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The Basis of Bantu Philology: Lecture Delivered at Capetown in January 1928

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 August 2012

Carl Meinhof
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Extract

The comparative philology of former times mainly occupied itself with the collection of such words in different languages as showed some similarity in sound, and even this phenomenon was not thought worthy of too much attention. It was not before the beginning of the nineteenth century that the scientific importance of the problems here involved were recognized, and it was seen that they called for thorough and exact investigation. First of all, the differences in structure that exist between the various European languages were examined more closely than had been done before, and those languages that were seen to possess a number of characteristics in common were then brought together into one group, which was called the Indo-European family of languages. Next, another group was found, namely that of the Semitic languages, the relationship to each other of which had been recognized long before on account of the greater uniformity in grammar and vocabulary. Indo-European and Semitic were then both classed together by virtue of their being ‘inflecting’ languages, that is to say, they change words not by means of endings only, but also through vowel change within the stem, and have grammatical gender.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , January 1929 , pp. 39 - 56
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1929

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References

page 46 note 1 x is the voiceless velar fricative, and y its voiced counterpart in the revised Lepsius orthography mostly used in comparative Bantu philology. Some symbols were not available for this essay, and had to be left out or descriptions given. We have used n for the velar nasal, š is the English sh. The symbols í and û are explained in the text.

page 47 note 1 Cf. Meinhof, , Grundriss einer Lautlehre der Bantusprachen, Berlin, Dietrich Reimer, 1910;Google ScholarBourquin, W., Neue Ur-Bantu-Wortstämme, Berlin, Dietrich Reimer, 1923.Google Scholar

page 47 note 2 x is pronounced somewhat further forward in this case.

page 53 note 1 See Zeitschrift für Eingeborenensprachen, vol. xviii.

page 54 note 1 The first part of this law is the same as the well-known law of dissimilation in ancient Greek.

page 54 note 2 The original plosives k and t have become aspirates in Nyamwezi, while p is also aspirated where it has been retained (see below).