Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1915 edition. Excerpt: ...but I may mention one point which is perhaps relevant--in Ewe certain onomatopoetic words are given the low tone if they refer to large objects and the high if they denote small ones, e.g. gbli and goli=" round." (See Westermann, Ewe-Grammatik, p. 44.) Similarly, in telling fairy-tales, we usually speak of ogres in a deep and small animals in a high voice. Here, then, we find an indisputable connection between pitch and meaning. Of course it is based on the fact that creatures of great size have deep voices, small ones high voices, corresponding to the size of their vocal chords. I have placed before you the two distinct types of language, each having its own peculiar character. But as groups of languages belonging to these distinct types are spoken side by side in Africa, a mixture was inevitable, and so we find that pitch accent has its place in the Bantu languages along with the stress accent. It is most markedly present in those languages which, like Duala, impinge on the Sudan area, it is far less so in those subjected to Hamitic or Semitic influences. In Swahili, the "tones" have quite disappeared. In Hottentot, which we believe to be a Hamitic language pervaded by a strong Bushman element, they exist side by side with the stress accent. You will very probably ask: "Who was the discoverer of these novel and very complicated phenomena?" In answer to this I must refer once more to my old friends the missionaries. In 1857, the missionary Schlegel published his Key to the Ewe Language,1 in which, already, the " tones " are discussed; and in the same year Wallmann, Inspector of Missions, gave to the world a Nama Grammar, in which he even marked the "tones" by means of musical notes....