Re: Khoisan (was: Basque & Katzner's Languages of the World)

In a message dated 11/17/01 3:24:28 PM, Matthew.Pearson@DIRECTORY.REED.EDU
writes:

>--- You wrote:
>Katzner doesn't use "Bushman" to refer to the whole family - he does in
>fact
>call the family Khoisan. Within that family, he lists a few languages:
>Bushman, Hottentot, Sandawe, Hatsa (Hadzapi).
>--- end of quote ---
>
>Incidentally, a colleague of mine at UCLA wrote her dissertation about
>the historical reconstruction of the Khoisan family. On the basis of detailed
>lexical and grammatical comparison, she makes the case that Hadza and Sandawe
>(which are spoken in Tanzania) don't belong to the Khoisan family at
all--that
>they're completely unrelated to the Hottentot/Bushman languages of southern
>Africa. Apparently the only reason people thought that Hadza and Sandawe
>were Khoisan languages was the fact that they have click sounds, which
>are otherwise so rare.
Interesting ... does she still view Hadza and Sandawe as related to each
other? This reminds me of something I read about certain groups of speakers
of click languages being very genetically far apart (I don't remember the
source unfortunately), and the whole idea that language along with humans
originated around there, and that the clicks in Khoisan languages must be
survivals from the first language/s, since we've never known them to arise in
a preexisting language (aside from borrowing). (I don't know how correct all
that is, BTW.)

>Matt.
>
>Matthew Pearson
>Department of Linguistics
>Reed College
>3203 SE Woodstock Blvd
>Portland, OR 97202
>503 771 1112 x 7618
Josh Roth
http://members.aol.com/fuscian/eloshtan.html