Sandawe language
Encyclopedia
Sandawe or Sandawi is a tonal language spoken by about 40,000 Sandawe people in the Dodoma
region of Tanzania
. Language use is vigorous among both adults and children, with people in some areas monolingual. Sandawe had generally been classified as a member of the defunct Khoisan family
since Albert Drexel in the 1920s, due to the presence of clicks
in the language. Recent investigations (Güldemann forthcoming) suggest that Sandawe may be related to the Khoe family
regardless of the validity of Khoesan as a whole. A discussion of Sandawe's linguistic classification can be found in Sands (1998).
Sandawe has two dialects, northwest and southeast. Differences include speaking speed, vowel dropping, some word taboo, and minor lexical and grammatical differences. Some Alagwa have shifted to Sandawe, and are considered a Sandawe clan.
SIL International
began work on Sandawe in 1996 and to date (2004), Daniel and Elisabeth Hunziker and Helen Eaton continue to work on the analysis of the language. They have so far produced a phonological description, a dialect survey report and several papers on aspects of grammar. Sandawe is also currently (since 2002) studied by Sander Steeman of Leiden University
.
High and low tones are fundamental. High falling tones are required in the underlying representation, for example in [tsʼâ] "water", but are also often due to a sequence of tones. As in Twi, mid tone does not occur initially. Hunziker et al. analyze it as a downstepped high tone: //H-L-H// is realized as [H-H-M]. This rightward shift on the tones is a general process in Sandawe. This analysis requires the assumption of floating low tones
carried by consonant cluster
s, and thought to reflect a historical vowel which has been deleted. The low and mid falling tones are a prosodic effect, found on final syllables, or on penultimate syllables followed by a voiceless vowel; this leftward shift of tone before voiceless vowels (which by their nature cannot carry tone) is another general process of Sandawe. Rising tone is only found on long vowels and can be seen as a low-high sequence.
Thus at a phonemic level, , , , and are required. Tone is not written, except indirectly in genitive phrases, which are hyphenated.
All five vowel qualities may be found as short oral /a/, long oral /aː/, and long nasal /ãː/ vowels. There are therefore fifteen basic vowel phonemes. Short nasal vowels also occur, apparently from the historical elision of a nasal consonant that is still attested in related forms. Long vowels are written double, aa, and long nasal vowels with a tilde, ã.
Long vowels are half again as long as short vowels. In morpheme-final position, low-tone /u/ and /i/ are frequently devoiced, though this may not occur after /j/, /w/, or /h/.
Tc and dz are [tʃ] and [dʒ] in the northwestern dialect, but often [ts] and [dz] or even [z] in the southeast. [tsʰ] for tch occurs but is less common.
Consonants in parentheses are rare.
The clicks in Sandawe are not particularly loud, when compared to more famous click languages in southern Africa. The lateral click [kǁ] can be confused with the alveolar lateral ejective affricate
[tɬʼ]. With the postalveolar clicks, the tongue often slaps the bottom of the mouth, and this slap may be louder than the actual release of the click. Wright et al. transcribe this slapped click with the ad hoc symbol [kǃ¡], although this is not the standard Extended IPA
usage of that symbol. The voiced clicks are rare, being known from only five words. Some speakers substitute aspirated clicks.
The glottalized click efflux is something like creaky voice
, not an ejective. In initial position, the glottis
is closed during the entire occlusion of the click, but not opened until after the burst of the [k], which is after the click release [ǃ]. In medial position, the glottis is closed after the velar closure [ŋ] and before the forward closure, but opened before the click release. Such clicks are not always nasalized all the way through; in some tokens they are simply prenasalized glottalized clicks, [ŋkǃˀ], bearing in mind that the superscript [ˀ] implies coarticulation
(that is, that it is pronounced together with the [k], not after, as explained above).
Labialized clicks are found in word-initial position. Voiced clicks are rare, with only half a dozen words known to contain them; some speakers substitute aspirated clicks. Wright et al. (1995) state that the voiced clicks are prenasalized word internally; however, Hunziker et al. (2008) analyze the only two such known words as instead having nasalized vowels.
The practical orthography is based on Xhosa
and Zulu
.
V
. Morpheme-initially, consonant clusters are of the form Cw; these are not found in the middle of morphemes. Most consonants are attested in this Cw sequence apart from the labials, the glottals (’, h), sonorants (r, l, y, w), and the rather infrequent consonants n, d, dl, & the voiced clicks, which may simply be gaps in attestation. The rounded vowels o, u are not found after Cw sequences. Vowel initial syllables, as in cèú "buffalo", are not found initially, though initial glottal stop is not written (íóó /ʔíóː/ "mother").
Glottal stops /ʔ/ are found as syllable codas, though these may be released in an echo vowel
in some circumstances. Hunziker et al. prefer to analyze these are final consonants, because the quality of the echo vowel is predictable, and otherwise this is the only place where the vowels /e a o/ would have voiceless allophones.
Hunziker et al. find complementary distribution between homorganic N
C clusters, which occur only medially (there are no word-final nasal consonants), and nasal vowels, which they only transcribe word finally. It would therefore seem that NC clusters are the realization of a preceding nasal vowel.
Other final consonants are found as consonant clusters in the middle of a word. Historically, these are presumably due to vowel elision, as evidenced by records from the early 20th century and also by tone patterns. In the northwestern dialect, words are found with final consonants where tonal patterns suggest there was once a voiceless final vowel, and where the southeastern dialect retains a voiceless i or u.
Pronominal suffixes
A syllabic nasal m is found in Swahili
loanwords. The most common word structure is disyllabic with or without long vowels (CV(ː)CV(ː)), according to De Voogt (1992).
[suffixes to be added]
Sample sentence (mid tones are not marked):
úte-s kxʼaré-és hàʔǃà
yesterday-I boy-I called
Yesterday I called a boy
(source: De Voogt 1992:19 adapted from Tucker 1977)
An article in Studies in African Linguistics, Volume 10, Number 3, 1979, by Gerard Dalgish, describes these 'subject identification strategies' in detail. Numerous permutations of sentence constituents are allowed in certain tenses, the pattern being: (a) the first constituent is the subject or (b) any non-subject that is first in the sentence must be marked for the subject. Non-subject constituents include verbs, a progressive marker, objects, indirect objects, adverbs, prepositional phrases, complementizers. Similar results obtain in WH-Questions.
of Botswana
and Namibia
. Most of the putative cognates Greenberg (1976) gives as evidence for Sandawe being a Khoesan language in fact tie Sandawe to Khoe. Recently Gueldemann and Elderkin have strengthened that connection, with several dozen likely cognates, while casting doubts on other Khoisan connections. Although there are not enough similarities to reconstruct a Proto-Khoe–Sandawe language, there are enough to suggest that the connection is real.
The pronominal system is quite similar:
These may cast some interesting light on the development of clicks. For example, the Sandawe word for 'horn', tlana, may be a cognate with the root n||â found throughout the Khoe family. This and other words suggests that clicks may form from consonant clusters when the first vowel of a word is lost: tlana > tlna > ||na (n||a).
Since the Khoe family appears to have migrated to southern Africa from the northeast, it may be that Sandawe is closer to their common homeland than the modern Khoe languages are.
Dodoma
Dodoma , officially Dodoma Urban District, population 324,347 , is the national capital of Tanzania, and the capital of the Dodoma region. In 1973, plans were made to move the capital to Dodoma...
region of Tanzania
Tanzania
The United Republic of Tanzania is a country in East Africa bordered by Kenya and Uganda to the north, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west, and Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique to the south. The country's eastern borders lie on the Indian Ocean.Tanzania is a state...
. Language use is vigorous among both adults and children, with people in some areas monolingual. Sandawe had generally been classified as a member of the defunct Khoisan family
Khoisan languages
The Khoisan languages are the click languages of Africa which do not belong to other language families. They include languages indigenous to southern and eastern Africa, though some, such as the Khoi languages, appear to have moved to their current locations not long before the Bantu expansion...
since Albert Drexel in the 1920s, due to the presence of clicks
Click consonant
Clicks are speech sounds found as consonants in many languages of southern Africa, and in three languages of East Africa. Examples of these sounds familiar to English speakers are the tsk! tsk! or tut-tut used to express disapproval or pity, the tchick! used to spur on a horse, and the...
in the language. Recent investigations (Güldemann forthcoming) suggest that Sandawe may be related to the Khoe family
Khoe languages
The Khoe languages are the largest of the non-Bantu language families indigenous to southern Africa. They are often considered to be a branch of a suspected Khoisan language family, and are known as Central Khoisan in that scenario. The nearest relative of the Khoe family is the extinct and poorly...
regardless of the validity of Khoesan as a whole. A discussion of Sandawe's linguistic classification can be found in Sands (1998).
Sandawe has two dialects, northwest and southeast. Differences include speaking speed, vowel dropping, some word taboo, and minor lexical and grammatical differences. Some Alagwa have shifted to Sandawe, and are considered a Sandawe clan.
SIL International
SIL International
SIL International is a U.S.-based, worldwide, Christian non-profit organization, whose main purpose is to study, develop and document languages, especially those that are lesser-known, in order to expand linguistic knowledge, promote literacy, translate the Christian Bible into local languages,...
began work on Sandawe in 1996 and to date (2004), Daniel and Elisabeth Hunziker and Helen Eaton continue to work on the analysis of the language. They have so far produced a phonological description, a dialect survey report and several papers on aspects of grammar. Sandawe is also currently (since 2002) studied by Sander Steeman of Leiden University
Leiden University
Leiden University , located in the city of Leiden, is the oldest university in the Netherlands. The university was founded in 1575 by William, Prince of Orange, leader of the Dutch Revolt in the Eighty Years' War. The royal Dutch House of Orange-Nassau and Leiden University still have a close...
.
Tone
Hunziker et al. (2008) transcribe seven surface tones: high [á], mid [ā], low [à], high falling [â], mid falling [ā̀], low falling [ȁ], and rising [ǎː] (on long vowels only)High and low tones are fundamental. High falling tones are required in the underlying representation, for example in [tsʼâ] "water", but are also often due to a sequence of tones. As in Twi, mid tone does not occur initially. Hunziker et al. analyze it as a downstepped high tone: //H-L-H// is realized as [H-H-M]. This rightward shift on the tones is a general process in Sandawe. This analysis requires the assumption of floating low tones
Floating tone
A floating tone is a morpheme or element of a morpheme that contains no consonants, no vowels, but only tone. It cannot be pronounced by itself, but affects the tones of neighboring morphemes....
carried by consonant cluster
Consonant cluster
In linguistics, a consonant cluster is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word splits....
s, and thought to reflect a historical vowel which has been deleted. The low and mid falling tones are a prosodic effect, found on final syllables, or on penultimate syllables followed by a voiceless vowel; this leftward shift of tone before voiceless vowels (which by their nature cannot carry tone) is another general process of Sandawe. Rising tone is only found on long vowels and can be seen as a low-high sequence.
Thus at a phonemic level, , , , and are required. Tone is not written, except indirectly in genitive phrases, which are hyphenated.
Vowels
Sandawe has five vowel qualities:| i | u | |||
| e | o | |||
| a |
All five vowel qualities may be found as short oral /a/, long oral /aː/, and long nasal /ãː/ vowels. There are therefore fifteen basic vowel phonemes. Short nasal vowels also occur, apparently from the historical elision of a nasal consonant that is still attested in related forms. Long vowels are written double, aa, and long nasal vowels with a tilde, ã.
Long vowels are half again as long as short vowels. In morpheme-final position, low-tone /u/ and /i/ are frequently devoiced, though this may not occur after /j/, /w/, or /h/.
Non-click consonants
The glyphs in italics are the practical orthography developed by Hunziker and Hunziker, followed by approximate equivalents in the IPA.| Labial Labial consonant Labial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active articulator. This precludes linguolabials, in which the tip of the tongue reaches for the posterior side of the upper lip and which are considered coronals... |
Alveolar Alveolar consonant Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth... |
Postalveolar Postalveolar consonant Postalveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as the hard palate... or palatal Palatal consonant Palatal consonants are consonants articulated with the body of the tongue raised against the hard palate... |
Velar Velar consonant Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth, known also as the velum).... |
Glottal Glottal consonant Glottal consonants, also called laryngeal consonants, are consonants articulated with the glottis. Many phoneticians consider them, or at least the so-called fricative, to be transitional states of the glottis without a point of articulation as other consonants have; in fact, some do not consider... |
|||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Central | Lateral Lateral consonant A lateral is an el-like consonant, in which airstream proceeds along the sides of the tongue, but is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth.... |
||||||
| Nasal Nasal consonant A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :... |
m [m] | n [n] | |||||
| Plosive and Affricate Affricate consonant Affricates are consonants that begin as stops but release as a fricative rather than directly into the following vowel.- Samples :... |
Voiced | b [b] | d [d] | (dl) [dɮ] | dz [dʒ ~ dz] | g [ɡ] | |
| Tenuis Tenuis consonant In linguistics, a tenuis consonant is a stop or affricate which is unvoiced, unaspirated, and unglottalized. That is, it has a "plain" phonation like , with a voice onset time close to zero, as in Spanish p, t, ch, k, or as in English p, t, k after s .In transcription, tenuis consonants are not... |
bp [p] | dt [t] | (tl) [tɬ] | tc [tʃ ~ ts] | gk [k] | ’ [ʔ] | |
| Aspirated Aspiration (phonetics) In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. To feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in front of one's mouth, and say pin ... |
p [pʰ] | t [tʰ] | tch [tʃʰ ~ tsʰ] | k [kʰ] | |||
| Ejective Ejective consonant In phonetics, ejective consonants are voiceless consonants that are pronounced with simultaneous closure of the glottis. In the phonology of a particular language, ejectives may contrast with aspirated or tenuis consonants... |
tsʼ [tsʼ] | tlʼ [tɬʼ] | k’ [kʼ] | ||||
| Fricative Fricative consonant Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German , the final consonant of Bach; or... |
(f) [f] | s [s] | lh [ɬ] | kh [x] | |||
| Approximant Approximant consonant Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no... |
r [ɾ] | l [l] | (y) [j] | w [w] | h [h] | ||
Tc and dz are [tʃ] and [dʒ] in the northwestern dialect, but often [ts] and [dz] or even [z] in the southeast. [tsʰ] for tch occurs but is less common.
Consonants in parentheses are rare.
Clicks
| | Word-initial clicks | | Word-medial clicks | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Laminal Denti-alveolar |
Lateral alveolar |
Apical postalveolar |
Laminal Denti-alveolar |
Lateral alveolar |
Apical postalveolar |
||
| Nasal | nc [ŋǀ] | nx [ŋǁ] | nq [ŋǃ] | [ŋǁ] | [ŋǃ] | ||
| Voiced | (gc) [ɡǀ] | (gx) [ɡǁ] | (gq) [ɡǃ] | [ŋɡǀ] | [ŋɡǁ] | ||
| Tenuis | c [kǀ] | x [kǁ] | q [kǃ] | [kǀ] | [kǃ] | ||
| Aspirated | ch [kǀʰ] | xh [kǁʰ] | qh [kǃʰ] | [kǁʰ] | |||
| Glottalised | c’ [kǀˀʔ] | x’ [kǁˀʔ] | q’ [kǃˀʔ] | [ŋʔǀˀ] | [ŋʔǁˀ] | [ŋʔǃˀ] |
The clicks in Sandawe are not particularly loud, when compared to more famous click languages in southern Africa. The lateral click [kǁ] can be confused with the alveolar lateral ejective affricate
Alveolar lateral ejective affricate
The alveolar lateral ejective affricate is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and in Americanist phonetic notation it is ⟨ƛ’⟩ ....
[tɬʼ]. With the postalveolar clicks, the tongue often slaps the bottom of the mouth, and this slap may be louder than the actual release of the click. Wright et al. transcribe this slapped click with the ad hoc symbol [kǃ¡], although this is not the standard Extended IPA
Extensions to the IPA
The Extensions to the IPA are extensions of the International Phonetic Alphabet and were designed for disordered speech. However, some of the symbols are occasionally used for transcribing normal speech as well, particularly in certain languages.-Brackets:The Extended IPA for speech pathology has...
usage of that symbol. The voiced clicks are rare, being known from only five words. Some speakers substitute aspirated clicks.
The glottalized click efflux is something like creaky voice
Creaky voice
In linguistics, creaky voice , is a special kind of phonation in which the arytenoid cartilages in the larynx are drawn together; as a result, the vocal folds are compressed rather tightly, becoming relatively slack and compact...
, not an ejective. In initial position, the glottis
Glottis
The glottis is defined as the combination of the vocal folds and the space in between the folds .-Function:...
is closed during the entire occlusion of the click, but not opened until after the burst of the [k], which is after the click release [ǃ]. In medial position, the glottis is closed after the velar closure [ŋ] and before the forward closure, but opened before the click release. Such clicks are not always nasalized all the way through; in some tokens they are simply prenasalized glottalized clicks, [ŋkǃˀ], bearing in mind that the superscript [ˀ] implies coarticulation
Co-articulated consonant
Co-articulated consonants or complex consonants are consonants produced with two simultaneous places of articulation. They may be divided into two classes, doubly articulated consonants with two primary places of articulation of the same manner , and consonants with secondary articulation, that is,...
(that is, that it is pronounced together with the [k], not after, as explained above).
Labialized clicks are found in word-initial position. Voiced clicks are rare, with only half a dozen words known to contain them; some speakers substitute aspirated clicks. Wright et al. (1995) state that the voiced clicks are prenasalized word internally; however, Hunziker et al. (2008) analyze the only two such known words as instead having nasalized vowels.
The practical orthography is based on Xhosa
Xhosa language
Xhosa is one of the official languages of South Africa. Xhosa is spoken by approximately 7.9 million people, or about 18% of the South African population. Like most Bantu languages, Xhosa is a tonal language, that is, the same sequence of consonants and vowels can have different meanings when said...
and Zulu
Zulu language
Zulu is the language of the Zulu people with about 10 million speakers, the vast majority of whom live in South Africa. Zulu is the most widely spoken home language in South Africa as well as being understood by over 50% of the population...
.
Phonotactics
The majority of Sandawe syllables are CConsonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are , pronounced with the lips; , pronounced with the front of the tongue; , pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; and ,...
V
Vowel
In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...
. Morpheme-initially, consonant clusters are of the form Cw; these are not found in the middle of morphemes. Most consonants are attested in this Cw sequence apart from the labials, the glottals (’, h), sonorants (r, l, y, w), and the rather infrequent consonants n, d, dl, & the voiced clicks, which may simply be gaps in attestation. The rounded vowels o, u are not found after Cw sequences. Vowel initial syllables, as in cèú "buffalo", are not found initially, though initial glottal stop is not written (íóó /ʔíóː/ "mother").
Glottal stops /ʔ/ are found as syllable codas, though these may be released in an echo vowel
Echo vowel
In speech, an echo vowel is a vowel that repeats the final vowel in a word. For example, in Chumash, when a word ends with a glottal stop and comes at the end of an intonation unit, the final vowel is repeated after the glottal stop, but is whispered and faint, as in for "arrow" . In Rukai , echo...
in some circumstances. Hunziker et al. prefer to analyze these are final consonants, because the quality of the echo vowel is predictable, and otherwise this is the only place where the vowels /e a o/ would have voiceless allophones.
Hunziker et al. find complementary distribution between homorganic N
Nasal consonant
A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...
C clusters, which occur only medially (there are no word-final nasal consonants), and nasal vowels, which they only transcribe word finally. It would therefore seem that NC clusters are the realization of a preceding nasal vowel.
Other final consonants are found as consonant clusters in the middle of a word. Historically, these are presumably due to vowel elision, as evidenced by records from the early 20th century and also by tone patterns. In the northwestern dialect, words are found with final consonants where tonal patterns suggest there was once a voiceless final vowel, and where the southeastern dialect retains a voiceless i or u.
Pronouns
Free pronouns| singular | plural | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | tsi | sũũ |
| 2 | hapu | sĩĩ |
| 3m | he-we | he-so |
| 3f | he-su |
Pronominal suffixes
| singular | plural | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | -és | -wà |
| 2 | -i | -è |
| 3m | -à | -ʔà |
| 3f | -sà |
Syllable structure
Sandawe syllables are usually of the form CV; in monosyllabic words, word-final nasals are not uncommon, CV(N). Sometimes other consonants are found in word-final position, but this is most probably the result of deletion of word-final voiceless vowels.A syllabic nasal m is found in Swahili
Swahili language
Swahili or Kiswahili is a Bantu language spoken by various ethnic groups that inhabit several large stretches of the Mozambique Channel coastline from northern Kenya to northern Mozambique, including the Comoro Islands. It is also spoken by ethnic minority groups in Somalia...
loanwords. The most common word structure is disyllabic with or without long vowels (CV(ː)CV(ː)), according to De Voogt (1992).
Nouns
A noun consists generally of a stem and a suffix which indicates gender (masculine, feminine, neuter) and number (singular, plural).[suffixes to be added]
Syntax
Basic word order in Sandawe is SOV according to De Voogt (1992). However, word order in the Sandawe sentence is very flexible due to the presence of several 'subject identification strategies'.Sample sentence (mid tones are not marked):
úte-s kxʼaré-és hàʔǃà
yesterday-I boy-I called
Yesterday I called a boy
(source: De Voogt 1992:19 adapted from Tucker 1977)
An article in Studies in African Linguistics, Volume 10, Number 3, 1979, by Gerard Dalgish, describes these 'subject identification strategies' in detail. Numerous permutations of sentence constituents are allowed in certain tenses, the pattern being: (a) the first constituent is the subject or (b) any non-subject that is first in the sentence must be marked for the subject. Non-subject constituents include verbs, a progressive marker, objects, indirect objects, adverbs, prepositional phrases, complementizers. Similar results obtain in WH-Questions.
Tone
Elderkin (1989) analyzes Sandawe as having two level tones (High, Low) and two contour tones (Falling, Rising). His thesis considers the behavior of tone at word-, sentence- and discourse-level. De Voogt (1992) and Kagaya (1993) list three level tones (High, Mid, Low) and two contour tones (Falling, Rising).Classification
The most promising candidate as a relative of Sandawe are the Khoe languagesKhoe languages
The Khoe languages are the largest of the non-Bantu language families indigenous to southern Africa. They are often considered to be a branch of a suspected Khoisan language family, and are known as Central Khoisan in that scenario. The nearest relative of the Khoe family is the extinct and poorly...
of Botswana
Botswana
Botswana, officially the Republic of Botswana , is a landlocked country located in Southern Africa. The citizens are referred to as "Batswana" . Formerly the British protectorate of Bechuanaland, Botswana adopted its new name after becoming independent within the Commonwealth on 30 September 1966...
and Namibia
Namibia
Namibia, officially the Republic of Namibia , is a country in southern Africa whose western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Angola and Zambia to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and east. It gained independence from South Africa on 21 March...
. Most of the putative cognates Greenberg (1976) gives as evidence for Sandawe being a Khoesan language in fact tie Sandawe to Khoe. Recently Gueldemann and Elderkin have strengthened that connection, with several dozen likely cognates, while casting doubts on other Khoisan connections. Although there are not enough similarities to reconstruct a Proto-Khoe–Sandawe language, there are enough to suggest that the connection is real.
The pronominal system is quite similar:
| Sandawe | Proto-Khoe–Kwadi | |
|---|---|---|
| 1sg PN | tsi | *ti (Kwadi tʃi) |
| 2sg PN | ha- | *sa |
| 3 PN base | he- | xa (Kwadi ha-) |
| 3ms suffix | -w(e), -m | (Khoe *-bV, *-mV) |
| 3fs suffix | su | (Khoe *-sV) |
These may cast some interesting light on the development of clicks. For example, the Sandawe word for 'horn', tlana, may be a cognate with the root n||â found throughout the Khoe family. This and other words suggests that clicks may form from consonant clusters when the first vowel of a word is lost: tlana > tlna > ||na (n||a).
Since the Khoe family appears to have migrated to southern Africa from the northeast, it may be that Sandawe is closer to their common homeland than the modern Khoe languages are.
External links
- Sandawe grammar at Cornell
- Sandawe wordlists and accompanying soundfiles at UCLA
- Ethnologue Report for Sandawe
- SIL International
- Helen Eaton More information on SIL International's work on Sandawe, with papers for downloading.