PDF hosted at the Radboud Repository of the Radboud University Nijmegen The following full text is a publisher's version. For additional information about this publication click this link. http://hdl.handle.net/2066/147923 Please be advised that this information was generated on 2021-10-06 and may be subject to change. H.C.G. MERKI GANDA CLASSIFICATION An ethno-semantic survey PROMOTOR Prof. Dr. L.F. Triebels GANDA CLASSIFICATION An ethno-semantic survey PROEFSCHRIFT ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor in de sociale wetenschappen aan de Katholieke Universiteit te Nijmegen, op gezag van de rector magnificus Prof. Dr. P.G.A.B. Wijdeveld, volgens besluit van het college van decanen in het openbaar te verdedigen op donderdag 1 mei 1980 des namiddags om 2 uur precies door HUBERTUS CORNELIS GERARDUS MERKIES geboren te Heerlen Nijmegen 1980 To Inge Typografie: F.M. Peeters-Loeffen en H.Th. Peeters Druk: G. Peeters en B. van Megen TABLE OF CONTENTS PAG PREFACE 1 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS 3 2.1 On the Situation 3 2.2 On Classification 16 2.3 On Language and Speech 35 2.4 On Value-Orientation 52 A SURVEY OF THE CLASSES 67 A SURVEY OF THE FIRST CLASS 75 4.1 Physical Features 79 4.2 Psychic Features 81 4.3 Special Characteristics 83 4.4 Skills 87 4.5 Supernatural Features 91 4.6 Honorific Features 98 4.7 Kinship Features 106 4.8 Features of Place and Origin 110 4.a Body Parts 112 4.b Diseases 114 4.с Animals 118 4.d Plants 121 4.e Features of Important Events 122 4.f Features of Nature 124 4.g Features of Artifact and Habitat 125 A SURVEY OF THE SECOND CLASS 127 5.1 Functional Aspects of Trees 130 5.2 Small Vegetation 139 5.3 Utensils made of Wood 141 5.4 Utensils made of Iron 143 5.a Persons 144 5.b Parts of the Body 145 5.с Sounds and Ailments 147 5.d Quantity 148 5.e Abstracta 149 5.f Land, Water, Winds 151 5.g Animals 152 5.h Rest-Group 153 5.i Plurals 154 PAG A SURVEY OF THE THIRD CLASS 155 6.1 Edible Animals 161 6.2 Non-Edible Animals 162 6.3 Fish 164 6.4 Birds 165 6.5 Fruits and Seeds 166 6.a Fishing and Hunting Terms 167 6.b Persons 168 6.с Parts of the Body 170 6.d Ailments 171 6. Plants 172 6.f Trees 173 6.g Land 174 6.h Weather 175 6.i Abstracta 176 6.к Plurals Only 177 A SURVEY OF THE FOURTH CLASS 179 7.1 Persons 183 7.2 Parts of the Body 184 7.3 Diseases 185 7.4 Abstracta 186 7.5 Vegetation 188 7.6 Animals 191 7.7 Place 193 7.8 Utensils 195 7.9 Plurals 199 A SURVEY OF THE FIFTH CLASS 201 8.1 Animals 203 8.2 Parts of the Body 204 8.3 Fruits and Plants 205 8.4 Abstracta 207 8.5 Places 209 8.6 Utensils 210 8.7 Plural Categories Only 211 8.7a Parts of the Body and Diseases 211 8.7b Abstracta 212 8.7c Vegetation 213 8.7d Food 214 8.7e Rest-Group 215 PAG A SURVEY OF THE SIXTH CLASS 217 9.1 Persons 219 9.2 Parts of the Human Body 220 9.3 Diseases 221 9.4 Speech 222 9.5 Agriculture 223 9.6 Animals 226 9.7 Abstracta 227 9.8 Land 229 9.9 Utensils 230 9.10 Rest-Group 232 A SURVEY OF THE SEVENTH CLASS 233 10.1 Persons 234 10.2 Ailments 235 10.3 Plants 236 10.4 Animals 238 10.5 Ornaments and Utensils 240 10.6 Minute Things 242 10.7 Abstracta 243 10.8 Rest-Group 244 10.9 Plural Categories Only 245 10.9a Parts of the Body 246 10.9b Ailments 247 10.9c Animals 248 10.9d Abstracta 249 A SURVEY OF THE REMAINING CLASSES 251 PLANTAIN CULTIVATION 253 12.1 Class I 259 12.2 Class II 264 12.3 Class III 266 12.4 Class IV 268 12.5 Class V 270 12.6 Class VI 271 12.7 Class VII 272 POST-SCRIPT 273 SAMENVATTING 283 REFERENCES 287 APPENDIX 329 PREFACE The motivation for this study finds its origin as far back as 1958, in the inlands of East-Africa, where I spent a considerable part of my adult life amongst Bantu as well as Nilotic people. There the interest in the inhabitants and their well- being fostered the study of their languages as a necess­ ary tool for a better understanding of their ways and means of life and partly as a means for identification with members of a group. Mastering the language was attempted after a fashion, mostly by way of trial and error, improving a little as the years went by, but never so much as to reach the level of knowledge or proficiency so proverbial with people for whom language is much more than a means of communication only. After a period of acculturation, my task mainly came to be with Bantu-speaking communities and hence the scope of this study. As my vocabulary increased, it was duly coded on paper and after the edition of Snoxall's Luganda Dictionary in 1967, minutely chequed and improved consider­ ably. Thus any omissions, mistakes or faulty descriptions otherwise, are entirely to be credited to my own short­ comings. The entire complicated issue of accentuation and pho­ netics, however important otherwise, have been omitted as being non-relevant for the purpose of this study, as well as other grammatical constructions, apart from the system of nouns. 1 It goes without saying that my gratitude extends to all those people, old and young, who stimulated my effort, who never grew tired nor ever gave up teaching and cor­ recting me, in their pleasant way so fashionable with them. The same applies to those people outside Africa, who pointed out to me, with equal patlece I hope, how the gathered material could be used for further study and understanding. The crux appeared to be a correct marcation of the borders between the disciplines involved, but then a pos­ sible trespass was condoned by Kroeber's remark that: "if linguists are working on higher problems and do not want to be bothered with this rather elementary sort of classi­ fication, that is fair enough. But let them at least occasionally allow their assistants to assemble the data for a competent classification or aid an ethnologist with basic linguistic grounding to go agead with it, since it is so important to students of culture". 1) A.L. Kroeber. "Concluding Review" An appraisal of Anthropology to-day. eds. S. Tax. L.C. Eisely. J. Rouse. Chicago 1953. 2 2. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS 2.1 ON THE SITUATION It Is correct to say that an anthropological study on the basis of linguistic phenomena concerns the rela­ tionship which exists between language and culture, how­ ever vague this statement may be. As early as the begin­ ning of the 17th century, Francis Bacon already main­ tained that conclusions could be drawn about the men­ tality and culture of a group of speakers on the basis of their language, (cf. Wald. 1978:392). Since then the problem of semantic content of lin­ guistic categories has been the object of many studies: cf. Meinhof 1948; Westerman 1935, 1947; Kühler-Meyer 1952, 1956; Manessy 1962, 1965; Alexandre 1953; Boas 1940, 1966; Greenberg 1948, 1955, 1957; Goodenough 1956, 1957; Lévi-Strauss 1958, 1963; Pike 1954, 1960; Firth 1957; Mauss 1923; Sapir 1949, 1964; Whorf 1956, 1964; Hoyer 1953, 1962; Mathiot 1962 and many others. The intention of this paper is not simply to ask whether such relations exist between language and culture, which in fact may be taken for granted, but rather to examine what these relations are and how they can be traced. It seems that interrelations between language and other aspects of culture are so close that hardly any part of the culture of a society can be studied without some re­ ference to the linguistic symbols used in that community . 3 Since the essence of linguistics really lies in its 2 pursuit for meaning, it stands to reason that the more cultural proceedings are refined, the more this will be reflected in linguistic terms, expressed in the precision of statement essential to the systematic nature of lin­ guistics. The language concerned in this paper is Luganda, one of a group of Bantu languages spoken in Uganda. The term Bantu is a generic term for a family of approxi­ mately 200 separate languages, apart from the dialects. (cf. Greenberg 1963; Guthrie 1948, 1967; Fodor 1966; Tucker and Brian 1956, 1966). These Bantu languages and their dialects extend across the greater part of the African Continent. In Uganda, according to the last census taken in 1959, 1) The idea is in terms of Fabre d'Olivet's thesis who thought in an anthropological and not simply in a grammatical way; to him, speech was not a faculty exalted on its own perch, but something to be under­ stood in the light of human behaviour and culture, of which it was a part, specialized but involving no different principle from the rest. The vocal sign (phoneme) was a highly specialized gesture or symbolic act, language a development of total somatic behaviour becoming symbolic and then diverting its symbolism more and more into the vocal channel".