Swahili and Sabaki: A Linguistic History.
By DEREK NURSE and THOMAS J.
HINNEBUSCH. Edited by THOMAS J. HINNEBUSCH,
with a special addendum by GERARD PHILIPPSON.
(University of California Publications in Linguistics, 121).
Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press 1993. Pp. xxxii+780.
$80 (ISBN 0-520-09775-0).
Shanga. The Archaeology of a Muslim Trading Community on the Coast of East
Africa. By MARK HORTON. (Memoirs of the
British Institute of East Africa, 14).
London: The British Institute in Eastern Africa, 1996. Pp. xvi+458. £75 (ISBN
1-872-56609-x).
Nurse's and Hinnebusch's Swahili and Sabaki: A Linguistic History is the most
comprehensive study yet done of Swahili history through linguistic analysis. It is
an encyclopedic work representing many years of research by the authors and other
scholars, and it focuses particularly on the emergence and evolution of the Swahili
language. The massive and diverse evidence they marshal is, of course, almost
entirely linguistic: as such they discuss four basal parameters of language
relationship and change, namely lexis, morphology, phonology and tone. (The last
two are treated together, and G. Philippson reviews the latter.)