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History From Linguistics: The Case of the Tana River*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

Derek Nurse
Derek Nurse*
Affiliation:
Institute of Swahili Research, University of Dar es Salaam
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Extract

It is the purpose of this article to investigate certain aspects of the Pokomo (P) language, and thereby to present a more detailed picture of Pokomo history than is currently available. Pokomo is an ideal laboratory for comparative linguistics. Whereas much as been written about most adjacent peoples, such as Orma, Somali, Mijikenda (MK), and Swahili, little has been said on the Pokomo, or their neighbors, the Dahalo; virtually no archeological work has been done along the Tana river, while Pokomo (and Dahalo) traditions are scantily recorded.

Further, the Tana represents more or less the extreme northeast border of the Bantu-speaking area, and it the meeting point for northern pastoralists and southern farmers. It is surrounded on all sides by speakers of Cushitic languages, from Ogaden Somali near Garissa, through Orma and Waata (all Eastern Cushitic), to Dahalo (Southern Cushitic) and Boni (Eastern Cushitic), on the Indian Ocean. At the same time, it is fairly remote from other Bantu-speaking groups. The nearest Kamba communities are nearly 100 miles as the crow flies to the west, across semi-desert, and the nearest sizeable Giriama settlement a similar distance south of Garsen across comparable terrain. The main Swahili communities of the Lamu Archipelago, north of the mouth of the river, have--at least today--little regular contact with the Pokomo. The relatively small Pokomo population--between 40,000 and 50,000--lives huddled along the banks of the Tana from Garissa in the north to the northern bank of the Indian Ocean estuary, a stretch of some 150 miles, although, if we exclude Malankote, the Pokomo territory is only some 100 miles long. They are primarily agricultural, although fishing and some hunting are also practiced.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 10 , 1983 , pp. 207 - 238
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1983

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Footnotes

*

The research for this article is partly based on funds or facilities afforded by the W.H. Whiteley Memorial Fund; Kenyatta University College, Nairobi; the British Institute in Eastern Africa, Nairobi; and the Institute of Swahili Research, Dar es Salaam, to all of which I would like to express my gratitude. It has also benefited from contributions of various kinds from Jim Allen, Chris Ehret, Derek Elderkin, Tom Spear, the late Norman Townsend, and Tom Wilson, all of whom the author would equally like to thank.

References

Notes

1. The minor exceptions in Somalia are the “Juba Bantu” and the dialect of the town of Barawa.

2. R., and Van Otterloo, K., A Sociolinguistic Study: The Bantu Language Groups of the Kenya Coastal Area (Nairobi, 1980), 7.Google Scholar

3. Ibid., 9.

4. For Sabaki see Hinnebusch, T.J., “The Shungwaya Hypothesis: A Linguistic Appraisal” in East African Culture History, ed. Gallagher, J.T. (Syracuse, 1976)Google Scholar; idem, “Swahili: Genetic Affiliation and Evidence,” Studies in African Linguistic/Supplement 6 (1976), 95-108; Spear, Thomas, The Kaya Complex (Nairobi, 1978).Google Scholar

5. In addition to Malankote, Pokomo, Swahili, Comorian, and Mijikenda, the others members of the NECB are: Ngulu, Zigua, Shambala, Bondei, Doe, Kwere, Zaramo, Kutu, Kami, Luguru, Kaguru, Sagara, Vidunda, and Gogo.

6. The digraph rh is the conventional symbol for the Upper Pokomo voiced, rolled, alveolar, spirant.

7. For references see Darroch, R.G., “Some Notes on the Early History of the Tribes Living on the Lower Tana, Collected by Mikael Samson and Others,” Journal of the East African and Uganda Batural History Society, 17 (1943/1944), 244–54, 370–94Google Scholar; Spear, , Kaya Complex, 21.Google Scholar I have a version of Shungwaya in UP collected at Ndera.

8. E.g. Komora Kombo, of Kipini, interviewed by Dan Stiles and I in April, 1980.

9. Some of the changes that characterize Malankote and Dahalo development are paralleled by the changes that characterize the emergence of Boni from Proto-Sam, and Waata from Orma. See Heine, Bernd, “Bemerkungen zur Boni-Sprache,” Afrika und Ubersee, 60 (1977), 242–95Google Scholar; idem, “The Sam Languages,” Afro-Asiatic Linguistics, 6/2 (1978), 1-93.

10. Ehret, Christopher, The Historical Reconstruction of Southern Cushitic Phonology and Vocabulary (Berlin, 1980), 114–26.Google Scholar

11. Ibid., 116, rule 15.

12. Ibid., 114.

13. “At least” is used advisedly since the exact number of aspirate and implosive stops is unclear.

14. A few UP dialects retain /η/.

15. Malankote speech would hardly have been so modified by the sporadic absorption of a handful of speakers of Dahalo, but rather by a group of mothers large enough to retain their own speech, and impose something of it on their children. For a similar case, involving Bantu-speaking fathers and Khoisan-speaking mothers, see Lanham.

16. While there are obviously unique similarities between the Pokomo and Malankote verb systems (see Appendix 3, 9-11) there appear to be certain curious dissimilarities as well.

17. See Gumperz, J.J. and Wilson, R., “Convergence and Creolisation” in Pidginisation and Creolisation of Languages, ed. Hymes, Dell (Cambridge, 1971), 151–68Google Scholar, and Nurse, Derek, The Dialects of Chaga (Hamburg, 1979), chapter 4.Google Scholar

18. See Besha, M.R., “A Sociolinguistic Description of Kimaa and its Points of Contact with Shambaa,” (M.A. thesis, University of Dar es Salaam, 1974).Google Scholar

19. Nurse, , The Swahili Dialects of Somalia and the Worthern Kenya Coast (Paris, 1982).Google Scholar

20. Case (10) is curious. Such a negative prefix is present in no other Sabaki or NECB language and must therefore be an innovation. There is no obvious phonological or morphological reason within Pokomo-Malankote for the appearance of this */nta-/, so it must lie under suspicion of being a loan originally. Of all the Bantu languages surrounding the Sabaki area, the only ones to have a /-ta-/ negative are the Thagicu languages of central Kenya. In Thagicu today, however, /-ta-/ is not initial, though this would not necessarily prevent it from being a source. Among the NECB languages, Gogo and Kaguru have promoted /-si/ to initial /si-/, covering all negatives and replacing /nka-/. Something like this may have happened earlier in Malankote, and then spread to Pokomo.

21. There are many local stories of Bajuni presence in the coastal hinterland as far south as the Tana in recent centuries. For Pate, Fumo Liongo stories involve his living both at Pate and on the mainland as far south as the Tana. In the nineteenth century, the Nabhahani moved their seat to Witu. For Pokomo presence on the mainland opposite Lamu, see Darroch, , “Some Notes,” 247.Google Scholar

22. This generalization probably extends to Malankote, but since our data are not complete, we cannot be certain.

23. If all nine MK dialects had been included, MK would look more unitary: Digo is by far the most disparate of the MK dialects.

24. The one exception is Comorian: it should be moved north to a point near the Swahili coast!

25. There is a parallelism of certain morphophonemic processes between the ND and Pokomo. For example, phenomena such as UP:

occur in all northern Swahili and all Pokomo dialects. It is not clear if they should be attributed to recent northern Swahili-Pokomo interaction or are to be seen as the result of older inheritance.

26. There is one, undiscussed, set of similarities, which is hard to explain, with Chaga:

Malankote in particular also has a small set of loans from Somali.

27. The Boni, the Eastern Cushitic neighbors of the Dahalo, are also assumed to have given up pastoralism for hunting-gathering.

28. Presumably because it had become morphologized in stems, but remained more flexible in prefixes.

29. There is considerable evidence that Dahalo has also been in contact with Thagicu languages. Ehret, , Ethiopians and East Africans (Nairobi, 1974), 78, 85Google Scholar, has presented lists of Cushitic loanwords in Thagicu. Some at least are likely to be of Dahalo origin. If they were all we had, the most plausible conclusion would be that Thagicu-Dahalo contact had occurred somewhere in central Kenya. Dahalo has other material that indicates contact with Thagicu languages. Thus, among others:

In the last two examples we see that mediation Thagicu:Dahalo took place through a g-less Thagicu language (e.g. Meru). There is another set, partly mentioned by Ehret, , Ethiopians, 66.Google Scholar

These are significant because they attest older, unshifted, Bantu stops: compare the Gikuyu shapes with (shifted) Swahili funo, ukosi, fungo. Ehret claims that these are loans into Dahalo from Proto-Swahili or Proto-Sabaki, but this seems to be incorrect. There is no evidence that Proto-Swahili or -Sabaki ever retained unshifted Proto-Bantu stops, or was ever spoken in this area. Since all Thagicu languages retain the older, unshifted, PB stops, and since these words are attested even today in Thagicu, the obvious source is Thagicu, not an older form of Swahili. And, given g-loss in at least some of the examples, the particular Thagicu languag may well have been the g-less Meru dialects.

30. Spear, , Kaya Complex, 36.Google Scholar

31. See Strandes, Julius, The Portuguese Period in East Africa (Nairobi, 1961), 304Google Scholar, and Freeman-Grenville, G.S.P., The East African Coast (Oxford, 1962), 250.Google Scholar

32. Fadiman, J.A., “Early History of the Meru of Mt. Kenya,” JAE, 14 (1973), 9–27.Google Scholar

33. Although the Chuka are specifically excluded from this tradition, their word for “coast, beach” is mawa, cognate with Swahili pwa-ni.

34. Fadiman, , “Meru of Mt. Kenya,” 12.Google Scholar

35. There are Waat traditions of the Meru near Lamu: Wario Guyo, of Tezo village, near Malindi, interviewed in May, 1980.

36. Fadiman, , “Meru of Mt. Kenya,” 13.Google Scholar

37. The islands in question, described as being coral, are not exactly at the mouth of the Tana, but some twenty miles farther north.

38. See Darroch, , “Some Notes,” 247.Google Scholar

39. Ibid.; Werner, Alice, “Some Notes on the Wapokomo of the Tana Valley,” Journal of the African Society, 12 (1912/1913), 359–84.Google Scholar

40. E.g. Mambrui, Jomvu, and Kilindini.

41. E.g., Hinnebusch, “Shungwaya'” Prins, A.H.J., “Shungwaya: die Urheimat der Nordost-Bantu,” Anthropos, 50 (1955), 273–81Google Scholar; idem, “The Shungwaya Problem: Traditional History and Cultural Likeness in Bantu North-East Africa,” Anthropos, 67 (1972), 9-35; Spear, Kaya Complex, chapter 2.

42. See footnote 8.

43. Bunger, R.L., Islamisation Among the Upper Pokomo (Syracuse, 1973).Google Scholar

44. Nurse, Swahili Dialects.

45. It would also be possible to suppose that identical, or almost identical, phonological innovation started independently in LP, MK, and Comorian, but this would be an unlikely and clumsy interpretation, as they are all likely to have been spoken in adjacent areas along the northern Kenya/southern Somali coast in the early part of the present millennium.

46. See footnote 38.

47. Spear, , Kaya Complex, 24.Google Scholar

48. What is said here should not necessarily preclude the possibility of even earlier settlement further north.

49. Deliberately omitted from this synthesis are the Orma and Somali contributions.

50. Of the 1000 Dahalo words available to the author, about forty contain a click and can therefore be assumed to be of Khoisan origin. Most refer to natural phenomena, a few to activities connected to hunting and gathering.

51. Ehret, , Ethiopians and East Africans, 7–8.Google Scholar

52. Ehret, Southern Cushitic Phonology and Vocabulary.

53. Nurse, “A Hypothesis Concerning the Origin of Swahili,” to appear in the published proceedings of a colloquium on Swahili language and culture, held at SOAS, April 1982.

54. Sandawe, the only language widely accepted as Khoisan in East Africa, has no interited prenasalized obstruents, for example, nor a phonemic velar nasal, though it does have an ejective v nonejective series.