Summary Details
| Query: |
Sum: Etyma
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| Author: | Maria Carlota A | |
| Submitter Email: | click here to access email | |
| Linguistic LingField(s): |
General Linguistics
History of Linguistics |
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| Summary: |
Some days ago I asked about the etyma of "Bantu" and "Benin". I would like to thank: Joaquim Brandao de Carvalho Bart de Boer Keith Battarbee Peter Daniels Laura Downing Ralf Grosserhode Marc Picard Baruch Podolsky George Rebuschi Here, a summary of theirs answers. The word "Bantu" was coined by Wilhelm Bleek. He was the first to see the relationship among those languages, and claimed that in his work Comparative Grammar of South African Languages (1862-1869). "Bantu" is a prototypical form for "people" in Bantu languages. It is as artificial as *ekwos to "horse" in indo-european. It consists of the root -ntu which is the reconstructed form for "person" in Bantu (Swahili has -tu, Gogo has nhu [Gogo doesn't allow nasal-voiceless plosive-sequences]. Nyamwezi has -nhu, Yanzi has -:r and so on and so forth). ba- is a nominal prefix of Class 2 ( ~wa, ba, va- B(voiced bilabial fricative)a in actual languages), which forms the plural of Class 1 (Bantu languages normally have 15-18 different noun-classes in different possible pairings). Concerning to "Benin", I reproduce the quotation sent me by Marc Picard, from Adrian Room's PLACE NAMES OF THE WORLD (Angus & Robertson): > "Before 1975 was *Dahomey*. Present name comes from that of former > Edo-Bini kingdom here, whose territory extended much further than > present state, so that Bini people are more closely connected with > southern *Nigeria*" (1987:44). Linguistically, Bini and Benin are > simply variant names of Edo (cf. Barbara Grimes' ETHNOLOGUE). ________________________________________________________________ Maria Carlota Rosa - UFRJ/ Faculdade de Letras/ Dept. de Linguistica e Filologia Campus Universitario - Ilha do Fundao - Rio de Janeiro - RJ CEP:21.941-590 - BRASIL tel/fax:(021) 270-1696 e-mails: carlota@acd.ufrj.br carlota@centroin.com.br |
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| LL Issue: | 9.149 | |
| Date Posted: | 31-Jan-1998 | |
| Original Query: | Read original query | |
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