Publications - Andrew Harvey

Abstract

The present article provides the first systematic analysis of the formal (phonetic and morphological) facet of interjections in Hadza. By using a prototype-driven approach to an interjective category and drawing on original evidence, the authors demonstrate that Hadza interjections closely comply with an interjective prototype. Hadza interjections meet most prototypical features and the exceptions attested fully match the exceptions that have previously been observed in other languages. Overall, the study corroborates the validity of the prototype postulated in scholarly literature, although certain refinements are also proposed.

Abstract

Problems with the lexical evidence used to posit Hadza as an Afroasiatic language are discussed. The failure to identify certain loanwords and the misanalysis of certain Hadza morphemes are problems rectified by having greater familiarity with Hadza and its linguistic contact history. Other problems are more general to the specific methodology employed. The overly wide semantic range of meanings often allowed in establishing form-meaning sets increases the likelihood of chance resemblances. The use of certain words that are likely onomatopoeic also reduces the impact of the proposed cognate sets. Ultimately, it is the lack of regular, repeated sound correspondences between Hadza and Afroasiatic that makes the proposal of their familial relationship unconvincing.

Abstract

This paper examines preverbal clitic clusters in the Tanzanian Rift Valley, an area of high linguistic diversity with representatives of the Bantu, Cushitic, and Nilotic families, as well as Sandawe (possibly a distant member of the Khoi-Kwadi family), and the language isolate Hadza. An earlier work (Kießling, Roland, Maarten Mous & Derek Nurse. 2008. The Tanzanian Rift Valley area. In Bernd Heine & Derek Nurse (eds.), A linguistic geography of Africa, 186–227. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) identified preverbal clitic clusters as a widespread feature across many languages of the Rift Valley, and posited the preverbal clitic cluster as a feature characteristic of a ‘Tanzanian Rift Valley Area’. The current paper provides further detail on preverbal clitic clusters across the languages of the region and examines possible routes of development for these structures. From this analysis, the picture that emerges is complex: contact scenarios cannot be restricted to ones in which West Rift Cushitic or its predecessor languages are the only models for the development of a preverbal clitic cluster and, in the case of Sandawe (and perhaps the Datooga varieties), it appears as if the development of a preverbal clitic cluster cannot be linked to contact at all. In terms of what this means for the ‘areality’ of the Tanzanian Rift Valley, this paper forgoes discussions about geographical delineation or arguments for or against a ‘Tanzanian Rift Valley Area’ in favour of highlighting the individual historical events (c.f. Campbell, Lyle. 2017. Why is it so hard to define a linguistic area? In Raymond Hickey (ed.), The Cambridge handbook of areal linguistics, 19–39. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) that may have given rise to preverbal clitic clusters in the languages of our sample, as well as encouraging continued investigation into the nature of these histories, both from a linguistic and interdisciplinary perspective.

Abstract

Hadza has 4 clicks in its sound inventory: bilabial, dental, alveolar and lateral [ʘ, |, !, ‖] that can be aspirated, glottal and nasal [ʘ̰, |ʔ, |h, ɴ|, ɴ|ʔ, !ʔ, !h, ɴ!, ɴ!ʔ, ‖, ‖h, ɴ‖h, ɴ‖ʔ]. The bilabial click [ʘ] has a noisy release and is defined as [grave & noisy]. Acoustically the oral clicks [|, !, ‖] are described with 2 features [grave vs. acute] and [abrupt vs. noisy]. The [grave] feature defining the alveolar click [!] has a peak in the FFT spectrum around 2 kHz. The [acute] feature defining the dental and lateral clicks [|, ‖] has a peak around 6 kHz for the dental and an emphasis in frequencies between 4 & 5 kHz for the lateral click (all peaks in rounded values). The difference between the [abrupt] [!, ‖] also has a duration component, i.e. short burst vs short noise band.

Full Author List

Hedvig Skirgård, Hannah J. Haynie, Damián E. Blasi1, Harald Hammarström, Jeremy Collins, Jay J. Latarche, Jakob Lesage, Tobias Weber, Alena Witzlack-Makarevich, Sam Passmore, Angela Chira, Luke Maurits, Russell Dinnage, Michael Dunn, Ger Reesink, Ruth Singer, Claire Bowern, Patience Epps, Jane Hill, Outi Vesakoski, Martine Robbeets, Noor Karolin Abbas, Daniel Auer, Nancy A. Bakker, Giulia Barbos, Robert D. Borges, Swintha Danielsen,Luise Dorenbusch, Ella Dorn, John Elliott, Giada Falcone, Jana Fischer,Yustinus Ghanggo Ate, Hannah Gibson, Hans-Philipp Göbel, Jemima A. Goodall, Victoria Gruner, Andrew Harvey, Rebekah Hayes, Leonard Heer, Roberto E. Herrera Miranda, Nataliia Hübler, Biu Huntington-Rainey, Jessica K. Ivani, Marilen Johns, Erika Just, Eri Kashima, Carolina Kipf, Janina V. Klingenberg, Nikita König, Aikaterina Koti, Richard G. A. Kowalik, Olga Krasnoukhova, Nora L. M. Lindvall, Mandy Lorenzen, Hannah Lutzenberger, Tânia R. A. Martins, Celia Mata German, Suzannevan der Meer, Jaime Montoya Samamé, Michael Müller, Saliha Muradoglu, Kelsey Neely, Johanna Nickel, Miina Norvik, Cheryl Akinyi Oluoch, Jesse Peacock, India O.C. Pearey, Naomi Peck, Stephanie Petit, Sören Pieper, Mariana Poblete, Daniel Prestipino, Linda Raabe, Amna Raja, Janis Reimringer, Sydney C. Rey, Julia Rizaew, Eloisa Ruppert, Kim K. Salmon, Jill Sammet, Rhiannon Schembri, Lars Schlabbach, Frederick W. P. Schmidt, Amalia Skilton, Wikaliler Daniel Smith, Hilário de Sousa, Kristin Sverredal, Daniel Valle, Javier Vera, Judith Voß, Tim Witte, Henry Wu, Stephanie Yam, Jingting Ye, Maisie Yong, Tessa Yuditha, Roberto Zariquiey, Robert Forkel, Nicholas Evans, Stephen C. Levinson, Martin Haspelmath, Simon J. Greenhill, Quentin D. Atkinson, Russell D. Gray

Abstract

While global patterns of human genetic diversity are increasingly well characterized, the diversity of human languages remains less systematically described. Here, we outline the Grambank database. With over 400,000 data points and 2400 languages, Grambank is the largest comparative grammatical database available. The comprehensiveness of Grambank allows us to quantify the relative effects of genealogical inheritance and geographic proximity on the structural diversity of the world’s languages, evaluate constraints on linguistic diversity, and identify the world’s most unusual languages. An analysis of the consequences of language loss reveals that the reduction in diversity will be strikingly uneven across the major linguistic regions of the world. Without sustained efforts to document and revitalize endangered languages, our linguistic window into human history, cognition, and culture will be seriously fragmented.

Abstract

This document is a bibliography of the languages of the Rift Valley Area of Tanzania, which is home to dozens of distinctive ethnic groups and languages. Uniquely, it is the meeting place of languages from three of the largest language families in Africa—Nilo-Saharan, Niger-Congo, and Afro-Asiatic—as well as Sandawe, a language with possible affinity with the so-called ‘Khoisan’ group, and Hadza, a language isolate, which means that it is not known to be related to any other languages currently spoken.

Abstract

Gorwaa is a South Cushitic language, spoken in north-central Tanzania. The number of speakers is approximately 132,748, and though used frequently in rural areas, many speakers are shifting to Swahili for everyday use, especially in the larger towns. Gorwaa is the name of the ethnic group, as well as the name of the language. Gorwaa is closely related to the other South Cushitic languages of Tanzania, namely: Iraqw, Alagwa, and Burunge; there is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Gorwaa and Iraqw. That being said, speakers from both communities consider themselves as two separate ethnic groups, and there are several salient lexical and morphosyntactic differences between Gorwaa and Iraqw. This paper provides an overview of the larger context in which Gorwaa is spoken. Section 2 sketches the history of its speaker community. Section 3 outlines the relationships (both genetic and areal) that exist between Gorwaa and other languages in the area. Section 4 provides details on language use and language attitudes (including speaker numbers, language vitality, and how speakers perceive Gorwaa). Section 5 explains the different names used (and currently in use) to label the Gorwaa language. Section 6 mentions important works about Gorwaa which precede this one. Section 7 provides some in-depth analysis of important facets of Gorwaa culture and society, and how in turn this is manifested in the Gorwaa language. Section 8 concludes the discussion.

Abstract

Though formal linguistics may seem far removed from projects of decolonization, the materials with which linguists work are often rich with insights into other ways of knowing, other ways of living, and, for the purposes of this volume, other ways of navigating colonial power. Pakani, a story gathered within a larger project to understand the grammar of the Gorwaa language, is a vivid account of how the Gorwaa people responded to a mandatory military training programme in which every able-bodied young man was to be sent far away from the traditional homeland and incorporated into a national fighting force. For a descriptive linguist, Pakani is a useful source of grammatical structures. For a reader interested in learning about how one group of people engaged with the sweeping changes brought about by European colonization of East Africa, Pakani represents one of the few Gorwaa accounts available in English.
This paper presents 134 lines of the Pakani story, transcribed, translated into English, along with a linguistic gloss of the words. Additionally, each line of text given may be resolved back to its original utterance in an open access audiovisual record available online through the Endangered Languages Archive at SOAS.

Abstract

Gorwaa is a South Cushitic language of Tanzania whose nouns are particularly complex. Based on detailed documentation of the language (most of which is openly accessible for consultation in an online archive (Harvey 2017)), this dissertation provides a first description of Gorwaa grammar, with a particular focus on the noun. Additionally, a grammatical analysis of Gorwaa nouns is developed using the Distributed Morphology architecture and Minimalist syntax. This offers a different perspective from the typically functional analyses available for South Cushitic languages thus far. Following a general sketch of Gorwaa grammar, as well as a brief introduction into the theoretical framework, each subsequent chapter of the dissertation focuses on one subpart of the noun and its morphosyntactic characteristics. Composed of several identifiable subparts (e.g. the stem, the suffix, and the linker), each of which in turn presents a rich array of variants, the Gorwaa noun is an ideal entry point for inquiry into Gorwaa as a system, as adequate explanation of nouns in this language touches on all the major modalities of grammar (phonology, morphosyntax, semantics, and pragmatics). Syntactically, the stem is formed of a root, whose characteristics (phonetic, semantic, and categorial) are determined by the larger syntactic structure in which it is found. Distinguished by two broad groups of morphosyntactic characteristics (those which are regular and those which are listed), the suffix is formed of (maximally) three syntactic heads: Cl (classifier), # (quantifier), and n (‘little n’). In order to bear a number value (Sg or Pl), nouns must be classified and quantified. Nouns unvalued for number (‘general’ number) are neither classified nor quantified. The little n head is the site of the paradigm, itself established as a grammatical formative realized as a specific suffix through instructions post-Spellout. Grammatical gender is a diacritic feature, also realized post-Spellout, making Agree a necessarily post-Spellout operation (cf. Bobaljik 2008). The linker is agreement morphology on the syntactic head D. Cases of mismatch between the form taken by the linker and the gender value of n represents the interpretable (semantic) features of the referent of the noun (itself the external argument of n), intervening in agreement relations between D and n. This mechanism is extended to account for adjectival number agreement on nouns of general number.

Abstract

Many languages are said to possess ‘gender’, that is, a morphosyntactic system in which nouns induce formal marking on other words beyond the noun itself (adjectives, verbs, etc.). Gorwaa (gow; South-Cushitic; Tanzania) possesses a gender system which is interrelated with number in a complex manner. Following the line of reasoning that biological (semantic) sex, grammatical (syntactic) gender, and (morphological) form-class are “interrelated but autonomous domains of linguistic generalization” set out in Harris’ (1991) examination of Spanish, and establishing that number and gender are interrelated in a complex manner, this paper considers the morphophonological word-markers of Gorwaa, a language whose nominal morphology is considerably different from that of Spanish. Following a discussion of gender and number in Gorwaa, all word-markers and their associated gender and number values are identified. In addition to being a useful exercise in arranging the empirical data, this paper sheds light on some surprising surface patterns of a little-studied language.

Abstract

When Swahili words are borrowed into Gorwaa and Iraqw, they are typically nativized according to a series of observable patterns. This work offers an account of how Swahili borrowings are integrated phonologically and morphologically into these languages. Phonologically, non-native phonemes are typically replaced by native sounds which are featurally similar to the original Swahili phoneme, and where no such similar phoneme exists, the non-native sound is tolerated. In order to repair words whose etymon begins with a syllabic nasal, either a vowel is inserted to break up the cluster, or the initial nasal is deleted. Vowels are very often lengthened on the stressed (penultimate) syllable. Where Swahili words do not violate any phonological rule, they are adopted without change. Morphologically, borrowed verbs are assigned a verbal derivational ending to identify the forms as verbs. The gender system of Swahili differs markedly from Gorwaa and Iraqw, and, as such, every borrowed noun must be assigned a gender. Typically (but not always), this is done according to the phonetic form of the noun. Nouns ending in round vowels are assigned masculine gender and nouns ending in the front vowel are assigned feminine gender. Pluralizing forms whose base is singular, or singularizing forms whose base is plural are more complicated, with a series of weakly productive rules operating to assign number suffixes to base forms. This results in a high number of irregular forms.

Abstract

When adapting loans into Swahili, a series of vowels are inserted, resulting in forms that differ from those in the source languages (etymons). This work 1) identifies the nature of these inserted vowels, and 2) develops an explanation of the system behind the various phonetic realizations of these vowels. Vowels examined are (as the title suggests) epenthetic rather than excrescent. Typically, when Swahili loanwords are adapted via epenthesis, features cannot cross from one side of the stressed syllable (which in Swahili is the penult). Therefore, word-final epenthetic vowels must appropriate features from adjacent consonants. Consonants spreading coronal features will result in a coronal epenthetic vowel [i], consonants spreading labial features will result in a labial epenthetic vowel [u], and consonants spreading pharyngeal features will result in a pharyngeal vowel [a]. Dorsal consonants do not contribute a feature, and the feature [coronal] is inserted by default. In pre-stress environments, both vocalic and consonantal material is available for Feature-Spreading. Features of vowels spread more freely than features of consonants, so vowel-vowel feature spreading is more prevalent. Several idiosyncratic forms exist in which vocalic material that existed in the etymon seems to have survived in the realization of epenthetic vowels. A handful of suppletive forms exist which seem to break the constraint on crossing from one side of the stressed vowel to the other.