Kwadi language

Kwadi /ˈkwɑːdi/ was a "click language" of uncertain classification once spoken in the southwest corner of Angola. It is believed to be extinct. There were only fifty Kwadi in the 1950s, of whom only 4–5 were competent speakers of the language. Three partial speakers were known in 1965, but in 1981 no speakers could be found.

Kwadi
ǃKwaǀtse
Native toAngola
Extinctca. 1950 ?
Language codes
ISO 639-3kwz
Glottologkwad1244[2]

Because Kwadi is poorly recorded, there is not much evidence with which to classify it. It is sometimes classified as the most known divergent member of the Khoe family, linking it to the Khoe languages in a "Kwadi–Khoe" family, though this conclusion is disputed. Proponents say it appears to have preserved elements of proto-Khoe that were lost in the western Khoe languages under the influence of Juu languages in Botswana.[3]

The Kwadi people, called Kwepe (Cuepe) by the Bantu, appear to have been a remnant population of southwestern African hunter-gatherers, otherwise only represented by the Cimba, Kwisi, and the Damara, who adopted the Khoekhoe language. Like the Kwisi they were fishermen, on the lower reaches of the Coroca River.[4]

Kwadi was alternatively known by the varieties of Koroka (Ba-koroka, Curoca, Ma-koroko, Mu-coroca) and Cuanhoca.

Phonology

Kwadi had either 4 or 6 vowels with oral and nasal variants.[5] A tentative consonant inventory is shown below.

Consonants
LabialDentalAlveolar Lateral Palatal VelarGlottal
EgressiveIngressiveEgressiveEgressiveIngressiveEgressiveIngressiveEgressiveEgressive
Nasal mŋǀnɲŋ
Voiceless stop pǀttɬǁcǂkʔ
Voiced stop b~βdɟɡ
Aspirated stop p(f)ʰǀʰt(s)ʰtɬʰcʰk(x)ʰ
Glottalized ǀʼtɬʼǂʼk(x)ʼ
Plain + /x/ ǀx
Fricative fsɬʃxh
Approximant wl~rj

Morphology

Pronouns

Kwadi has personal pronouns for first and second person in singular, dual, and plural numbers. Pronouns have subject, object, and possessive cases.[6] 1st person plural may have distinguished clusivity. Object pronouns are suffixed with -le/-de, except for the first person dual object pronoun, which is just mu. Possessive pronouns are the same as the subject form, except for the first person singular possessive pronoun, which is tʃi. Third person pronouns are simply the demonstratives, which are formed with a demonstrative base ha- followed by a gender/number suffix.

Personal Pronouns
SGDUPL
1st ta(h)amu(u)hina (inclusive?)
ala (exclusive?)
2nd sauwau

Nouns

Kwadi nouns distinguished three genders (masculine, feminine, and common), as well as three numbers (singular, dual, and plural).[6] Some nouns form their plural with suppletion. For example: tçe "woman" vs. tala kwaʼe "women". The attested paradigm of nominal suffixes for masculine and feminine nouns is given below.

SGDUPL
Masculine -dɛ-wa-u
Feminine -e-wa-ʼɛ

See also

References
  1. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Khoe–Kwadi". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  2. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Kwadi". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  3. Changing profile when encroaching on hunter-gatherer territory?: towards a history of the Khoe–Kwadi family in southern Africa. Tom Güldemann, paper presented at the conference on Historical linguistics and hunter-gatherer populations in global perspective, at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Aug. 2006.
  4. Blench, Roger. 1999. "Are the African Pygmies an Ethnographic Fiction?". Pp 41–60 in Biesbrouck, Elders, & Rossel (eds.) Challenging Elusiveness: Central African Hunter-Gatherers in a Multidisciplinary Perspective. Leiden."Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-01-26. Retrieved 2011-10-26.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  5. Güldemann, Tom (2013). "Phonetics and Phonology: 3.5 Kwadi". In Vossen, Rainer (ed.). The Khoesan Languages. Routledge Language Family Series. New York: Routledge. pp. 87–88.
  6. Güldemann, Tom (2013). "Morphology: 3.5 Kwadi". In Vossen, Rainer (ed.). The Khoesan Languages. Routledge Language Family Series. New York: Routledge. pp. 261–263.
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