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Plant Names in the Tanzanian Bantu Language Vidunda: Structure and (Some) Etymology Karsten Legère University of Gothenburg

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Plant Names in the Tanzanian Bantu Language Vidunda: Structure and (Some) Etymology Karsten Legère University of Gothenburg Plant Names in the Tanzanian Bantu Language Vidunda: Structure and (Some) Etymology Karsten Legère University of Gothenburg 1. Background Vidunda (autonym: Chividunda) is a small Bantu language which in Guthrie’s referential classification is identified as G38 (Guthrie 1970). This language was selected for a project which dealt with wild plant names and uses. The research project “Vilda växter i bantuspråk – namn och användning: en lingvistisk, kognitiv, folktaxonomisk och etnobotanisk jämförelse” (Wild plants in Bantu languages – names and uses: a linguistic, cognitive, folktaxonomic and ethnobotanial comparison, co-researcher Christina Thornell) was approved and funded for three years (2003-2005) by the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation.1 Several reasons triggered the decision to work on Vidunda such as a) Vidunda like many other Tanzanian languages was assumed to be potentially endangered given the estimated below 20,000 speaker number (based on the 1967 population census [Tanzania 1971] and tendencies of ethnic growth and contraction).2 b) Prior to the project Vidunda has not been studied by linguists.3 It is almost totally undocumented.4 c) Together with Bernd Heine the author of this paper had earlier worked on Swahili plant names. It turned out that this focus has much to offer for a linguist with regard to e.g. noun structure, noun classes and distribution, etymology and conceptualization. It was felt that the data for the lingua franca Swahili should be supplemented by material from another Bantu language which is spoken up-country in a remote area, thus expecting a rather low impact of Swahili. In the course of the project work a total of approximately 650 plant names and specimens (for botanical identification) was collected. It is not possible to indicate the exact number of these lexical items, since varieties exist for a couple of plant names. The main resource persons were Peter Mkwan’hembo and Simon Maganga. At a later stage Nestorius Nikasi and Yusti Mayuga (all residents of Vidunda village) joined the research team. All were committed field assistants who personally identified themselves with the complex task of moving around searching for plants. This was a time- 1 The author gratefully acknowledges the generous support for the project. University of Dar es Salaam kindly issued the research permit AB3/3(B) for conducting field research in Vidunda Ward (Kilosa District, Morogoro Region) which is the Vidunda core area. 2 See more on this issue in Legère (1992, 2002). 3 There is an end-19th century wordlist which includes 210 lexical items, clauses and sentences (although the title claims to present 250 entries) published by the lay missionary Last. The author of this Vidunda list and Last’s resource person for the language was Kitindi, a hunter – Ziráha by birth (speaking a Sagala dialect, Last 1885:16). Despite various limitations and inconsistencies that are the result of the then state of knowledge for reducing languages to writing the material is quite reliable. 4 So far a list of plant names collected by Frank Mbago (a botanist of the University of Dar es Salaam) among Vidunda people was traced (Mbago 2002). However, the lexical items were mostly Swahili names hence are irrelevant as a direct source of reference. Nevertheless, this list was thoroughly discussed with L1 speakers for identifying appropriate Vidunda equivalents of the species, subsequently revised and included in the author’s data file which was established during the project period. © 2009 Karsten Legère. Selected Proceedings of the 38th Annual Conference on African Linguistics, ed. Masangu Matondo et al., 217-228. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project. 218 consuming job, since extensive farming in the area has contributed towards reducing the forest area to small pockets where the original vegetation still exists. It goes without saying that, as a consequence of this expansion of human activities, biodiversity has been widely affected. Accordingly, the field research was also an important initiative which resulted in establishing an inventory of which plants and names existed at this point in time. In addition, the elicitation of plant names went along with a detailed description (where possible) in Vidunda of how each plant is used.5 The objective of this paper is to present some linguistic aspects of the study on Vidunda plant names. In doing so, the complex character of the elicited data will be demonstrated. The data analysis which follows addresses various ways of naming plants in Vidunda ranging from single lexemes to complex plant names. The paper is inter alia a specific contribution to the academic discourse on nominal morphology and noun classes in Bantu languages, semantics of the latter as well as etymology and conceptualization. 2. The structure As typical for the Bantu languages, Vidunda plant names as nouns whether derived or not, compounds or nouns as headwords in an adnominal phrase display the characteristic structure: Noun class prefix (NCP) + Noun stem (NS)6 Accordingly, the noun consists of a specific noun class prefix which is either singular or plural (exceptions permitted) and the noun stem. Here are some examples which represent various types of plant names identified in Vidunda; the NCP is underlined on the left, the noun stem appears on the right separated by a hyphen from the NCP: i-dzoba (Acacia robusta) -- simple lexeme singular, non-derived; mi-kangadzi (Khaya anthotheca) -- complex lexeme plural, derived from the verb stem -kangadza ‘be strong’; i-chemandzuchi (Gloriosa simplex) -- compound, compound members are the verb stem -chema ‘call’ and ndzuchi ‘bee(s)’; n-'hosa n'hulu (Plumbago zeylanica) -- single lexeme as headword in an attributive phrase with the class 9/10 adjective n’hulu < --kulu ‘big, strong, tall’, where the adjective stem is modified by voiceless nasal formation;7 lw-enya lwa kumuhulo (Cissus rubiginosa) -- single lexeme as headword in an adnominal phrase with the class 11 concord morpheme lu- and the associative -a ‘of’ and the locative ku-muhulo ‘in forest’ meaning ‘wild’. As already partly exemplified above, the Vidunda plant names may be divided as follows: 5 For details of the project see Legère, Mkwan’hembo and Maganga (2004) which also includes orthography matters. 6 “Stem” understood in the sense defined by Brinton and Traugott (2005:34) as “a lexical form minus inflectional morphology”. 7 For a description of voiceless nasal formation which is peculiar to class 9/10 in Bantu languages in general and neighboring Kagulu see Petzell (2007: 33-34). 219 plant names simple lexemes complex lexemes (non derived) (derived) original Vidunda stem stem shared with Swahili Figure 1: Structure and origin of Vidunda plant names In addition, there are also complex plant names which are either the result of compounding or nouns which are modified by an adnominal expression. This is summarized in the following figure: complex plant names head nouns + compounds adnominal modifiers Figure 2: Complex plant names The following part of the paper comments in more detail on the noun structure. 2.1. The noun class prefix (NCP) The NCP is responsible for the noun class allocation of the plant name. In the project the following NCPs were identified as being relevant in constituting plant names: Class 3 – m- (mw-),8 such as in msolo (Pseudolachnostylis maprouneifolia) and mwanakogose (Emilia coccinea); Class 4 - mi- (my-),9 e.g. mitunguludza (Cussonia spicata), myeledza (Elephantopus scaber); Class 5 – i-, e.g. itotoka (Monechma debile); Class 5a – li-, e.g. lin'hi (Cyperus articulatus); Class 7 – chi-, e.g. chidago (Cyperus rotundus); Class 8 – vi-, e.g. vidzadzabi (Cayratia gracilis); Class 9 and 10 – N-, e.g. n'hosa (Ageratum conyzoides); Class 11 – lu- (lw-)8, e.g. lwenya (Hyptis suaveolensis).10 The NCPs that were listed above constitute the following singular-plural pairs (also called genders): 8 The graph w representing the non-syllabic /u/. 9 The graph y representing the non-syllabic /i/. 10 No plant name evidence for the lu-prefix could be found. But its existence is confirmed by e.g. the folk taxonomic term ludzabi ‘creeper, liana’ which otherwise means ‘rope’. 220 3/4 mhaka – mihaka (Solanum nigrum), 5/4 itagata - mitagata (Psorospermum febrifugum), 5a/4 lin'hi – min’hi (Cyperus articulatus), 7/8 chinonile – vinonile (Oxalis corniculata), 9/10 mp'hudza – mp'hudza11 (Cucurbita maxima), 9/4 n'halu – mitalu12 (Hyparrhenia filipendula), 11(/10 or 4) lwenya (Hyptis suaveolensis) – for this plant name no morphologically marked plural was traced.13 The overwhelming majority of the plant names are allocated to class 5 (NCP i-). It is fascinating to observe that, as indicated above, the plural NCP is that of class 4. This gender is only reported for Giryama (E 72a) for the augmentative 5a, (see Guthrie 1970:47)14 and is, to the best of our knowledge, not found elsewhere in other Bantu languages, where in most cases class 3/4 pairs are the rule. Similarly, NCP 5 normally alternates with NCP 6, mainly for naming fruits, but also for plants. However, in Vidunda the pair NCP 5/6 is only relevant for names of fruits, where the singular form overlaps with that of plants. In addition, even for fruits and seeds a plural version which uses NCP 4 is recorded. However, in such a singular/plural pairing NCP 4 has a negative connotation implying that the fruits or seeds are not valuable, held in low esteem or likewise. In addition to NCP 5, there is another NCP in this class, i.e. NCP variant 5a li-. This peculiar NCP creates augmentatives, thus emphasizing bigness as distinct from the default NCP 5. Its plural partner is again NCP4, as already mentioned above. In the case of vowel initial stems this NCP 5a seems to be the rule. Excluding the specific class 5(a)/4 pairing, the other noun class pairs/genders display regularities and patterns that are characteristic of the Bantu languages.15 Thus, the few lexical items as plant names which belong to class 7/8 reflect smallness that inter alia is a peculiar semantic attribute of this class.
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