Bantu Studies : The French in East Africa

Abstract

A decade ago, in a review article for this same journal (Hasha I974), I expressed some doubts concerning the very existence of a French school of African linguistics. In a short editorial rebuttal, 'P. A.' (Professor Pierre Alexandre) suggested that I had beaten the wrong bush and should have gone after the genuine Paris fashion in the SELAF catalogue. After having followed this advice and even more after a number of shoptalks with French-trained fellow African specialists, I have come to qualify my first opinion rather than to relinquish it entirely. I'll say now that there is no such thiing as a single homogeneous French academic and scientific approach to African languages and linguistic problems. Judging from published work, there seems to be deeply seated differences between the methods and underlying theories of, say, Professor Houis' Afrique et Language team and those of the LACITO-SELAF group of National Centre for Scientific Research (NCSR). True enough, their respective geographic fields are not exactly the same, the former dealing chiefly with West African languages while the latter are more concerned with Central African, Bantu and Creole ones. Perhaps because of a longer tradition of contact with West Africa-easily explainable by historical factors-I have an impression that Afrique et Language is, so to speak, more French in its outlook than the NCSR lab. This impression may stem, of course, from my own lack of familiarity with West African languages and linguistics. Yet the fact remains that, judging from the list of contributors to SELAF publications, this organisation appears to have wider contacts with Africanist scholars in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. This may possibly be a reason for several occurrences of de'ja vu feelings on my part. In this respect when, following 'P. A.' 's admonition in his post-scriptum to my first article, I read through SELAF's three-volume Enque'te et description... handbook (Bouquiaux & Thomas 1976) (I understand some French colleagues gave it the nickname' Red Bible' after the colour of its cover), I found the linguistic theory underlaying its descriptive methods to be implicit rather than explicit and not always crystal clear, at least for the uninitiate. Yet, insofar as I could make it out, I saw it, in many cases, as parallel and very close to Hallidayan 'scales and categories'. This is even truer of the Bantu studies produced by members of the LACITOSELAF persuasion-no wonder since the Grand Old Man of French bantuistics makes no mystery of having picked up (and to some extent re-cut) Malcolm Guthrie's mantle. Professor Pierre Alexandre and his associates (students? followers? disciples?) have recently invaded East African Bantu, a field long deserted by French linguists, and produced sound, informative studies quite different from previous French efforts in this region. Without detracting from Father Sacleux's