Phuthi language

language
name=Phuthi
nativename=Síphùthì
states=Lesotho, South Africa
region=Southern Africa
speakers=around 20,000
familycolor=Niger-Congo
fam2=Atlantic-Congo
fam3=Volta-Congo
fam4=Benue-Congo
fam5=Bantoid
fam6=Southern Bantoid
fam7=Narrow Bantu
fam8=Central
fam9=S
fam10=S40 (Nguni)
iso2=bnt|iso3=unassigned

Phuthi ("Síphùthì") [The second and third vowels in this word "Síphùthì" are in fact both superclose. In the adapted IPA needed to represent Sotho vowels, subscript commas are used for transcribing superclose vowels. Such superclose vowels would be represented in the same way in the phonetic transcription of Phuthi (but are given as < î û > in the proposed Phuthi orthography).] is a Nguni Bantu language spoken in southern Lesotho and areas in South Africa adjacent to the same border [Basic historical, linguistic and geographical information about Phuthi is found in the Donnelly (1999) reference.] . The closest substantial living relative of Phuthi is Swati (or "Siswati"), spoken in Swaziland and the Mpumalanga province of South Africa. Although there is no contemporary sociocultural or political contact, Phuthi is linguistically part of a historic dialect continuum with Swati. Phuthi is heavily influenced by the surrounding Sotho and Xhosa languages, but retains a distinct core of lexicon and grammar not found in either Xhosa or Sotho, and found only partly in Swati to the north.

The documentary origins of Phuthi can be traced to Bourquin (1927), but in other oblique references nearly 200 years from the present (Ellenberger 1912). Until recently, the language has been very poorly documented with respect to its linguistic properties. The only significant earlier study (but with very uneven data, and limited coherent linguistic assumptions) is Mzamane (1949).

Geography and demography

It has been estimated that around 20 000 people in South Africa and Lesotho use Phuthi as their home language, but the actual figures could be much higher. No census data on Phuthi-speakers is available from either South Africa or Lesotho.

Phuthi is spoken in dozens (perhaps many dozens) of scattered communities in the border areas between where the far northern Eastern Cape meets Lesotho: from Herschel northwards and eastwards, and in the Matatiele area of the northeastern Transkei; and throughout southern Lesotho, from Quthing in the southwest, through regions south and east of Mount Moorosi, to mountain villages west and north of Qacha (Qacha's Nek).

Within Phuthi, there are at least two dialect areas, based on linguistic criteria: Mpapa/Daliwe vs. all other areas. This taxonomy is based on a single (but very salient) phonological criterion (presence/absence of secondary labialisation). Mpapa and Daliwe (Sotho "Taleoe" [taliwe] ) are villages in southern Lesotho, southeast of Mount Moorosi, on the dust road leading to Tosing, then on to Mafura (itself a Phuthi-speaking village), and finally Mpapa/Daliwe. Other Phuthi-speaking areas (all given in Lesotho Sotho orthography) include Makoloane [makolwani] and Mosuoe [musuwe] , near Quthing, in south-western Lesotho; Seqoto [siǃɔtɔ] (Xhosa "Zingxondo", Phuthi "Sigxodo" [sigǁɔdɔ] ); Makoae [makwai] (Phuthi "Magwayi") further to the east; and a number of villages north and west of Qacha's Nek. (Qacha is the main southeastern town in Lesotho, in the Qacha's Nek District). Phuthi-speaking diaspora (that is, heritage) areas include the far northern Transkei villages of Gcina [gǀina] (on the road to the Tele Bridge border post) and Mfingci [mfiŋǀi] (across the Tele River, opposite Sigxodo, approximately).

Political history

The most famous Phuthi leader in the historical record was the powerful Chief Moorosi (born in 1795), who died in unclear circumstances on Mount Moorosi (Sotho "Thaba Moorosi") in 1879, after a protracted nine-month siege by the British, 'Boers' (i.e. Afrikaner) and Basotho forces (including the military participation of the Cape Mounted Riflemen). This siege is often referred to as "Moorosi's Rebellion". The issue that triggered the siege was alleged livestock theft in the Herschel area. In the aftermath of the siege, Phuthi people dispersed widely over what is contemporary southern Lesotho and the northern Transkei region, in order to escape capture by the colonial powers. It is for this reason, it has been hypothesised, that Phuthi villages (including Mpapa, Daliwe, Hlaela, Mosifa and Mafura -- all to the east of Mount Moorosi, in Lesotho) are typically found in such topographically mountainous regions, accessible only with great difficulty to outsiders).

After the siege of "Moorosi's rebellion", many Phuthi people were captured, and forced into building the bridge (now, the old bridge) at Aliwal North that crosses the Senqu (Orange River). Prior to 1879, Moorosi had been regarded as a very threatening competitor to commonly acknowledged father of the Lesotho nation, Chief Moshoeshoe I. Even though currently represented to some extent in the Lesotho government in Maseru, subsequent to the 1879 uprising, the Phuthi people essentially fade from modern Lesotho and Eastern Cape history.

Classification

Phuthi is a Bantu language, clearly within the southeastern Zone S (cf. Guthrie 1967-1971). But within southern Africa Phuthi is viewed ambivalently as being either a Nguni or a Sotho-Tswana language, given the very high level of hybridity displayed at all subsystems of the grammar (lexicon, phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax).

But Phuthi is genetically&mdash;along with Zulu, Xhosa, Ndebele and Swati&mdash;certainly a Nguni language. Thus, it should be numbered in the S.40 group within Zone S, following Guthrie's classification. Further, given the range of lexical, phonological and even low-level phonetic effects that appear to be shared almost exclusively with Swati, Phuthi can be classified uncontroversially as a Tekela Nguni language, that is, in the subset of Nguni that includes Swati, some versions of Southern Ndebele, and the Eastern Cape remnant languages, Bhaca and Hlubi.

The standard claim (e.g. Mzamane 1949) that Phuthi displays very heavy contact and (anti-Nguni) levelling affects from its long cohabitation with Sotho (for a period perhaps in excess of three centuries) is confirmed in the contemporary lexicon and morphology. There is, for example, a very high level of 'lexical doublets' for many items, for many speakers. There are also regional effects: the Mpapa Phuthi dialect (the only one to retain labialised coronal stops) leans much more heavily towards Sotho lexicon and morphology (and even phonology), whereas the Sigxodo dialect leans more towards Xhosa lexicon and morphology (and even phonology).

Phonology and morphology

Sustained field work in 1994/1995 among speech communities in Sigxodo and Mpapa (southern Lesotho) resulted in the discovery of a surprisingly wide range of phonological and morphological phenomena (including the nine that follow here), aspects of which are unique to Phuthi (within all of the southern Bantu region).

Click consonants

Phuthi has a system of click consonants, typical for nearly all Nguni, at the three common articulation points: dental, alveolar and alveolateral. But the range of click release types, or 'accompaniments' is relatively impoverished, with only four: plain, aspirated, voiced, nasalised). Swati, by comparison, has essentially only one click type (dental [|] ), but five (or even six) release types. The reduced click range in Phuthi is partly related to the complete phonological absence of prenasalised consonant NC sequences.

Vowel harmony

Two vowel harmony patterns propagate in opposite directions: perseverative superclose vowel height harmony (left-to-right); and anticipatory ATR/RTR tenseness harmony, invoking mid vowels [e o ɛ ɔ] (right-to-left). In the first, 'supercloseness'&mdash;also a Sotho vocalic property&mdash;in root-final position triggers suffix vowels of the same supercloseness value. In the second, all mid vowels uninterruptedly adjacent to the right edge of a phonological word are lax ( [RTR] ); all other mid vowels are tense ( [ATR] ).

Vowel imbrication

Vowel imbrication is the vowel harmony-like morphophonological phenomenon found in many Bantu languages. Vowel imbrication in two-syllable verb roots is effectively fully productive in Phuthi, that is, "-CaC-a" verb stems become "-CeC-e" in the perfective aspect (or 'perfect tense').

Labialisation

Labialised coronal consonants [tf tfw dv dvw] , that is, consonants with distinct heterorganic (fricated) secondary articulation, generally found to be exceedingly rare in Bantu languages).

Tone

Either of two surface tone distinctions, H (high) or L (low), is possible for each syllable (and in certain limited cases rising (LH) and falling (HL) tones are possible too). There is a subtype within the L tone category: when a syllable is 'depressed' (that is, from a depressor consonant in the onset position, or a morphologically or lexically imposed depression feature in the syllabic nucleus), the syllable is produced phonetically at a lower pitch. This system of tone depression is phonologically regular (that is, the product of a small number of phonological parameters), but is highly complex, interacting extensively with the morphology (and to some extent with the lexicon). Phonologically, Phuthi is argued to display a three-way High/Low/toneless distinction. Like all Nguni languages, Phuthi displays phonetically rising and falling syllables, always related to the position of a depressed syllabic nucleus.

Depressed consonants

In line with a number of southern Bantu languages (including all Nguni, Venda, Tsonga and Shona), and also all Khoisan languages of southwestern Africa), a significant subset of the consonants in Phuthi are 'depressors' (or 'breathy voiced'). These consonants are so named because they have a consistent depression effect on the pitch of an immediately successive H (high) tone. In addition, these consonants produce complex non-local phonological tone-depression effects. Swati and Phuthi have similar properties in this respect, except that the parameters of the Phuthi depression effects are significantly more complex than those documented thus far for Swati.

Tone/voice interaction

Significantly complex tone/voice interactions have been identified in Phuthi. This phenomenon results in what is analysed at one level as massive and sustained violations of locality requirements on a H tone domain arising from a single H tone source, e.g. surface configurations of the type HLH (in fact H L* H) are possible where all H syllables emanate from a single underlying H source, given at least one L syllable being depressed. Such tone/voice configurations lead to grave problems for any theoretical phonology that seeks to be maximally constrained in its architecture and operations.

The last two phenomena are non-tonal suprasegmental properties which each take on an additional morphological function in Phuthi:

Morphological use of vowel height

The 'supercloseness' property also active in the first vowel harmony type (above) is active in at least one paradigm of the Phuthi morphological system (the axiomatic negative polarity of the copula: "There is no..."). A morphological use for a vocalic property (here: supercloseness) does not appear to be recorded elsewhere for a Bantu language.

Morphological use of breathy voice/depression

The vocalic property breathy voice/depression is separated from the set of consonants that typically induces it, and is used grammatically in the morphological copulative &mdash; similar to the Swati copula &mdash; and elsewhere in the grammar too (e.g. in associative prefixes formed from 'weak' class noun prefixes 1,3,4,6,9).

Phrases

:Ngivisisa siKguwa kanci tejhe - I understand a little English:Ngiyakutshadza - I love you:Ngiyalitshadza likhaya lakho lelitjha - I love your new home:Ngiyatitshadza tijha takho letitjha - I like your new dogs:Ngiyatitshadza titfoga takho letitjha - I like your new sticks

Alphabet

The Phuthi alphabet:

;vowels
* a e i o u;consonants
* b bh d dl dlh dv dz f g h hl j jh k kg kh l m n p ph s t tf th tj tjh ts tsh v w y z;clicks and click combinations
*plain: c q x
*aspirated: ch qh xh
*voiced: gc gq gx
*nasalized: nc nq nx

Bibliography

*Bourquin, Walther (1927) 'Die Sprache der Phuthi'. "Festschrift Meinhof: Sprachwissenschaftliche und andere Studien", 279-287. Hamburg: Kommissionsverlag von L. Friederichsen & Co.
*Donnelly, Simon (1997) 'Aspects of Tone and Voice in Phuthi'. (MS.) U. Illinois PhD dissertation.
*Donnelly, Simon (1999) 'Southern Tekela is alive: reintroducing the Phuthi language'. In K. McKormick & R. Mesthrie (eds.), "International Journal of the Sociology of Language" 136: 97-120.
*Ellenberger, David-Frédéric. (1912) "History of the Basuto, Ancient and Modern". Transl. into English by J.C. Macgregor. (1992 reprint of 1912 ed.). Morija, Lesotho: Morija Museum & Archives.
*Guthrie, Malcolm. (1967-1971) "Comparative Bantu: An Introduction to the Comparative Linguistics and Prehistory of the Bantu Languages." (Volumes 1-4). Farnborough: Gregg International.
*Msimang, Christian T. (1989) 'Some Phonological Aspects of the Tekela Nguni Languages'. Doctoral dissertation, University of South Africa, Pretoria.
*Mzamane, Godfrey I. M. (1949) 'A concise treatment on Phuthi with special reference to its relationship with Nguni and Sotho'. "Fort Hare Papers" 1.4: 120-249. Fort Hare: The Fort Hare University Press.

Notes

External links

*http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=ssw:Note: the Ethnologue entry is currently inaccurate. Phuthi is no longer coherently in any obvious sort of heteronomous dialect relationship to Swati (several hundred kilometres separate the two language territories; Phuthi-speakers have no conscious awareness of any relationship to Swati). Nevertheless, there are very significant linguistic elements at all levels of the grammar, not least the lexicon, that tie Phuthi closely to Swati historically, in fact, as the closest living relative of Swati.