RVN Webinar Series - Early East African and Peripheral East Cushitic
Channel: Rift Valley Network
Date: 2022-12-16

Note: This talk has not gone through a process of peer review, and 
findings should therefore be treated as preliminary and subject to change.

How to cite: Tosco, Mauro, and Bonny Sands. 2022. Early East African and Peripheral East Cushitic: Foragers and pastoralists in early East Africa.Talk given at the Rift Valley Network Webinar Series. 14/12/2022.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7440446

Abstract: The languages spoken in East Africa before the introduction of pastoralism and agriculture are little known; isolates such as Hadza and Shabo (Ch'abu) are still extant, but these are surely remnants of an earlier rich diversity that must have obtained. This study looks at words that occur in these languages of East African hunter-gatherers and also in Peripheral East Cushitic (PEC) languages (Dullay and Yaaku), which would have been spoken by some of the earliest East African pastoralists. We contend that Cushitic languages spoken by foragers such as Dahalo and Yaaku retained some vocabulary items from earlier, non-Cushitic languages. PEC languages spoken by pastoralists also include some lexical items borrowed from forager languages, i.e. adstratal rather than substratal borrowing. Contact between foragers and pastoralists was not a one-time event; loans between West Rift and Hadza also occur, as has already been well-attested in the literature.