Comparative Wordlist for /ts/

'thunderclap, shouting in ;a loud voice'

H S . (UCA) tsaawaa (AH)

Mg. (cca) ntsantsa 'shouted1 (cf. LD.

M g . (cca) ntsantsa 'shouted * (cf. HF.

'bird'

13 'guinea corn1 *»y-l- <cf. S. 1982:16)

Gr.(wcB) d'ooli 'jump over1

(cf. JS. 1981:153) these correspondences are given in Klfengenheben (1928), NM r

(1977a) and Schuh (1972).

2.14.1 Dialect Variation

Dialect variants are illustrated in the following examples:

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Kano Bauchi/ 'comb out hair* tseef&e tseefee/

s eefee

'm ov eme nt1 mootsli mootsii/

moosli 'escape, run a w a y 1 tseer&e tseer&e/

seeree Kano dialect (East Hausa). Ghana Hausa consistently has the plain counterpart /s/.

2.14.2 Borrowing from Arabic to Hausa

Borrowed words from Arabic into Hausa are characterized by variation in the phonetic treatment of the Arabic original.

The distinction between plain and emphatic consonants is preserved, with reinterpretation of the emphatics. Such a process is found in Sindhi (cf. Blust (1980)).

Hausa /ts/ variously alternates with / d ' :t s :c 1 : t '/ in words containing /t/ in Arabic. The commonest examples are words that represent personal names. See examples below.

Arabic East Hausa West Hausa 'personal

name1

'good

behaviour1

taahir tayyabaa tayyabuu

'accident* xatar tabi?a

' sexual wat?

intercourse' 'to sin* xata?

d'aahiru d 1ayyabaa d 1ayyabuu faad* imatu had'afii/

hatsafii d 1abi?aa

waad*a?ii

had* a?u

tsaahiru tsayyabaa tsayyabuu hwaatsimatu hatsafii

tsabi?aa

waat'a?ii/

waac' a?^ii hat1a?u/

h ac1a?u/hatsa2u

Sources: Greenberg (1947), Ahmed and Daura (1970), Zaria (1982) .

Arabic /t/ corresponds to Hausa / d 1:t s :c ':t '/ according to the dialect area, (cf. Bargery (1934:xxiii) and James and Bargery (1925)).

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2.14.3 Correspondences Between Hausa /ts/ and Guruntum /b'/r /<*'/•

Hausa 'fear' tsooroo 'cleanliness* tsabtaa 'suck1

'jumping * 'sour *

Guruntum b*oolo b* iisi

tsootsaa b'ub'i tsallee d'ooli

(cf. Jg. 1988:184)

'white *

(cf. Jg. 1988:189)

tsaamii

(cf. Jg. 1988:188) (cf. Jg. 1988:185)

saab'id*! (AH)

The last example could be explained by assuming that the Guruntum word has a prefix saa-. This is the only example found.

2.15 Summary

This chapter provides a general overview of the different comparative studies on the Chadic glottalic consonants.

Claims were presented and criticised. The languages cited were taken to be representative of the respective branches of the Chadic family.

Of special interest are the various reconstructions of the ejectives among the established Chadic glottalic consonants. The results represented a scarcity or lack of cognates across the four branches for /ts/, / k 1/ and /'y/.

The question remains: why were there not enough cognates found across the branches, which according to the classifications are very closely related? There seem to be three possible answers to this question:

1 the vocabularies included in the wordlist are not the appropriate ones upon which to base a Chadic comparative study;

2 the time separation among the groups obscures the reconstruction of these cognates, for example through semantic shift; or

3 there is insufficient cross-language data.

Since all the vocabulary items included in the comparative list are items which are considered to be Chadic items for comparative purposes, one can therefore say that the vocabulary items used in this study are most appropriate.

It may be possible that the problem of semantic shift has contributed to the scarcity or lack of cognates found across the languages. However, the ultimate problem with this comparative exercise on the four branches of Chadic lies with the unavailability of data. The best way to remedy this is for more data to be made available, by reseachers and linguists analysing Chadic languages in great detail over an adequate length of time. One way to

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ease the burden on the few linguists interested in the study of the Chadic languages would be to encourage speakers of these languages to become linguistically critical of, and interested in, the study of their languages.

Finally, the reconstructions seem very interesting and need further investigation because:

1 we found a language (Hausa) which, in general, seems to be very consistent with regard to its phonological development but has developed unusual (for Chadic) phonemes;

2 from a general phonetic point of view, one finds that some of the reconstructions are odd, for example, one does not expect a sonorant to change into an ejective;

see Section 2.13.

3 there is very little study done on the origin of /'Y/.

2.16 NOTES

1 In these studies, however, several of the Chadic languages cited are only represented by entries or samples taken down in the field. Individual comparativists make possible assumptions from the scanty data available to them. The phonological changes between the branches have not been sufficiently demonstrated. How difficult and unclear such attempts are is evident in the degree of dissimilarities between proposed protoforms by different comparativists. For example:

Newman Jungraithmayr and Shimizu (1977b:26) (1981:111)

'fly' (n) *diwa *k'db

Within the Chadic family, there also exist some practical dictionaries of individual languages, for example Bargery1s (1934) and Abraham's (1962) dictionaries of Hausa, and Schuh's (1981) dictionary of Ngizim, but we lack etymological dictionaries that are complete and dependable.

However, while these dictionaries are not

3 What they consider as "counterexamples" are forms which have been recorded by earlier linguists with inadequate training who have failed to distinguish consistently between voiced and glottalized consonants. For example, Schon (1876) noted the peculiarity of /b'/ and sometimes writes it as /gb/.

4 It makes a big difference to the reconstruction of the glottalized sounds in PC, whether one assumes with N/M (1966) and JS (1981) that they existed as single sounds at the very begining of Chadic or accepts the alternative assumption that they are sounds which are the product of a language process of merging and systematizing (cf. Skinner (1971). The latter is possible but it poses serious problems for /ts/, /k'/ and /'y/. The problems will not be discussed here.

%

5 Hausa m. ad'ii 'sweet drink' may be cognate with G u r u n t u m :m w a d 1 ami 'sweetness' (Jaggar

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(1988:188)). If so, then the idea of borrowing raised by Skinner may not necessarily be the case.

6 Schuh has argued that only when sound correspondences have been established for the internal relationships of the branches of Chadic can a firmer basis be set for establishing sound correspondences for the entire Chadic family. He therefore limited himself to the study of the West Chadic branch only.

7 Dogon Doutchi is one of the major dialect areas in the Niger republic, cf . Zaria (1982).

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