This paper deals with certain features of the Bantu dialect spoken at Machame on the western slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanganyika Territory. It arises very largely as the result of work done in London with the help of Mr. S. J. Ntiro, whose home is in Machame, but in part from observations made in the field during study-leave in Africa. The subject-matter of what follows is narrowly circumscribed, but the treatment is relevant to problems of more general interest in linguistic analysis, especially those involved in the analysis of so-called ‘ tone languages ’.

The material to be considered consists of disyllabic words of which the syntactical function is identical except in so far as they are sub-categorized by features of grammatical concord: it is by reference to this function that these words are here called ‘ nouns ’. They are all equally analysable in terms of a single prefix and a stem.

One of the commonplaces with regard to Ethiopian literature is the fact that it is heavily indebted to foreign sources for much of its material. The initial works of Ethiopic literature were made from Greek but as knowledge of that language faded, undoubtedly owing to the spread of Muslim hegemony which isolated Ethiopia from contact with Christianity outside Africa, translation from Greek came to an end. With the ‘restoration’ of the Solomonic dynasty in 1270, increased literary activity brought about the translation into Ge‘ez (Ethiopic) of a number of Arabic works, usually those of Christian writers.

Maewo is the northernmost island eastwards of the double chain of islands in Melanesia known as the New Hebrides. Dr. R. H. Codrington gives a grammar of Maewo in ML., pp. 408–420. The dialect used by him for the grammar was that of Tanoriki, a place some twelve miles from the north end of the island on the west side. This grammar was founded principally on information supplied by native scholars from that part of Maewo in the Melanesian Mission school at Norfolk Island. Codrington also made use of a small edition, 33 pp., of the Book of Common Prayer in the language. The translation of Psalm 100 in ML., p. 419, is taken from that book.

A Mong many mythological beings mentioned in Zoroastrian literature and enumerated by the late Professor Louis Casartelli in his La Philosophie religieuse du Mazdéisme, Paris, 1884, p. 120, Gõpatšōh deserves our special mention. He is the man-bull of the ancient Babylonians, adopted into the mythology of the later Zoroastrian period most probably through the intermediary of the Elamites saturated with Babylonian culture. Gōpatšōh is the name given to him in Pahlavi literature, and is said to be another name for Aγēraθ, son of Pašang and brother of Afrāsiāb, king of Turan. He resides in the country called Sōkapastān or Saukavastān, which is situated between Chinistan and Turkistan (Bundahišn, 29, 5; for the legend of Aγrēraθ, cf. Darmesteter, Zend–Avesta, ii, p. 436, No. 23). Dātistān-i-Dēnīk 90, 4, explains the name Gōpatšāh by “ king of Gōpat”, and says that Gōpat is a country coterminous with Ērān–Vej on the bank of the river Dāitīk.

§1

A Short account of the Kuvalayamālā was given in “An Unpublished Fragment of Paiśācī”, BSOAS., xii, p. 659 foil. It is dated A.D. 778 and is known from two MSS.—J dated A.D. 1083 and P undated, of which P 2 is a copy. The bulk of the work is written in Pāyaya-bhāsā, i.e. Jaina Maharastri. Other styles are used, one of which is Avabbhamsa, which Uddyotana, the author, describes as Sakkaya-Pāy'ubhaya-suddh'āsuddha-paya-samataramgaramgamta vaggiram “A spoken language rippling with even waves of Sanskrit and Prakrit words correct and incorrect”. It is therefore not the classical Apabhramśa of Hemacandra and others, which does not contain Sanskrit words apart from the tatsamas or words common to Sanskrit and Prakrit.

§2

The first and longest fragment is printed by L. B. Gandhi in GOS. 37 (G.), Intro., p. 109. The spelling is much less regular than in the Prakrit preceding and following it, and cannot be ascribed for the most part to clerical errors. The two MSS. do not differ widely. For reasons into which it is unnecessary to enter here it is clear that J and P were copied from the same MS. and neither is dependent upon the other. P 2, although an inferior MS., often usefully supplements J and in the present extract such aid is particularly welcome, as owing to the habit of readers putting a finger on the text where difficulties occur, much of the J palm-leaf has been smudged and would be almost unreadable without the help of P 2.

Under the name of Sudanic or Negro languages are comprehended, according to the generally received terminology, the African tongues which stretch in a broad band across the continent from Cape Verd to the Great Lakes; further north they reach nearly to the Red Sea in isolated instances, and in the south to the confines of the Indian Ocean in the shape of linguistic islets whose affinities are only with difficulty recognizable. To the south of the area stretches the Bantu territory, interspersed with pigmy and Bushmen elements, of whom the latter alone have well-marked forms of speech, while the former appear to speak the tongues of Bantu neighbours, or of Sudanic tribes, who must have been their neighbours at an earlier period but have now been swallowed up in the Bantu flood. South-west of the Bantu we have the Nama languages, often classified as Hamitic.

In Johnson's Standard Swahili-English dictionary (1939) the meaning of the verb-Shika is described as follows:

hold fast, take hold of, keep hold on, seize, grasp, keep. A common word with a wide range of application, e.g. (1) get hold on, press hard on, be on the mind, put in difficulties; (2) keep a hold on, persevere in; (3) hold to, keep to, observe, remember, attend to, obey; (4) determine, resolve, make up the mind to; (5) also as Intrans. have a hold, prevail, be urgent.

The problem of “accent” in the Japanese language has attracted the attention of a few Japanese scholars for some hundred years. In recent years more writers, both native and foreign, on the Japanese language have touched upon this problem. For instance, B. H. Chamberlain, A Handbook of Colloquial Japanese, 3rd ed., 1898, pp. 19–20; R. Lange, Lehrbuch der japanischen Umgangssprache, 1906, ss. xxvii–viii; E. R. Edwards, Étude phonétique de la langue japonaise, 1903, § 142 f., § 159. Native writers: S. Izawa, Kokutei Tokuhon Seidokuho (The Orthoepy of the State Text Books); B. Yamada, Nihon Daijiten (Japanese Grand Dictionary); T. Takahashi, Hatsuon Jiten (Pronouncing Dictionary). Yet the results attained by these writers have not been quite satisfactory, as, for instance, Lange considers the Japanese “accent” to be that of stress, while Izawa thinks it is the delicate difference of length of speech-sounds. Yamada, Takahashi, etc., while they were right in thinking it to be difference of pitch, could not make out the pitch relations of the syllabic units of each word, and their method of indicating the “accent” was quite misleading.