammar. Since 2002 , Sandaw has also been studied by Sander Steeman of the University of Leiden .

Vowels

Sandava vocalism is represented by a 15-membered triangular system:

Five short simple (oral) vowels correspond to 5 long simple and long nasal . In addition, vowels “u” and “i” are often found at the end of a word, which are realized as deaf.

Consonants

Non-Clicking Consonants

Signs in italics - a practical spelling developed by Daniel and Elizabeth Hanziker, the equivalents of IPA are given in square brackets.

Clicks

The clicks in the sandava are not very loud compared to the more famous snapping consonants of the languages ​​of South Africa. The lateral click [kǁ] may be confused with the abruptive lateral affricate [tɬ '] . When pronouncing postalveolar clicks, the tongue often slams along the bottom of the oral cavity, and this blow can be louder than the base of the click itself. Wright et al. they transcribe this variant of the click with the special symbol [kǃ¡] , although this is not the normal meaning of this symbol in the extended MFA. A similar phenomenon exists in the neighboring Hadza language, in which all postalveolar cliques are “clapping”.

Only three of the five outcomes of clicks occur between vowels and all are nasalized (nasal clicks are the easiest to pronounce; for example, in the languages Dahalo and Daming , all clicks are nasal.) The outcome of glottalized clicks is not abrupt and resembles the so-called. creaky voice . In the initial position, the glottis is closed for the entire full bow of the click and does not open until the explosion [k] occurs after pronouncing the base of the click [ǃ] . In the middle position, the glottis is closed after the velor closure [ŋ] and before the anterior closure, but opens before making a click. Such clicks are not always completely nasalized. In some characters, these clicks are denoted by [ŋkǃˀ] , taking into account that the sign [ˀ] means co-articulation (that is, it is pronounced simultaneously with [k], and not after).

As in Hadza, the postalveolar and palatal ( ǂ ) cliques are not distinguished in the sandava. [one]

Practical spelling is based on scythe and zulu .

Prosodion

Sandave is a tone language . Elderkin (1989), examining the behavior of tones at the level of a word, sentence and conversation, shows the presence of two level tones (high and low) and two contour tones (descending and ascending). De Voogt (1992) and Kagaya (1993) point to three levels (high, medium, and low) and two contour tones (down and up).

Syllable Structure

Syllables usually have a CV structure; monosyllabic words often end in a nasal vowel - CV (N). Sometimes a word ends in a consonant, but this is most likely the result of loss of terminal deaf vowels. Syllabic nasal m is noted in borrowings from Swahili. The most common two-syllable word structure is with or without long vowels (CV (:) CV (:)) (De Voogt (1992).

Nouns

The noun includes the root and suffixes that indicate gender (masculine, feminine and middle) and number (singular and plural).

Adjectives

According to Kagaya (1993), there are no adjectives in the sandava as a special part of speech. Their function is taken by special verb constructions.

Pronouns

Pronouns can exist as separate words, or as special suffixes in other parts of speech. For example, the pronoun "I" corresponds to the word tsi and the suffix -és . Personal pronoun suffixes:

Syntax

According to De Voogt (1992), the basic word order in the sandava is SOV (subject - direct complement - predicate). However, the word order in a sentence is very flexible due to the existence of several “subject definition strategies”.

An example of a simple sentence (middle tone not marked):

úte-s kx'aré-és hàʔ! à
Yesterday I’m a boy, I called
I called a boy yesterday

The most promising candidates for kinship with the Sandavas are the Central Khoisan languages ​​of Botswana and Namibia .

Greenberg (1976) provides the following arguments in favor of classifying this language as Khoisan, in addition to the approximately 50 Sandava-Khoisan lexical similarities. The following are the main ones:

• Personal pronouns:
  • tsi “I” (cf. nama , naro ta , chva či );
  • ha-we “he” (cf. naro xa-ba );
  • -sa “she” (cf. nama -s , naro -sa );
  • ha-su, he-su “she” (cf. naro xa-sa )
  • -e “it” (cf. nama -i (nominative), -e (accusative))
• Demonstrative pronouns :
  • he “this” (cf. the Qur'an he );
  • ha “that” (cf. tskham , lheghvi ha , naro xa , chva ho );
  • ne "here" (nama ne )
  • na “there” (common to ta-kvi , nama ǁna );
• Suffixes of the plural:
  • - ko masculine (nama -ku , tsham -gu (personal plural)
  • - si female ( naro-si , nama -ti , languages ​​zhu , khong -si (general plural);
• Adjective formant: -se (cf. central khung -si , nama -se , naro - sə .)
• Verbal reciprocal suffixes: -ki (cf. naro , nama -ku )

T. about. there is reason to believe that the sandavas are no more distant from the southern Khoisan families than they are from each other, despite the geographical distance. Although this hypothesis is regarded with skepticism by many linguists, Sands provides additional arguments in favor of the correct inclusion of the sandava (but not the hadzah ) in this macro family.

• 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, AJ 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 .

• Hadza
• Khoisan languages
• Joseph Greenberg

• Sandaw at Ethnologue
• Helen Eaton Additional information on SIL International's sandava work.
• Sandaway Audio Records at The UCLA Phonetics Lab Archive
• Sandaway Syntax Overview at Khoisan Syntax Homepage