Morphological Khoisan influence in the Southern African Bantu language Yeyi

IF 0.4 4区文学 0 LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS

Journal of African Languages and Linguistics Pub Date : 2022-05-01 DOI:10.1515/jall-2022-8892

Hilde Gunnink

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Abstract

Abstract Language contact with Khoisan languages has resulted in the adoption of click phonemes in certain southern African Bantu languages. Contact-induced changes outside the phonological domain, however, are less commonly recognized. This paper provides a first ever analysis of morphological influence from Khoisan languages in Yeyi, a Bantu language spoken in Botswana and Namibia. Firstly, Yeyi has a set of lexical verbs that take an obligatory prefix i- or ra-, and both these prefixes and many of the verbs on which they occur are of Khoisan origin. Secondly, Yeyi has four verbal derivational suffixes that have been copied from Khoisan languages. The description of these contact-induced changes in Yeyi shows that contact with Khoisan languages, especially those of the Khoe family, involved extensive bilingualism. Dialectal difference in Yeyi furthermore suggests that Khoisan contact was more intense in Botswana than in Namibia. As some linguistic changes appear to derive from Khoisan languages that are not spoken in the vicinity of Yeyi, the language contact situation in which they arose was quite different from the one that occurs today.

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科伊桑语在南部非洲班图语叶语中的影响

摘要语言与科伊桑语言的接触导致了某些南部非洲班图语采用点击音素。然而，接触引起的语音领域之外的变化却不太常见。本文首次分析了科伊桑语对博茨瓦纳和纳米比亚班图语Yeyi的形态学影响。首先，Yeyi有一组带有强制性前缀i-或ra-的词汇动词，这些前缀和它们出现的许多动词都来源于Khoisan。其次，叶易语有四个从科伊桑语中复制而来的派生后缀。对这些接触引起的Yeyi变化的描述表明，与Khoisan语言的接触，特别是Khoe家族的语言，涉及广泛的双语。Yeyi的方言差异进一步表明，Khoisan在博茨瓦纳的接触比在纳米比亚更为密切。由于一些语言变化似乎源于叶伊附近不使用的科伊桑语，因此它们产生的语言接触情况与今天发生的情况截然不同。

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来源期刊

Journal of African Languages and Linguistics Multiple-

CiteScore

0.60

自引率

0.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： The Journal of African Languages and Linguistics was founded in 1979 and has established itself as an important refereed forum for publications in African linguistics. The Journal of African Languages and Linguistics welcomes original contributions on all aspects of African language studies, synchronic as well as diachronic, theoretical as well as data-oriented. The journal further contains a list of recently published books on African languages and linguistics, which many libraries find to be of use for the acquisition of books. The Journal of African Languages and Linguistics is a peer-reviewed journal of international scope.