Clement Martin Doc (rarely a more correct transmission of the Doke ) ( English Clement Martyn Doke ) ( May 16, 1893 - 1980 ) is a South African linguist , Africanist , one of the largest Bantu language specialists in the first half of the 20th century. Doc knew many African languages well and was a supporter of “Bantu grammar for Bantu languages,” that is, a departure from Eurocentrism. The Doc system became standard for describing Bantu languages in South Africa, although it was criticized for its inattention to the achievements of the linguistics of that time and its inapplicability to languages of a different system [1] .
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Doc's father was a missionary, and Doc himself began to travel a lot around South Africa quite early. In 1923 , he went to Lambaland (in Northern Rhodesia ).
Doc published many descriptive and prescriptive works on the languages of South Africa and the Bantu languages in general, was engaged in comparative grammar and the history of Bantuism. For a long time he worked at the University of Witwatersrand (from 1923 to 1953). The document contains detailed descriptions of clicking sounds in Bantu and Khoisan languages , for which he came up with lettering.
Doc also developed practical spelling for many languages (for example, he proposed a new spelling for Sean and Sesotho ), which, however, was not always accepted by the authorities.
Among the most important works of Doc is his detailed Zulu grammar (Text-book of Zulu grammar, 1947) and a dictionary compiled in collaboration with the Zulu poet and scholar Benedict Vilakazi (1948). While working on a bibliography on Bantuism, Doc simultaneously proposed a new classification of the southern Bantu languages (Zone S according to Hasri ), which turned out to be the most adequate and still generally accepted [2] . In addition, Doc was the creator of one of the authoritative classifications of all Bantu languages, very popular before the Gasri classification.
Notes
- ↑ Gleason, HA (1956). Review of The Southern Bantu Languages by CM Doke // Language 32 (3), pp. 567-573
- ↑ Childs GT An Introduction to African Languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2003
Major works
- Bantu linguistic terminology . London New York: Longmans, Green, 1935.
- Text-book of Lamba grammar . London, 1938.
- Outline grammar of Bantu . Johannesburg: University of the Witwatersrand, 1943.
- Bantu: Modern grammatical, phonetical and lexicographical studies since 1860 . London, 1945.
- Text-book of Zulu grammar . Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1947
- Zulu-English Dictionary . Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1948. (with Benedict Wallet Vilakazi)
- The Southern Bantu languages . London New York: Oxford University Press, 1954.
- Contributions to the history of Bantu linguistics . Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1961. (with DT Cole)
In the Russian translation, one of Dock's work was published:
- Bantu languages inflective with a tendency to agglutination // D. A. Olderogge (eds.). African Linguistics: Sat. articles. M., 1963, p. 189-227.