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Sandawe language
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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 has generally been classified as a Khoisan language since Albert Drexel in the 1920s, due at first just to the presence of clicks in the language. Recent investigations (Güldemann forthcoming) show that Sandawe is most likely related to the Khoe family regardless of the validity of Khoesan as a whole. A recent discussion of Sandawe's linguistic classification can be found in Sands (1998).
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.
SoundsVowelsSandawe has five vowel qualities:
All five vowel qualities may be found as short oral, long oral and long nasal vowels. There are therefore fifteen vowel phonemes. In word-final position, devoiced u and i vowels occur frequently.
ConsonantsNon-click consonantsThe glyphs in italics are the practical orthography developed by Hunziker and Hunziker, followed by approximate equivalents in the IPA.
Clicks(source: Wright et al. 1995)
| | Word-initial clicks | | Word-medial clicks |
|---|
| Laminal
Denti-alveolar | Lateral
alveolar | Apical
postalveolar | | Laminal
Denti-alveolar | Lateral
alveolar | Apical
postalveolar |
|---|
| Nasal | nc | nx | nq | Nasal | | | | | Voiced | gc | gx | gq | Prenasalized | | | | | Tenuis | c | x | q | | Aspirated | ch | xh | qh | | Glottalised | c’ | x’ | q’ | Glottalized nasal | | | |
The clicks in Sandawe are not particularly loud, when compared to more famous click languages in southern Africa. The lateral click can be confused with the ejective lateral affricate . 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 , although this is not the standard Extended IPA usage of that symbol. The voiced click series is not very stable, and this is precisely the series that is missing from Hadza.
Only three of the five click effluxes occur between vowels, and all are nasalized. (Nasal clicks are the easiest to pronounce; in Dahalo and Damin, for example, all clicks are nasal.) The glottalized click efflux is something like creaky voice; it is 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 , which is after the click release . In medial position, the glottis is closed after the velar closure 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, , bearing in mind that the superscript implies coarticulation (that is, that it is pronounced together with the [k], not after, as explained above).
The practical orthography is based on Xhosa and Zulu.
GrammarPronounsFree pronouns
| singular | plural |
|---|
| 1 | tsi | suu |
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| 2 | hapu | sii |
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| 3m | he-we | he-so |
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| 3f | he-su |
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Pronominal suffixes
| singular | plural |
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| 1 | -és | -wà |
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| 2 | -i | -è |
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| 3m | -à | -?à |
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| 3f | -sà |
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Syllable structureSandawe 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 loanwords. The most common word structure is disyllabic with or without long vowels (CV(?)CV(?)), according to De Voogt (1992).
NounsA noun consists generally of a stem and a suffix which indicates gender (masculine, feminine, neuter) and number (singular, plural).
[suffixes to be added]
AdjectivesThe same roots may be used as adjectives or verbs according to Kagaya (1993:ix).
SyntaxBasic 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 kx'aré-és hà?!à
yesterday-I boy-I called
Yesterday I called a boy
(source: De Voogt 1992:19 adapted from Tucker 1977)
ToneElderkin (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).
ClassificationThe most promising candidate as a relative of Sandawe are the Khoe languages 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:
| Sandawe | Proto-Khoe-Kwadi |
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| 1sg PN | tsi | *ti (Kwadi t?i) |
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| 2sg PN | ha- | *sa |
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| 3 PN base | he- | xa (Kwadi ha-) |
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| 3ms suffix | -w(e), -m | (Khoe *-bV, *-mV) |
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| 3fs suffix | su | (Khoe *-sV) |
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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.
- On the external relationships of the Khoe family. Tom Güldemann and Edward Elderkin.
Further readingSee also
External links-
- More information on SIL International's work on Sandawe, with papers for downloading.
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