Contact influence in the Tjhauba variety of Kgalagadi

Abstract

Tjhauba, spoken in northwestern Botswana, is a regional variety of the Bantu language Kgalagadi. Tjhauba exhibits a number of striking linguistic differences with respect to other, previously described Kgalagadi varieties, some the result of language-internal changes, but mostly due to contact with different surrounding Khoisan and Bantu languages. Making use of newly collected field data, this paper shows that Tjhauba has an extensive inventory of click phonemes, contrasting different click accompaniments and, in the speech of elderly speakers, also different click types. Tracing the sources of Tjhauba click words shows that these originate in different Khoisan languages, but also in the Bantu click language Yeyi. Semantically, click words, but also loanwords that do not contain clicks, cluster in the domain of flora and fauna, particularly species found in or close to water. These linguistic findings also shed light on the history of Tjhauba speakers. The adoption of a large number of click phonemes suggests intensive language contact, as still evidenced by ongoing Tjhauba/Khwe bilingualism. A number of the likely source languages for Tjhauba click words are no longer spoken in the area, suggesting contact situations that are no longer ongoing. Furthermore, clicks occur in loanwords, but unlike in neighbouring Bantu click languages, there is no evidence that clicks were also extended to inherited Tjhauba words. This suggests that the sound symbolic or identity marking functions of clicks as posited for other Bantu click languages do not play a role in Tjhauba.