Sandawe is a tonal language spoken in the Dodoma region of Tanzania. Reported speaker numbers vary between 30 000 (Tucker, 1977) and 70 000 (SIL/Ethnologue 1987). Sandawe is classified as a Khoisan language by Greenberg (1976). This classification is motivated by the presence of clicks in the language and by several morphological similarities. A more recent discussion of Sandawe's linguistic classification can be found in Sands (1998). Tone refers to the use of pitch in language to distinguish words. ... Dodoma, population 324,347 (2002 census), is the official capital of Tanzania and also the capital of the Dodomo region. ... Map showing the distribution of the Khoi-San languages. ... Greenberg is the last name of a number of people: Arnold C. Greenberg (president of Coleco in 1978, philanthropist in 2001) Bernard Greenberg (programmer: Emacs#Emacs History) Clement Greenberg (early-20th-century critic) Evan G. Greenberg (president and CEO of ACE Limited) Gerald B. Greenberg (film editor: Academy Award for...

SIL International began work on Sandawe in 1996 and to date (2004), Daniel and Elisabeth Hunziker and Helen Eaton continue to work on the analysis of the language. They have so far produced a phonological description, a dialect survey report and several papers on aspects of grammar. Sandawe is also currently (as of 2004) studied by Sander Steeman of Leiden University.

Sounds

Vowels

Sandawe has five vowel qualities:

All five vowel qualities may be found as short oral, long oral and long nasal vowels. There are therefore fifteen vowel phonemes. In word-final position, devoiced u and i vowels occur frequently.

Consonants

Non-click consonants

[not written yet]

Clicks

(source: De Voogt 1992:53,54)

Grammar

Pronouns

Syllable structure

Sandawe syllables are usually of the form CV; in monosyllabic words, word-final nasals are not uncommon, CV(N). Sometimes other consonants are found in word-final position, but this is most probably the result of deletion of word-final voiceless vowels. A syllabic nasal m is found in Swahili loanwords. The most common word structure is disyllabic with or without long vowels (CV(:)CV(:)), according to De Voogt (1992). Swahili (also called Kiswahili; see Kiswahili for a discussion of the nomenclature) is an agglutinative Bantu language widely spoken in East Africa. ...

Nouns

A noun consists generally of a stem and a suffix which indicates gender (masculine, feminine, neuter) and number (singular, plural).

[suffixes to be added]

Adjectives

Adjectival concepts are mostly expressed as verbs in Sandawe according to Kagawe (1993:ix).

Syntax

Basic word order in Sandawe is SOV according to De Voogt (1992). However, word order in the Sandawe sentence is very flexible due to the presence of several 'subject identification strategies'.

Sample sentence (mid tones are not marked):

úte-s kx'aré-és hàʔ!à
yesterday-I boy-I called
Yesterday I called a boy
(source: De Voogt 1992:19 adapted from Tucker 1977)

Tone

Elderkin (1989) analyzes Sandawe as having two level tones (High, Low) and two contour tones (Falling, Rising). His thesis considers the behavior of tone at word-, sentence- and discourse-level. De Voogt (1992) and Kagaya (1993) list three level tones (High, Mid, Low) and two contour tones (Falling, Rising).

Classification

Greenberg (1976) gives the following arguments for its classification as Khoisan, as well as about 50 claimed Sandawe-Khoisan vocabulary similarities:

• Personal pronouns: tsi "I" (cf. Hottentot, Naron ti, Hietshware či; sa "she" (cf. Hottentot -s, Naron -sa); e "it" (Hottentot -i nominative, -e accusative), ha-we "he" (cf. Naron xa-ba); ha-su, he-su "she" (cf. Naron xa-sa)
• Demonstratives: ha "that" (cf. /Xam, Batwa ha, Naron xa, Hietshware ho); he "this" (Korana he); na "there" (common Southern Bushman, Hottentot //na); ne "here" (Hottentot ne)
• Plural suffixes: -si feminine plural (Naron -si, Hottentot -ti, Northern Bushman, /Auni -si common plural); -ko masculine plural (Hottentot -ku, /Xam -gu personal plural)
• Adjective formant -se (cf. Auen -si, Hottentot -se, Naron -sə.)
• Verbal suffixes: reciprocal -ki (cf. Naron, Hottentot -ku)

However, this classification is regarded with scepticism by many linguists, and a common ancestor of Sandawe and Khoisan has yet to be reconstructed. Hietshware is a Khoisan language of Botswana and Zimbabwe. ... /Xam is an extinct Khoisan language of South Africa, part of the !Kwi language group. ... Korana is an endangered or even extinct Khoisan language of South Africa. ... Auen may refer to any of several southern African Khoisan languages: =/Kxau//ein language Akhoe language This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...

Further reading

References

• Dobashi, Yoshihito (2001) 'Agreement and Word Order in Sandawe' In Cornell Working Papers in Linguistics, 2001, 18, pp 57-74.
• Eaton, Helen C. (2002) 'A Grammar of Focus in Sandawe' (Unpublished Ph.D thesis, University of Reading).
• Elderkin, Edward D. (1989) 'The Significance and Origin of the Use of Pitch in Sandawe' (Unpublished D.Phil thesis, University of York).
• Kagaya, Ryohei (1993) 'A Classified Vocabulary of The Sandawe Language', Asian & African Lexicon vol 26. Tokyo: Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa (ILCAA).
• Sands, Bonny E. (1998) 'Eastern and Southern African Khoisan: evaluating claims of distant linguistic relationships.' Quellen zur Khoisan-Forschung 14. Köln: Köppe.
• Voogt, A.J. de (1992) Some phonetic aspects of Hatsa and Sandawe clicks (Unpublished MA thesis in African Linguistics, Leiden University).

See also

• Hadza language, Khoisan languages, Joseph Greenberg

Hadza is a language of Tanzania. ... Map showing the distribution of the Khoi-San languages. ... Joseph Greenberg may refer to one of The linguist Joseph H. Greenberg The director of Yiddish-language films, better known as Joseph Green This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...

External links

• UCLA Phonetics archive of Sandawe wordlists and accompanying soundfiles (http://archive.phonetics.ucla.edu/Language/SBR/SBR.html)
• Ethnologue Report for Sandawe (http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=SBR)
• SIL International (http://www.sil.org)
• Helen Eaton (http://www.drhelenipresume.com) More information on SIL International's work on Sandawe, with papers for downloading.