Teaching and Learning Guide for: Africa’s Linguistic Diversity
Authors: Sands Bonny 
Published: July 2009

Author’s Introduction

African languages have played an important role in the development of linguistic theory but their role in the fields of historical linguistics and linguistic typology has been less prominent. Africa’s linguistic diversity has been long underestimated given the dominance of the four‐family model proposed by Joseph Greenberg. Criticism of this model has long held among specialists in some of Africa’s smaller and lesser‐known language families, but has only recently become more widely acknowledged among linguists. Archaeologists, geneticists, and others continue to model African prehistory based on African linguistic classifications, which are outdated and which have failed to withstand scrutiny. This teaching and learning guide suggests a program to train scholars in recognizing and evaluating the standards by which various African language classifications have been made. Africa’s linguistic diversity will be shown to be far greater than what is suggested by the four‐family model.

Author Recommends

1. Childs, G. Tucker. 2003. The classification of African languages. An Introduction to African Languages, 19–53. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

A highly readable introduction to the subject, ‘The classification of African languages’ provides an overview of the four‐phylum model, along with the discussion of some of the major critiques that have been made of it.

2. Dimmendaal, Gerrit J. and F.K. Erhard Voeltz. 2007. Africa. Encyclopedia of the World’s Endangered Languages, 579–634. ed. by Christopher Moseley. London: Routledge.

‘Africa’ provides an overview of the major changes to the picture of African language classification that have been accepted by leading historical linguists and specialists. This reading also includes a list of endangered African languages, and an up‐to‐date discussion of Africa’s linguistic areas.

3. Campbell, Lyle and William J. Poser. 2008. Africa. Language Classification: History and Method, 203–245. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

The ‘Africa’ section of Campbell and Poser’s book surveys the history of African language classification. Examples are given showing problems with the types of evidence used to uphold Greenberg and pre‐Greenberg classifications.

4. Dimmendaal, Gerrit J. 2008. Language ecology and linguistic diversity on the African continent. Language and Linguistics Compass 2(5).840–858. DOI:
DOI: 10.1111/j.1749-818X.2008.00085.x

The article ‘Language ecology and linguistic diversity on the African continent’ discusses recent revisions to African linguistic classification and pays special attention to the development of spread zones and accretion zones on the continent. It also details several cases of contact‐induced linguistic changes.

5. Batibo, Herman M. 2005. The endangered languages of Africa. Language Decline and Death in Africa: Causes, Consequences and Challenges, 62–86. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

The book ‘Language Decline and Death in Africa’ is an important survey of the factors that have been leading to a loss of linguistic diversity on the African continent. Chapter 5 ‘The endangered languages of Africa’ provides a concise summary of these factors, as well as a country‐by‐country outline of endangered languages.

6. Mous, Maarten. 2003. Loss of linguistic diversity in Africa. Language Death and Language Maintenance: Theoretical, Practical and Descriptive Approaches, 157–170. ed. by Mark Janse and Sijmen Tol. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

The article ‘Loss of linguistic diversity in Africa’ surveys the linguistic genetic diversity of the continent’s languages and provides an overview of the factors that have led to a language shift in Africa.

Online Materials

1. The World Atlas of Language Structures Online (WALS)

http://wals.info/index

The World Atlas of Language Structures Online (WALS) is a database of over 58,000 datapoints of phonological, grammatical, and lexical features of a subset of the world’s languages. The database allows scholars see maps of the distribution of these features, and to read the 142 chapters examining these structural features across the typological database.

The Online database is a project of Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and the Max Planck Digital Library, edited by Martin Haspelmath, Matthew S. Dryer, David Gil and Bernard Comrie (Munich: Max Planck Digital Library, 2008). WALS was also published as a book (with CD‐ROM) by Oxford University Press in 2005.

2. SIL Electronic Survey Reports

http://www.sil.org/silesr/indexes/languages.asp

The SIL Electronic Survey Reports website provides links to a large number of language surveys (in a downloadable pdf format) produced by Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) researchers. These reports include a great deal of linguistic information about a large number of African languages. Of particular interest to the comparative linguist is the large number of word lists included in the reports.

3. Jouni Maho’s Web Resources for African Languages

http://www.africanlanguages.org/

Jouni Maho’s ‘Web Resources for African Languages’ pages provide a continuously updated list of online databases and downloadable documents on African languages. Links to both published and unpublished sources are included. The pages also provide a select print bibliography for each language family or isolate.

4. Comparative Bantu Online Dictionary (CBOLD)

http://www.linguistics.berkeley.edu/CBOLD/

The Comparative Bantu Online Dictionary (CBOLD) at the University of California Berkeley as started in 1994 by Larry Hyman and John Lowe but includes contributions from scholars from many other institutions. It includes over 20 searchable Bantu language dictionaries, the Tervuren database of Bantu Lexical Reconstructions (BLR2) (with 9800 entries), and the Tanzanian Language Survey lexical database.

5. Ethnologue: Languages of the World

http://www.ethnologue.com/

Ethnologue is an ‘encyclopedic reference work cataloging all of the world’s 6,912 known living languages’ produced by the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL). This website provides a quick and handy means of getting information about such topics as: the languages spoken in each country, the number of speakers of each language, language and dialect names (and variants), and relationships between languages. This database (currently in its 15th edition) must be used with some discretion as (i) the number of distinct languages is inflated, and (ii) a Greenbergian four‐family referential classification scheme of African languages is treated as a phylogenetic classification.

6. UNESCO Redbook of Endangered Languages

http://www.tooyoo.l.u‐tokyo.ac.jp/archive/RedBook/index.html

The UNESCO Redbook of Endangered Languages has a searchable database of the world’s most endangered languages. Information provided includes: language name (and variants), geographical location, relationships, and present state of the language. If known, information is presented about the total number of speakers (and number of members of the ethnic group), degree of speakers’ competenece, mean age of youngest speakers, distribution by sex of speakers, published and unpublished material on the language, and names of competent scholars who work on the language. The data on African languages were provided by Bernd Heine and Matthias Brenzinger.

Syllabus: African Languages and Language Comparison

This course provides an introduction to African languages and language comparison. The course as outlined is designed as a graduate seminar, but it could also be given as an undergraduate lecture class, with certain modifications. Guests could be brought in to demonstrate linguistic features of different African languages and to teach students some words and phrases. The course could be adapted for students with little or no background in historical linguistics by expanding the section on the Comparative Method, and by including a larger number of in‐class and take‐home exercises. The course could be modified for a student population of archaeologists and historians by adding a section on the use of linguistics in reconstructing prehistory and reducing the time spent on language endangerment and areal linguistics.

Week 1: African language classifications

The focus of the first week is to familiarize students with Africa, its nations, geography, and languages. Readings are designed to orient students by providing (i) a survey of the state of African language classification (Sands 2009), (ii) an overview of the methods commonly used to classify African languages (Nurse 1997), and (iii) insight into the intellectual history of language classifications (Irvine 1995).

Suggested reading:

Irvine, Judith. 1995. The family romance of colonial linguistics: Gender and family in nineteenth‐century representations of African languages. (Special Issue: Constructing Languages and Publics. ed. by S. Gal and K. Woolard). Pragmatics 5(2).139–153.

Nurse, Derek. 1997. The contributions of linguistics to the study of history in Africa. Journal of African history 38(3).358–391. http://www.jstor.org/stable/182541

Sands, Bonny. 2009. Africa’s linguistic diversity. Language and Linguistics Compass 3(2).559–580. DOI: 10.1111/j.1749-818X.2008.00124.x

Week 2: The Comparative Method

The second week focuses on the tried‐and‐true standard of language classification, the Comparative Method. If students do not already have a background in historical linguistics, readings, and exercises from general introductions to the subject should be provided. The Comparative Method should be demonstrated in class using data the instructor is familiar with, or with data in Mutaka and Tamanji (2000). The instructor should lead students in a discussion pointing out cases of language families that are and are not based on a classical application of the Comparative Method, based on a reading of Campbell and Poser (2008).

Suggested reading:

Campbell, Lyle and William J. Poser. 2008. Africa. Language Classification: History and Method, 203–245. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Mutaka, Ngessimo M., with the collaboration of Pius Ngwa Tamanji. 2000. Classification of African languages. An Introduction to African Linguistics, 1–32. Munich: Lincom Europa.

Week 3: The Method of Mass Comparison: Kunama case study

The method Greenberg used to create his African language classification is examined in Week 3. Focusing on the evidence brought forth for the classification of the Kunama language (classified by Greenberg as Nilo‐Saharan), students will examine the Method of Mass Comparison (Greenberg 1963). The class will discuss whether Greenberg’s method produced substantially more proof than that used by Huntingford (1956) to classify Kunama as a Nilo‐Hamitic language (a language grouping consisting primarily of some Nilotic and some Cushitic languages, based on outdated notions of race). These classifications can be compared with that of Bender (1991). The class will examine whether Bender’s evidence for the inclusion of Kunama in Nilo‐Saharan satisfies the requirement of the Comparative Method that sound correspondences be ‘regular and repeated’.

Suggested reading:

Greenberg, Joseph H. 1963. Chari‐Nile. The Languages of Africa, 85–129. Bloomington: Indiana University.

Huntingford, G. W. B. 1956. The ‘Nilo‐Hamitic’ languages. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 12(2).200–222. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3629115

Bender, M. Lionel. 1991. Sub‐classification of Nilo‐Saharan. Proceedings of the Fourth Nilo‐Saharan Conference, Bayreuth, Aug. 30–Sep. 2, 1989, 1–35. ed. by M. Lionel Bender. Hamburg: Helmut Buske.

Week 4: Lexicostatistics in African language classification

The majority of African language subclassifications have been made using lexicostatistics. Although lexicostatistics is intended to be applied only after the Comparative Method has been used to identify cognates, this is not the typical practice. Problems with the use of lexicostatistics in place of linguistic reconstruction are discussed in Heine and Kuteva (2001), with respect to the Nubian languages. Examples of the appropriate use of lexicostatistics and dialectometrics are found in the selected readings: Hinnebusch (1999), Möhlig (1992).

Suggested reading:

Hinnebusch, Thomas J. 1999. Contact and lexicostatistics in Comparative Bantu studies. Bantu Historical Linguistics: Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives, 173–205. ed. by Jean‐Marie Hombert and Larry M. Hyman. Stanford: CSLI.

Möhlig, Wilhelm J.G. 1992. Language death and the origin of strata: Two case studies of Swahili dialects. Language Death: Factual and Theoretical Explorations with Special Reference to East Africa, 157–179. ed. by Matthias Brenzinger. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Heine, Bernd and Tania Kuteva. 2001. Convergence and divergence in the development of African languages. Areal Diffusion and Genetic Inheritance: Case‐Studies in Language Contact, 393–411. ed. by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald and R.M.W. Dixon. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Week 5: Evaluating language comparisons: Omotic case study

Following the discussion in Week 4 about the use of lexicostatistics in African language classification, students will look at how lexicostatistical comparisons are highly dependent on the set of words on which the comparison is based (Kessler 2001). Students will look at one set of languages, Omotic, to see how different lexicostatistical comparisons may vary (Blažek 2008, Bender 1990).

The instructor may wish to assign one of the following short paper topics or group discussion topics based on the readings: (i) Does the evidence from shared irregularities, paradigms, and grammatical markers (Bender 1990) support a particular subclassification of Omotic? (ii) Do shared phonological innovations (inferred from Blažek 2008) support a particular subclassification of Omotic? (iii) Evaluate the evidence supporting Omotic as an Afroasiatic (or Cushitic) language group.

Suggested reading:

Bender, M. Lionel. 1990. A survey of Omotic grammemes. Linguistic Change and Reconstruction Methodology, 661–695. ed. by Philip Baldi. Berlin. Mouton de Gruyter.

Blažek, Václav. 2008. Lexicostatistical comparison of Omotic languages. In Hot Pursuit of Language in Prehistory: Essays in the Four Fields of Anthropology In honor of Harold Crane Fleming, 57–148. ed. by John D. Bengston. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Kessler, Brett. 2001. Nonarbitrary vocabulary. The Significance of Word Lists, 83–102. Stanford: CSLI.

Week 6: Other approaches to modeling linguistic diversity

Recent techniques for modeling language relationships and similarity are the focus of Week 6. Students will be introduced to phylogenetic techniques borrowed from the biological sciences (Marten 2006, Nichols and Warnow 2008), which are aimed at reconstructing linguistic genetic relationships. The class should discuss how to evaluate classifications by looking at how results differ widely depending on the data and assumptions fed into the model. This section of the course could be expanded to train students in performing the technique themselves.

Computational comparisons involving phonetic similarity (Alewijnse et al. 2007) may also be discussed in class, with attention being paid to the question of how linguistic diversity should best be determined.

Suggested reading:

Alewijnse, Bart, John Nerbonne, Lolke J. van der Veen and Franz Manni. 2007. A computational analysis of Gabon varieties. Proceedings of the RANLP (Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing) Workshop on Computational Phonology. Borovetz (Bulgaria). Available online: http://www.let.rug.nl/~nerbonne/papers/

Marten, Lutz. 2006. Bantu classification, Bantu trees and phylogenetic methods. Phylogenetic Methods and the Prehistory of Languages, 43–55. ed. by Peter Forster and Colin Renfrew. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.

Nichols, Johanna and Tandy Warnow. 2008. Tutorial on computational linguistic phylogeny. Language and Linguistics Compass 2(5).760–820. DOI: 10.1111/j.1749-818X.2008.00082.x

Week 7: Challenges for linguistic classification

Certain types of languages and speech varieties contribute to linguistic diversity yet are often ignored in historical linguistic classifications. Students should be exposed to: argots, youth vernaculars, urban speech varieties (Goyvaerts 1996), mixed languages, sign languages (Serpell and Mbewe 1990), pidgins and creoles (Owens 1991), and code‐switching.

Suggested reading:

Goyvaerts, Didier L. 1996. Kibalele: form and function of a secret language in an ethnic cauldron. Journal of Pragmatics 25(1).123–143. DOI: 10.1016/0378-2166(94)00067-6

Owens, Jonathan. 1991. Nubi, Genetic Linguistics, and Language Classification. Anthropological Linguistics 33(1).1–30.

Serpell, Robert and Mackenzie Mbewe. 1990. Dialectal flexibility in sign language in Africa. Sign Language Research: Theoretical Issues. (Proceedings of the International Conference, Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research, II, May 18–21, 1988 at Gallaudet University), 275–287. ed. by Ceil Lucas. Washington DC: Gallaudet University Press.

Week 8: Language contact, borrowing, and diffusion

Week 8 introduces students to the role that language contact has played in the diffusion of linguistic features. Both recent (Storch 2007) and ancient (Dimmendaal 2001) contact patterns should be considered. The class should discuss the types of social conditions that can lead to heavy lexical and grammatical borrowing. The degree to which areal traits (Heine and Zelealem Leyew 2008) and borrowings have been misidentified as signs of linguistic genetic relatedness should also be discussed.

Suggested reading:

Dimmendaal, Gerrit J. 2001. Areal diffusion versus genetic inheritance: An African perspective. Areal Diffusion and Genetic Inheritance: Problems in Comparative Linguistics, 358–392. ed. by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald and R.M.W. Dixon. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Heine, Bernd and Zelealem Leyew. 2008. Is Africa a linguistic area? A Linguistic Geography of Africa, 15–35, 309–310. ed. by Bernd Heine and Derek Nurse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Storch, Anne. 2007. Grammatical change and emblematic features in Western Nilotic. Selected Proceedings of the 37th Annual Conference on African Linguistics, 1–15. ed. Doris L. Payne and Jaime Peña. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project. Available online: http://www.lingref.com/cpp/acal/37/index.html

Week 9: African linguistic areas: case studies

The degree to which areal traits and borrowings have been misidentified as signs of linguistic genetic relatedness should be discussed. Different linguistic areas such as the Macro‐Sudan belt (Bryan 1959, Güldemann 2008) and the Tanzanian Rift Valley Area (Kießling 1998) may be discussed. Alternately, discussion might focus on the distribution of a particular morphosyntactic trait (marked‐nominative case systems, verb‐final languages).

Suggested reading:

Bryan, Margaret. 1959. The T/K languages: A new substratum. Africa 29(1).1–21. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1157496

Güldemann, Tom. 2008. The Macro‐Sudan belt: Towards identifying a linguistic area in northern Sub‐Saharan Africa. A Linguistic Geography of Africa, 151–185, 315–318. ed. by Bernd Heine and Derek Nurse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kießling, Roland. 1998. Reconstructing the sociohistorical background of the Iraqw language. Afrika und Übersee 81.167–225.

Week 10: African phonetic and phonological diversity

Week 10 focuses on the phonetic and phonological diversity found in Africa. Students will examine whether African sound systems differ from those in other parts of the world (Clements and Rialland 2008). Students should listen to, and learn to produce clicks, ejectives, implosives, labial‐velar stops, etc. Discuss how sounds and sound patterns can diffuse across language families within linguistic areas, using labial flaps as a case study (Olson and Hajek 2001).

Suggested reading:

Clements, Nick and Annie Rialland. 2008. Africa as a phonological area. A Linguistic Geography of Africa, 36–85, 310–312. ed. by Bernd Heine and Derek Nurse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Olson, Kenneth S. and John Hajek. 2001. The Geographic and Genetic Distribution of the Labial Flap. SIL Electronic Working Papers (SILEWP) 2001–001. Available online: http://www.sil.org/silewp/2001/002/

Week 11: The loss of African linguistic diversity: sociolinguistic factors

Week 11 exposes students to a range of marginalized ethnolinguistic groups and detailed studies of sociolinguistic and historical factors that have led to language shift. Instructors may wish to have students lead presentations on case studies of their own choice.

Suggested reading:

Brenzinger, Matthias. 1992. Lexical retention in language shift: Yaaku/Mukogodo‐Maasai and Elmolo/Elmolo‐Samburu. Language Death: Factual and Theoretical Explorations with Special Reference to East Africa, 213–254. ed. by Matthias Brenzinger. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Haruna, Andrew. 1998. Language death: The case of Bubburè in Southern Bauchi Area, Northern Nigeria. Endangered Languages in Africa, 227–251. ed. by Matthias Brenzinger. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe.

Kastenholz, Raimund. 1998. Language shift and language death among Mande blacksmiths and leatherworkers in the diaspora. Endangered Languages in Africa, 253–266. ed. by Matthias Brenzinger. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe.

Monaka, Kemmonye C. and Gregory. H. Kamwendo. 2007. Linguistic minorities and marginalization in Botswana: Prospects for survival. Vital Voices: Endangered Languages and Multilingualism (Proceedings of the Tenth FEL Conference, CIIL, Mysore, India, 25–27 October 2006), 135–142. ed. by R. Elangaiyan, R. McKenna Brown, Nicholas D. M. Ostler and Mahendra K. Verma. Bath, UK: Foundation for Endangered Languages.

Week 12: The loss of African linguistic diversity: Language attrition and change

Week 12 focuses on the loss of linguistic structures that typically accompany language shift and loss. The class should discuss the nature of language data on which classifications have been based. Has data been collected from a language whose speakers have already shifted in most (or all) domains to another language? Which languages of particular interest to African classifications are only known through the speech of the last generation of speakers? (e.g. Ongota, Kwadi, Mpre).

Other topics of discussion include: How can the choice of language consultant (bilingual or not, living in their home area or in a university town) affect the linguistic data collected? How can the method of elicitation affect the data collected? What difference does the expertise of the linguist (or other person) documenting the language make?

Suggested reading:

Appleyard, David L. 1998. Language death: The case of Qwarenya (Ethiopia). Endangered Languages in Africa, 143–161. ed. by Matthias Brenzinger. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe.

Tosco, Mauro. 1992. Dahalo: An endangered language. Language Death: Factual and Theoretical Explorations with Special Reference to East Africa, 137–155. ed. by Matthias Brenzinger. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Week 13: Typological diversity of African languages

Week 13 focuses on the typological diversity of African languages. After being presented with an overview of the subject (Cysouw and Comrie 2009), students will look in‐depth at one typological feature. The class will compare two studies that focus on tone in African languages (Dediu and Ladd 2007, Wedekind 1985) and evaluate them in light of currently accepted language classifications, typological sampling methods, and definitions of how to encode languages (Maddieson 2005).

Suggested reading:

Cysouw, Michael and Bernard Comrie. 2009. How varied typologically are the languages of Africa? The Cradle of Language, 189–203. ed. by Rudolf Botha and Chris Knight. (Studies in the Evolution of Language, 12). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Dediu, Dan and D. Robert Ladd. 2007. Linguistic tone is related to the population frequency of the adaptive haplogroups of two brain size genes, ASPM and Microcephalin. PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) 104(26).10944–10949. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0610848104

Maddieson, Ian. 2005. Tone. The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. ed. by Martin Haspelmath, Matthew S. Dryer, David Gil and Bernard Comrie. Munich: Max Planck Digital Library, Chapter 13. Available online at http://wals.info/feature/13.

Wedekind, Klaus. 1985. Thoughts when drawing a map of tone languages. Afrikanistische Arbeitspapiere 1.105–124.

Week 14: Explaining Africa’s linguistic diversity

The final week of the course looks at causal mechanisms behind Africa’s linguistic diversity. Topics include the effect of ecology (Nettle 1996) and climate change (Dimmendaal 2008) on language density and diversity.

Suggested reading:

Dimmendaal, Gerrit J. 2008. Language ecology and linguistic diversity on the African continent. Language and Linguistics Compass 2(5).840–858. DOI: 10.1111/j.1749-818X.2008.00085.x

Nettle, Daniel. 1996. Language diversity in West Africa: An ecological approach. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 15.403–438. DOI: 10.1006/jaar.1996.0015

Focus Questions

1. What kinds of motivations have scholars had for asking the question ‘How many language families are there in Africa?’, and how have these motivations shaped the ways that scholars have answered the question?

2. What standards of proof must be obtained in order to validate a hypothesis of a linguistic genetic relationship?

3. To what extent is Africa’s linguistic diversity shaped by language contact patterns?

4. Is linguistic diversity best measured or modeled by using phylogenetic methods such as the Comparative Method, by typological comparisons, or by some combination of these?

5. How has language shift and marginalization in Africa affected the perception of the continent’s linguistic diversity?