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A Nineteenth-Century Link Between Chinese And African Language Studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

P. E. H. Hair
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Extract

In a recent paper on tone-marking systems employed during the last hundred years in African language studies, Professor Tucker has referred incidentally to parallel developments in Chinese language studies. The present note, offered as a footnote to Professor Tucker's paper, documents recognition, early in the nineteenth century, that Chinese and a number of African languages have in common the feature of semantic tone.

Type
Notes And Communications
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , February 1966 , pp. 143 - 145
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1966

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References

1 Tucker, A. N., ‘Systems of tone-marking African languages’, BSOAS, XXVII, 3, 1964, 594–611.Google Scholar

2 It would be of interest to know whether those who first detected semantic tone in Bantu, e.g. de Couto in 1661, the Protestant missionaries in South Africa in the early nineteenth century, thought of the comparison with Chinese. They could certainly have known about Chinese tonality since this was first recognized by European missionary-linguists around 1600. But there is no mention of a comparison in Doke, C. M. and Cole, D. T., Contributions to the history of Bantu linguistics, Johannesburg, 1961.Google Scholar

3 T. E. Bowdich, Mission …to Ashantee, 229, 359, 361.

4 Christaller, J. G., Die Tone der Neger-Sprachen und ihre Bezeichnung, Basel, [1893], 1-5.Google Scholar

5 Crowther, S., Vocabulary of the Yoruba language, London, 1843, 2.Google Scholar

6 Tucker, op. cit., 602.

7 Crowther, S., A grammar and vocabulary of the Yoruba language, London, 1852, unnumbered page and p. 2.Google Scholar

8 Stock, E., History of the CMS, London, 1899, II, 102–3.Google Scholar

9 DeFrancis, J., ‘A missionary contribution to Chinese nationalism ’, Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, LXXIII, 1948, 1–34.Google Scholar

10 Lepsius, C. R., Standard alphabet. Second edition, London, 1863, 275, 277.Google Scholar

11 Crowther, S., A grammar and vocabulary of the Nupe language, London, 1864, p. iii.Google Scholar