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What Do We Do with Irregular Correspondences? The Case of the Khoe Languages*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

Rainer Vossen
Rainer Vossen*
Affiliation:
Universität Bayreuth
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Extract

There is nothing that cannot be related directly or indirectly to anything else, and it is this nightmare that is horrifying. There seems to be no precedent for this sort of chaos in the languages of the world… (Traill 1974:251)

Regularity of phonological change is considered a basic principle of historico-linguistic reconstruction. In 1876 A. Leskien of the Leipzig school of neogrammarians formulated the postulate of sound change occurring without exception, meaning “that if one assembled all the facts, and analyzed them accurately and thoroughly, one could state exceptionless principles or laws for the development of language” (Lehmann 1973:87). However, it has since been argued on the basis of empirical research that languages are never in complete balance and that, therefore, change is not necessarily constant, nor parallel among groups speaking different languages. Various reasons have been found to account for irregularities in language: the impact of one language on another, the effect of children acquiring their language, etc. Yet before we enter into any etiological discussion of irregular or unstructured phonological change, the area of investigation for the present case study must be introduced, and the characteristic of the problematic nature of the case sketched.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 18 , 1991 , pp. 359 - 379
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1991

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Footnotes

*

I am indebted to Professors Franz Rottland, Edwin N. Wilmsen, and participants at the international symposium on “African Protohistory,” held during 22-24 April 1989 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, for their valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper. Special thanks are due to my colleague Klaus Keuthmann, who designed the maps herein. I also wish to express my sincere gratitude to the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Bonn, which generously sponsored both my extensive fieldwork in Botswana (between 1983 and 89) and my attendance at the Illinois symposium.

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