the role of hausa in comparative studies: a historical … does not belong to afro-asiatic and this...
TRANSCRIPT
The Role of Hausa in Comparative Studies:
A Historical Sketch
Alessandro SUZZI VALLI
University of Naples “L‟Orientale”
Tsakure
Wannan maqala ta ba da taqaitaccen bayani a kan matsayin harshen Hausa a cikin binciken kwatancin harsuna. An fara da abubuwan da Jacob Friedrich Shön ya kawo a shekarar 1862 a cikin bincikensa, inda ya ce harshen Hausa, idan an kwatanta shi da Yahudanci yana nuna kama da harsunan Simitawa. Daga baya, an kawo manyan bincike-binciken da aka yi a qarnin da ya wuce, kamar su Müller/Krause da Lepsius da Meinhof da Lukas da Greenberg… har izuwa Takacs. Daga qarshe, takardar ta yi bayani a kan hanyar da bincike a kan harshen Hausa ya yi tasiri a kan binciken kwatancin harsuna dangane da harsunan dangin Cadi, da kuma matsayinsa a cikin harsunan gidan Afro-asiya gaba xaya, tare da kimanta matsayin harshen Hausa a cikin binciken kwatancin harsunan Afro-asiya.
This paper aims at reviewing the position of Hausa within the field
of Chadic comparatistic studies. The role of Hausa has been since the
beginning dominant in this respect. Its contribution in defining a
position of the Chadic branch in the main frame of Afro-Asiatic
phylum has been outstanding, with over 150 years of documentation,
glossaries, grammars, (the last excellent endeavour in this direction
with his reference grammar is that of Prof. Phillip Jaggar in 2001). In
the last decades, however the literature on other Chadic languages has
significantly developed, and new generations of linguists are no longer
supported only by the Hausa extensive resources. It is a pity to say
that, in some instances, available materials on other Chadic languages,
though little as they were, have not been sufficiently exploited by
many scholars in the last century, as we will see later on, delaying
298 Alessandro Suzzi Valli
important assumptions on the validity of genetic affiliation of Hausa
and related languages to the Afro-Asiatic phylum.
Now, a long prelude on the past most important literature on this
topic is of course unavoidable, and through that, we will see how
Hausa, slowly and undaunted, during the last two centuries, gained its
position and role, linguistically speaking.
First attempt to consider Hausa in comparison to other idioms dates
back to 1843, when J.F. Schön published his Vocabulary of the
Hausa Language.1 In the introduction he listed few cases of Hausa
lexical terms resembling in both phonetic shape and meaning some
foreign forms taken from the most disparate world languages. The full
passage is reported below (Fig. 1):
Fig.1 - Schön 1847
1 1843. Vocabulary of the Hausa Language, London, ii-iii.
The Role of Hausa in Comparative Studies: A Historical Sketch 299
Fulani does not belong to Afro-Asiatic and this is what we can
already detect clearly from the few examples taken from Schön:
Ghiova, „elephant‟, is actually a phonetic corruption of -, two
distinct morphological elements, the stem being connected with an
area lexical isogloss common also to a few Chadic languages2. As to
the gloss „much‟, Kohevi, it should be ko-heew-i, a composition of
three morphemes.
It is clear then that the two words from Hausa and Fulani cannot be
put together. Anyhow, conscious of the pioneer undertaking by this
eminent scholar, and aware also of the inadequate knowledge of those
languages at that time, besides the lack of competence in the
comparative method applied to linguistics, lexical parallels which
have been set up on those simple shape resemblance still were
justifiable.
Afterwards, in 18623 Schön drew attention to the affinities and
somehow identities in lexicon and grammar between Hausa and
Hebrew, trying, therefore, to style Hausa a Semitic language. The
personal pronouns were the most striking part of his preliminary
comparison.
I will report here the original passage in which the compared
lexical terms are presented:
2 Jungraithmayr/Ibriszimow I 1994; p. 58 root „H‟ nii ~ langs. Sura and
Goemai. 3 1862. Grammar of the Hausa Language, London, xii-xiii.
300 Alessandro Suzzi Valli
Fig. 2 - Shon 1862
One more lexeme is mentioned on page 150, yamma „west/western‟,
which would soon be a fundamental testimony of a larger and deep
heritage, i.e. the Afro-Asiatic common lexicon. Obviously, most of the
terms presented as direct links to Hebrew were introduced into Hausa
through Arabic, as we nowadays know them in detail.4
4 Baldi (1988)
The Role of Hausa in Comparative Studies: A Historical Sketch 301
It is enough for a Hausaist to feel proud looking back at such a
correlation between one of the most important and representative
Semitic language‟ i. e. Hebrew, and Hausa, a still little known African
idiom at that time; just few years earlier Renan,5 the eminent Semitist,
tried to establish successfully some correlation between Hebrew and
Coptic, as well as with a number of Libyan dialects:
Fig. 3 - Renan 1858
5 E. Renan, 1858. Histoire générale et système comparé des Langues
Sémitique.
302 Alessandro Suzzi Valli
If we try to match the Hausa personal pronoun system to those
above, we could immediately infer that they belong to the same
linguistic macro-family; naturally something, we have already been
acknowledged of, for the last 50 years.
The prefixes ma/mai6 formatives of derivational names constitute
one of the strong points, together with the personal pronoun
paradigm7 and the gender distinction, in favour of a Semitic origin of
the language.
Furthermore, in phonetics Schön stated that the sound ạ in Hausa
(to be interpreted as a medium high vowel), for instance in k ækà,
corresponds to Hebrew8 .ע
Charles H. Robinson, in the notes on Hausa phonology of his
Hausa grammar,9 introduced the problem of the appurtenance of this
language to some of the known linguistic families. He cited Berber
and Coptic as Hamitic languages, in accordance to the new term
introduced by Renan,10
to which he wished to add Hausa as members
of the same group, in opposition to Semitic (Arabic and Ethiopic) and
Bantu.
The features fixed as proof of linguistic affiliation are, in addition
to those already established by Schön, 1) the genitive formation by
means of n or na, common to both Berber and Coptic; 2) the
vocabulary resemble in several words that of Coptic; for instance H.
6 Ibidem pp. 9-12.
7 Ibidem p.21.
8 Schön, 1862 op.cit. p.2.
9 Hausa Grammar, 1897-1925, 13th impression London 1942, pp. 189-
190. 10
Op. cit. pp. 88-89 «We must thus assign the Egyptian language and civilisation to a distinct family, which we may call, if we will, Hamitic. To this same group belong, doubtless, the non-Semitic dialects of Abyssinia and Nubia. Future research will show whether, as has been conjectured, the indigenous languages to the north of Africa, the Berber and the Tuarek, for example, which appear to represent the Lybian and ancient Numidian, ought to be assigned to the same family […]».
The Role of Hausa in Comparative Studies: A Historical Sketch 303
so/sau “time” Copt. sop ftu “four”; H. dubu
“thousand” Copt. thba meaning “ten thousand”, etc.
He finally stated that one/third of Hausa lexicon is derived from
Semitic but he also wanted to point out what follows, which is worth
to be mentioned:
[…] at present the fact that two-thirds of the Hausa vocabulary present no similarity to any Semitic language, forms an almost insuperable obstacle to the acceptance of this theory (that Hausa is a semitic language) until such time as a careful study of the surrounding languages, and more particularly of the languages which are spoken in and on the borders of the Sahara Desert, e.g. Berber, Tuareg, Songai, &c., may prove either the existence or non-existence of connecting links between Hausa and Arabic or any other Semitic language. (Robinson 1897:189)
The publication of the notes of Gottlob Adolf Krause on Musgu
language (Musuk), by Friedrich Müller,11
established for the first time a
relation, mainly lexical, between the former language and Hausa. As a
consequence, probably on trail of this newly discovered linguistic
connection, Leo Reinich tried to compare the two Chadic languages
Hausa and Musgu to Semitic and Egyptian, in regards to personal
pronoun system, verbal conjugation and, as a new entry in the
comparative analysis, plural formation, which also, as we know,
constituted one of the columns for the foundation of Afro-Asiatic
Phylum as a linguistic family. Through such striking similarities, Hausa,
Musgu, Berber dialects and Ancient Egyptian were grouped together
under the definition of „Hamitic languages‟ as opposed to Semitic.
However, long before, the German traveller Heinrich Barth (1862)
had already put in comparison Hausa with other Chadic languages
(Logone Wandala, Bagirmi, Maba) besides Kanuri, Teda, Fulfulde and
Songhay (Nilo-Saharan) in what we can consider the perfect linguistic
comparison, since no any pre-constituted ideas on established
11
1886. Die Musuk-Sprache in Central-Afrika. Nach den Aufzeichnungen von Gottlob Adolf Krause. Wien.
304 Alessandro Suzzi Valli
classifications (actually no attempt had been made so far) could at any
rate cause a corruption of data or the results of the linguistic analysis for
those languages treated. The scope was not comparative; neither aimed
at formulating theoretical views on the origin of languages, nor to
establish relationships among them. The unique scope was to strengthen
the knowledge of African languages and cultures in the Western
countries, where the awareness of them was scanty, mainly resultant
from missionary works.12
Actually, it includes a bulk of material
concerning morphology, syntax of clauses from the everyday speaking,
nouns lists, numbers etc.; a more or less correct phonetic value was
given of every single phoneme. Though he was acquainted with
different languages of the area he travelled (Arabic, Kanuri, Teda,
Fulfulde) Hausa remained his privileged idiom, so he stated
[…] Kanuri-idiom during a period of more than two years constituted pre-eminently my medium of conversation with the natives… I dare to say, that I spoke it with a tolerable degree of accuracy and fluency, although never so well as the Hausa, which, on account of its copious as well as forcible and flexible character and from its richness in vowels, had once for all won my special predilection, which was the reason why I preferred conversing in this idiom […] (Barth 1862:xvii)
Although, as a scientific work from the linguistic point of view,
Barth‟s vocabularies are nowadays unfortunately of little use, maybe
due to the choice of glosses not properly fitting a comparative-
historical task, or due to the informants not being „pure‟ speakers,
Barth‟s work is still to be considered a masterpiece in the field of
anthropological-linguistics, particularly in consideration of the epoch
in which it was written.
12
In this regard it would be of some interest for the reader to give the following citation by Barth from his introductory remarks: «[…] my vocabularies, at least the larger ones, constitute a striking contrast to similar labours of the missionaries, because they do not represent a distinct and single dialect of each language, but each language in its general character and features, such as it lives in the mouth of the people».
The Role of Hausa in Comparative Studies: A Historical Sketch 305
Meinhof Carl (1912), studied in detail the morphological
characteristics of different languages from various geographic
contexts (and consequently different language families, the current
Afro-Asiatic, Nilo-Saharan, Khoisan), and summarised common
features like gender, polarity and noun classes markers, on the bases
of which he distinguished the Hamitic languages from the Sudanic
ones. Since his theoretical assumption turned out later on (Greenberg
1955, 1963) to be false, only the short lexical list at the end of the
publication remains of some worth. In there, Hausa forms were cited
in isolation, although some knowledge of related language was
already consolidated (for ex. Musgu – Muller 1886, Reinish 1909),
and without much consideration of the general linguistic situation of
the Lake Chad area. The languages investigated in the comparative list
are fiest of all Ful, Hausa, Schilluk, Bedauye, Somali, Masai, Nama,
in first place, besides Egyptian. Some of the items are well known
nowadays, like „Rind (meat)‟ sa „riechen (smell)‟ sunsuna AA *sn,
interrogative pronoun „Wer? Was?‟ Hausa mi; „Auge (eye)‟, very
important isogloss spread all over the Afroasiatic geographic
extension end even beyond (see Suzzi Valli & Leger 2007, Suzzi Valli
2008), presented in the two renowned forms *yrt/ill and *indo. It is
remarkable that he could already be able, with such poor data
available to him, to distinguish the above two forms. Then „trinken‟,
„blume‟, etc. This list of 77 items does not diverge significantly from
the much posterior lexical lists by Greenberg and Diakonoff as we
will see later on. The unquestionable point that immediately emerge
from the list, is that the evident lexical affinity links languages
belonging to Afro-Asiatic, and this is something that Meinhof was not
yet able to realise. So, fifty years later, with more or less the same
quantity of data a complete different theoretical view was build up.
Hausa remains, undoubtly, the prevailing source of lexical material.
In the thirties of the last century, direct connection of Hausa with the
ancient stage of HS, took hold, and Werner Vycichl (1934)
concentrated his endeavour on Hausa-Egyptian correlation. The
clamour provoked was great. Any minimal part of grammar was
analysed in detail and remarkable common features have been
306 Alessandro Suzzi Valli
revealed, most of which were taken in future decades as pillars for the
foundation of the whole Afro-Asiatic phylum.
Marcel Cohen, much later (1947), did not add much to the acquired
knowledge of Chadic at that time, and he cited only occasionally
Hausa forms in his comparative vocabulary not considering at all
Musgu, nor the above mentioned solid relations to Egyptian. He did
not consider moreover the available works of Foulkes on Angas
(1915) and Lukas on Logone (1936) and Buduma (1939).
Cohen‟s work was revised by Nina Pilszcikowa (1958, 1960), and
the assumptions taken by the French scholar were extended to other
languages (grouped under the name of Nigero-Chadian), essentially,
Karekare, Ngizim, Ngamo, Bolewa, Kanakuru. In addition, she took
into consideration neighbouring languages, non-Afro-Asiatic, called
semi-bantu (Katabe, Djaba, Piti, Tcharai, Kourama, Djandji, etc.),
from which she gathered common features treating them as
borrowings, which might have been introduced in a very remote past.
In this regard Pilszcikowa showed examples like Hausa mutum as
derived from < mu + tun the first morpheme being a noun-class
marker, feature, that obviously has not an Afro-Asiatic origin and its
probable intrusion would be not recent in time. Likewise, the case of
nama “meat” should be a trace of an ancient loan-words stock brought
in early in history. Important palatalization processes were also
documented, thanks to new data from extra-Chadic languages.
The bases for the consequent classification of African languages,
carried out by J. Greenberg short later, were definitely set down. The
comparative method was defined properly, and by that time it has
been always including not only Hausa, but at minimum two (in most
cases more than two) Chadic languages.
Hausa has never stopped, anyhow, to play a dominant role in the
comparative studies in which Chadic was included.
Igor Diakonoff speaks about Chadic mentioning only Hausa, for
instance in the phonological description of H-S and especially, as
much more fundamental, in the table of phonetic correspondences
where Semitic inventory is proposed in all stages of development
(ancient, middle) and geographically (North vs. South/Peripheral). For
The Role of Hausa in Comparative Studies: A Historical Sketch 307
Cushitic, although far from representing adequately the full group, is
proposed with Bedawye, Somali and Agau. Berber is reconstructed. In
regards to word-formation he cites the „interesting case‟ of mai- (as if
it was newly discovered, disregarding the hundred-years-before
description by Schön and others in the sequel) used in Hausa to form
adjectives, participles, abstract nouns, etc. Far from revising fully
Diakonoff‟s work, it is enough to add that all over his dissertation
Hausa is sporadically mentioned and, quite inexplicable to me, in
isolation from other related Chad(ic) languages that were already well
known by that time. In conclusion, it should have been better not to
mention „Chad‟ as a group/branch but rather just talk about „Hausa‟ as
a probable member of the H-S.
Things do not seem to change much in his next work Afrasian
Languages (Diakonoff 1988). Apart from accurate description of the
personal pronoun system, in which a bashful appearance of three new
Chadic languages (Musgu, Logone and Mubi) is recorded, and in spite
of a beautiful and exhaustive account for the Semitic branch, Chadic is
left aside, represented by Hausa alone, and the samples taken into
account are unbelievably reduced compared to the previous 1965‟s
work; in numbers, the section devoted to it is 5% of the full essay.
Joseph Greenberg started a new era. A different approach to the
comparative field was elected, based mainly on mass comparison. A huge
bulk of data was input from all known languages of the continent and
classifications eventually drawn up proved to be mostly correct. Hausa,
maybe for the first time, was not any longer considered the main source
for Chadic, or as such appeared to be. The slight difference in numbers in
favour of Hausa (29 vs 22 of Musgu) of the lexical list (1963:51-64), is
not relevant and in the general trend, we can say that quotations are
proportionally distributed among the Chadic languages with no
preference for the Hausa data, though the latter was (and still is) for sure
the best described language, compared to the rest of Chadic.
Paul Newman (1977) comparative work differs in respect to the
general trend, and Tera is the most used source with 54 entries in the
word list, followed by Hausa with 47 while the rest of languages stand
approximately between 10 and 20 entries (Kera 19 and Karekare 13
308 Alessandro Suzzi Valli
for ex.). A significant number of the reconstructed forms, especially
the most dubious cases, tend generally to liken those of Kera, as if this
language was taken as a starting point for reconstruction, otherwise
they use to conform to the Hausa words shape.
In the nineties of the last century extensive etymological dictionaries
of Afro-Asiatic and specifically Chadic, were available. All material
from almost all Chadic languages has been used, and for the first time
a fully reliable reconstruction of Chadic roots (and Afro-Asiatic) was
finally realised. As far as I could check off the lists, there is not
appreciable superiority in numbers of the Hausa lexical entries
compared to the other Chadic languages. Herrmann Jungraithmayr in
1994, with the collaboration of Dymitr Ibriszimow produced an
impressive comparative etymological dictionary as a secondary
development of the first attempt of reconstructing Chadic in 1981,
having at his disposal the extensive Chadic Word Catalogue. There is
a slightly dominance of the Hausa entries (110 out of 175 total glosses
against 95 of Bole). In two cases the reconstructed phonetic shape of
the Chadic roots is significantly influenced by one language, and this
language is Hausa. One is the gloss „dog‟ where a triradical root kn is
proposed instead of a more plausible biradical shape because «[...]
there is indeed not much evidence for –n as R3, but the Hausa plural
form karn-uka makes it probable […]»(p. 49). The other one is „eye‟,
where ydn form is proposed as representing the whole Chadic but the
final nasal is suggested only, again, by the Hausa plural form (p. 60).
Vladimir Orel and Olga Stolbova published (1995) the Hamito-
Semitic Etymological Dictionary in which an extensive stock of
material, actually 2672 glosses, was analysed, and likewise
reconstruction of Afro-Asiatic roots was tempted. The role of Hausa
in reconstruction here does not seem to be dominant, the only problem
being the scantiness of data, reported from all Afro-Asiatic branches,
used to elaborate single reconstructed roots.
The most extensive linguistic comparative work in the Afro-Asiatic
field, is that of Takács Gábor, started in 1999, pursued in during the last
ten years, and to be continued for many other years to come. More than
2500 pages published up to now, with the Ancient Egyptian as a starting
The Role of Hausa in Comparative Studies: A Historical Sketch 309
point for analysis, all possible lexical connections within Afro-Asiatic
are explored, and it lands itself very well to reconstructive purposes
although Takács did not tempt any reconstruction himself.
Hausa (alone) in relation to other HS languages (lexicon,
morphology):
- Schon 1843 (Fulani), 1862 (Hebrew); Robinson 1897 (Berber,
Coptic); Meinhof 1912; Vycichl 1934 (Egyptian); Cohen1947 (HS);
Diakonoff 1965 – 1988 (HS); Hodge 1966 (Egyptian)
Hausa in relation to other Chadic languages
- among others: Barth 1863 (Logone Wandala, Bagirmi, Maba)
besides Songhai, Teda, Kanuri (lexicon, morphology, syntax); Muller
1886 (Musgu); Pilszcikowa 1958, 1960; Greenberg 1955, 1963;
Newman 1966, 1977; Jungraithmayr (1994).
100
0
Fig. 4. Predominance of Hausa in comparative studies
_ Schön, Robinson, Muller, etc. XIX century Cohen 1947
_ Meinhof 1912, Reinisch 1909
_ Hodge 1966, Diakonoff 1988
_Diakonoff 1965
_Pilszcikowa 1958,
1965 Newman 1977
_Greenberg 1963
_Jungraith. 1994
Takacs 1999-2008_
Stolbova,
_Orel 1995
_Vycichl 1934
310 Alessandro Suzzi Valli
As we can see in this intuitive graph, the progress in Chadic
comparative studies does not always follow a regular time-line
sequence. In the beginning Hausa was the only Chadic language
studied, but in the mid-sixties an unjustified prevalence in the use of
Hausa data took over in spite of the rich existing material on other
Chadic languages. Hausa never stopped to play a dominant role up to
the end of nineties (Takacs) although this did not influence in a
significant way results of comparative analysis, apart from few very
cases as previously discussed (Jungraithmayr/Ibriszimow 1994).
References
Baldi, Sergio. 1988. A First Ethnolinguistic Comparison of Arabic
Loanwords Common to Hausa and Swahili. Supplement n. 57 to
AION, Vol. XXXXVIII (4).
Barth, Heinrich. 1862. Sammlung und Bearbeitung zentralafrika-
nischer Vocabulieren. Gotha. Justus Pertes.
Cohen, Marcel. 1947. Essai comparative sur le vocabulaire et la
phonétique du chamito-sémitique. Paris. Libraire Ancienne Honore
Champion.
Diakonoff, Igor M. 1965. Semitohamitskie jazyki. Moskva. Nauka.
-----. 1988. Afrasian Languages, Moskva: Nauka.
Foulkes, H. D. 1915. Angass Manual. Grammar Vocabulary. London.
Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner and Co.
Greenberg, H. Joseph. 1955. Studies in African Linguistic
Classification. New Haven. Compass Publishing Company.
-----. 1963. Languages of Africa. Bloomington. Indiana University.
Lukas, Johannes. 1936. Die Logone Sprache im Zentralen Sudan.
Abhandlungen für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 21/6.
-----. 1939. Die Sprache des Buduma in Zentralen Sudan.
Abhandlungen für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 24/2.
Jungraithmayr, H. & D. Ibriszimow. 1994. Chadic Lexical Roots. II
Vols. Berlin. Reimer.
Meinhof, Carl. 1912. Die Sprachen den Hamiten. Hamburg.
Friedrichsen and Co.
The Role of Hausa in Comparative Studies: A Historical Sketch 311
Müller Friedrich. 1886. Die Musuk-Sprache in Central-Afrika. Nach
den Aufzeichnungen von Gottlob Adolf Krause. Wien.
Newman, Paul. 1977. “Chadic Classification and Reconstruction”: 1-
40 in Afro-Asiatic Linguistics 5/1.
Pilszczikowa, Nina. 1958. “Contribution à l‟étude des rapports entre le
Haoussa et les autre langues du groupe nigéro-tchadien”: 75-99 in
Rocznik Orientalistyczny 22/2.
-----. 1960. “Le haoussa et le chamito-sémitique à la lumière de
l‟Essai comparatif de Marcel Cohen”: 97-130 in Rocznik
Orientalistyczny 24/1.
Reinich, Leo. 1909. Das persönliche Fürwort und die Verbalflexionin
den Chamito-Semitichen Sprachen. Wien. Alfred Hölder.
Renan, Ernest. 1858. Histoire générale et système comparé des
Langues Sémitique. Paris. Imprimerie impériale.
Robinson H. Charles. 1897. Hausa Grammar. London. Kegan Paul,
Trench, Trübner.
Schön, J. Frederick. 1843. Vocabulary of the Hausa Language.
London. Church Missionary Society.
-----. 1862. Grammar of the Hausa Language. London. Church
Missionary Society.
Stolbova, O. & V. Orel. 1995. Hamito-Semitic Etymological
Dictionary. Materials for a Reconstruction. Leiden. E.J. Brill.
Suzzi Valli, Alessandro. 2009. “Una proposta di analisi di stratigrafia
lessicale in Africa sahariana e sub-sahariana”: 41-51 in S. Baldi
(ed.) Atti dell’VIII Afro-Asiatic Congress (Università degli Studi di
Napoli ‘L’Orientale’ 11-13 settembre 2008). Studi Magrebini vol.
VI.
Suzzi Valli, A. & R. Leger. 2010 “The Lexeme „eye‟ in Chadic
reconsidered”: 365-372 in CAMSEMUD 2007. Proceedings of
the 13th
Italian Meeting of Afro-Asiatic Linguistics (held in
Udine, May 21st-24
th, 2007, edited by Frederick Mario Fales &
Giulia Francesca Grassi. Padova. S.A.R.G.O.N. Editrice e
Libreria.
Takács, Gábor. 1999-2008. Etymological Dictionary of Egyptian.
Vols. 3. Leiden. Brill.