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Aka As a Contact Language: Sociolinguistic AKA AS A CONTACT LANGUAGE: SOCIOLINGUISTIC AND GRAMMATICAL EVIDENCE The members of the Committee approve the masters thesis of Daniel Joseph Duke Donald A. Burquest _____________________________________ Supervising Professor Thomas N. Headland _____________________________________ Carol V. McKinney _____________________________________ Copyright © by Daniel Joseph Duke 2001 All Rights Reserved To the Bayaka people and their friends may our circle be unbroken AKA AS A CONTACT LANGUAGE: SOCIOLINGUISTIC AND GRAMMATICAL EVIDENCE by DANIEL JOSEPH DUKE Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Arlington in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS IN LINGUISTICS THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT ARLINGTON August 2001 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The road to finishing this thesis has been a long one, and many people helped me keep going to the end. Some special people helped carry the burden, and some nearly had to carry me. I want to thank everyone who had a part in seeing the work through. Thanks to family and friends who supported and encouraged me. There are some special friends who were very directly involved with the writing of the thesis, and who I’d like to thank particularly. My committee consisted of Dr. Donald A. Burquest, Dr. Thomas N. Headland, and Dr. Carol V. McKinney. Each member put in a tremendous amount of time and effort into the redaction of the text, and each one contributed greatly from his or her specialization: Dr. Burquest in linguistics and African languages, Dr. McKinney in anthropology and African languages, and Dr. Headland in anthropology and hunter-gatherers. The thesis could not have been as ambitious as it was without the dedicated work and wide area or expertise these scholars brought into it. It was an honor for me to work with them. My colleagues in Central Africa deserve special mention here, because this thesis grew out of our work together. Thanks to my survey partners Mikael Bister and Elysée Moehama. Thanks especially to the members of the Beka project: Dominique Kosseké, Saint-Jérôme Sitamon, François Ndinga, and Bartélémy Kombo, along with our linguistic consultant Constance Kutsch Lojenga. Thanks to our administrators Juerg Stalder and Dr. Mark Karan. And on that line, thanks to the Cameroon branch of SIL International for sending me on loan me to CAR in the first place, and for giving me extra time to work on the thesis. v A special thanks to the people who helped developed the ideas which led to the thesis. My professors at UT Arlington deserve much thanks: Dr. David Silva for teaching me phonology, and Dr. Susan Herring for teaching me Functional/Typological Grammar. They will recognize many of my earlier attempts at analysis in this thesis. A special “thank you” goes to Dr. Mary Morgan, who helped me develop the original ideas for the sociolinguistic analysis. Thank you to the Indiana University Linguistics Department for getting me started originally in linguistics, and for the years of encouragement since then. Many friends have put themselves out to help me write this thesis. Thanks to Charlyn Teddar for her work in translating some texts for me. Thanks to Jana Keilholtz for proofreading the thesis and offering many helpful changes. Thanks to Dick Johnson, Dave Irwin, and Kris Roth for their encouragement. Any faults remaining in the thesis are the sole responsibility of the author, who is very much indebted to everyone who made this work possible. April 5, 2001 vi ABSTRACT AKA AS A CONTACT LANGUAGE: SOCIOLINGUISTIC AND GRAMMATICAL EVIDENCE Publication No. _____ Daniel Joseph Duke, M.A. The University of Texas at Arlington, 2001 Supervising Professor: Donald A. Burquest This thesis presents a discussion of the typological classification and origins of the languages spoken by Central African Pygmies. It focuses on Aka, the language of the Bayaka Pygmies in Central African Republic (C.A.R.) and Congo-Brazzaville. The Aka language is shown to have arisen out of language contact between pygmy hunter-gatherers and the village agriculturalists with whom they trade. Typologically, Aka is a mixed language, with a Bantu structure but having a significant lexical and grammatical substratum that appears to be the remnant of an ancient pygmy language. The current language use patterns of the Bayaka and their villager patrons in the Lobaye region of C.A.R. are documented in detail. These patterns are analyzed and the analysis is applied to shed light on what language contact situation would have given rise to Aka. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ....................................................................................... v ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................. vii LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................. xii LIST OF TABLES .................................................................................................. xiii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ................................................................................. xv Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................... 1 1.1 Hypothesis ........................................................................................... 1 1.2 African Pygmies .................................................................................. 4 1.3 Demography ........................................................................................ 6 1.4 History ................................................................................................. 8 1.5 Language identification ...................................................................... 9 1.5.1 Designation ......................................................................... 9 1.5.2 Classification ...................................................................... 11 1.6 Research and data .............................................................................. 13 1.6.1 Language use data .............................................................. 13 1.6.2 Language data .................................................................... 17 1.7 Conclusion ......................................................................................... 18 2. LITERATURE REVIEW ............................................................................... 19 2.1 General Works ................................................................................... 19 2.2 Anthropological research ................................................................... 21 2.3 Ethnomusicology ............................................................................... 22 viii 2.4 Linguistic Research ............................................................................ 23 2.4.1 SELAF fieldwork ................................................................ 23 2.4.2 SIL fieldwork ...................................................................... 25 2.4.3 Research among the Bayaka of Congo ............................... 26 2.4.4 Fieldwork among other pygmy groups ............................... 26 2.4.5 Conclusion .......................................................................... 28 2.5 Theoretical Background ..................................................................... 29 2.5.1 Introduction ........................................................................ 29 2.5.2 The "original pygmy language" controversy ..................... 29 2.5.3 The "mixed language" controversy .................................... 32 2.6 Conclusion ......................................................................................... 41 3. LINGUISTIC EVIDENCE ............................................................................. 42 3.1 Introduction ........................................................................................ 42 3.1.1 Relevance to hypothesis ...................................................... 42 3.1.2 Previous claims of Bahuchet and Thomas .......................... 44 3.1.3 Data and methodology ........................................................ 46 3.2 Bantu elements ................................................................................... 49 3.2.1 Overview ............................................................................ 49 3.2.2 Phonology .......................................................................... 59 3.2.3 Noun class system .............................................................. 70 3.2.4 Conclusions ........................................................................ 74 3.3 *Baakaa elements .............................................................................. 74 3.3.1 Overview ............................................................................ 74 3.3.2 Demonstratives .................................................................. 75 3.3.3 Verbal affixes ..................................................................... 79 ix 3.3.4 Conclusions ........................................................................ 80 3.4 Conclusions ....................................................................................... 81 4. SOCIOLINGUISTIC EVIDENCE ................................................................. 82 4.1 Introduction ...................................................................................... 82 4.2 Bayaka language use .......................................................................
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