BANTU GRAMMATICAL CLASSIFICATION AND LINGUISTIC NOMENCLATURE

The publication, some few years ago, of Professor J. Marouzeau's Lexique de la Terminologie Linguistique must have aroused in the mind of many a Bantuist, professional and amateur,but perhaps more particularly among amateurs in the science, the desire for a similar work written from the point of view of the Bantu languages. Not only was there room for such a work-even apart from the consideration that not all Bantuists can read French-since many linguistic terms have been and are. applied to Bantu languages with a meaning more or less different from that which they bear in general. and Indo-European linguistics, and since many terms are in use with reference to Bantu languages which are not found in the French work; it was also becoming high time that a book of the kind appeared for Bantu languages; since for various reasons, such as the comparative newness of the science of Bantu linguistics, the great differences between the Bantu languages and the other longer-studied and better-known types of language from which much current linguistic terminology is derived, the lack of linguistic training on the part of many who have contributed, however meritoriously, to our knowledge of the Bantu languages, the isolation in which many students of these languages worked, and the differences in outlook between various schools of linguistic thought which have been brought to bear upon the problem of nomenclature applied to these languages, ther-e have come to exist in the field of Bantu linguistics a multitudinousness of terms, a variety of usages and connotations, and a confusing heterogeneity of nomenclature which must have driven many an amateur to despair, and which have made things considerably more difficult for the professional student of a science, which in itself is difficult enough without the added complexity of mixed terminologies. Professor Doke's latest work must therefore be very heartily welcomed, since it not only catalogues, defines, and illustrates the terms which have been and are in use, but also attempts to unify and standardize the nomenclature of the science with which it deals. A word of acknowledgment is also due to the Carnegie Corporation, which, through the Research Grant Board, partly financed the publication of the