The Role of Hausa in Comparative Studies: A Historical Sketch

The Role of Hausa in Comparative Studies:

A Historical Sketch

Alessandro SUZZI VALLI

University of Naples “L‟Orientale”

Tsakure

Wannan maqala ta ba da taqaitaccen bayani a kan matsayin harshen Hausa a cikin binciken kwatancin harsuna. An fara da abubuwan da Jacob Friedrich Shön ya kawo a shekarar 1862 a cikin bincikensa, inda ya ce harshen Hausa, idan an kwatanta shi da Yahudanci yana nuna kama da harsunan Simitawa. Daga baya, an kawo manyan bincike-binciken da aka yi a qarnin da ya wuce, kamar su Müller/Krause da Lepsius da Meinhof da Lukas da Greenberg… har izuwa Takacs. Daga qarshe, takardar ta yi bayani a kan hanyar da bincike a kan harshen Hausa ya yi tasiri a kan binciken kwatancin harsuna dangane da harsunan dangin Cadi, da kuma matsayinsa a cikin harsunan gidan Afro-asiya gaba xaya, tare da kimanta matsayin harshen Hausa a cikin binciken kwatancin harsunan Afro-asiya.

This paper aims at reviewing the position of Hausa within the field

of Chadic comparatistic studies. The role of Hausa has been since the

beginning dominant in this respect. Its contribution in defining a

position of the Chadic branch in the main frame of Afro-Asiatic

phylum has been outstanding, with over 150 years of documentation,

glossaries, grammars, (the last excellent endeavour in this direction

with his reference grammar is that of Prof. Phillip Jaggar in 2001). In

the last decades, however the literature on other Chadic languages has

significantly developed, and new generations of linguists are no longer

supported only by the Hausa extensive resources. It is a pity to say

that, in some instances, available materials on other Chadic languages,

though little as they were, have not been sufficiently exploited by

many scholars in the last century, as we will see later on, delaying

298 Alessandro Suzzi Valli

important assumptions on the validity of genetic affiliation of Hausa

and related languages to the Afro-Asiatic phylum.

Now, a long prelude on the past most important literature on this

topic is of course unavoidable, and through that, we will see how

Hausa, slowly and undaunted, during the last two centuries, gained its

position and role, linguistically speaking.

First attempt to consider Hausa in comparison to other idioms dates

back to 1843, when J.F. Schön published his Vocabulary of the

Hausa Language.1 In the introduction he listed few cases of Hausa

lexical terms resembling in both phonetic shape and meaning some

foreign forms taken from the most disparate world languages. The full

passage is reported below (Fig. 1):

Fig.1 - Schön 1847

1 1843. Vocabulary of the Hausa Language, London, ii-iii.

The Role of Hausa in Comparative Studies: A Historical Sketch 299

Fulani does not belong to Afro-Asiatic and this is what we can

already detect clearly from the few examples taken from Schön:

Ghiova, „elephant‟, is actually a phonetic corruption of -, two

distinct morphological elements, the stem being connected with an

area lexical isogloss common also to a few Chadic languages2. As to

the gloss „much‟, Kohevi, it should be ko-heew-i, a composition of

three morphemes.

It is clear then that the two words from Hausa and Fulani cannot be

put together. Anyhow, conscious of the pioneer undertaking by this

eminent scholar, and aware also of the inadequate knowledge of those

languages at that time, besides the lack of competence in the

comparative method applied to linguistics, lexical parallels which

have been set up on those simple shape resemblance still were

justifiable.

Afterwards, in 18623 Schön drew attention to the affinities and

somehow identities in lexicon and grammar between Hausa and

Hebrew, trying, therefore, to style Hausa a Semitic language. The

personal pronouns were the most striking part of his preliminary

comparison.

I will report here the original passage in which the compared

lexical terms are presented:

2 Jungraithmayr/Ibriszimow I 1994; p. 58 root „H‟ nii ~ langs. Sura and

Goemai. 3 1862. Grammar of the Hausa Language, London, xii-xiii.


Fig. 2 - Shon 1862

One more lexeme is mentioned on page 150, yamma „west/western‟,

which would soon be a fundamental testimony of a larger and deep

heritage, i.e. the Afro-Asiatic common lexicon. Obviously, most of the

terms presented as direct links to Hebrew were introduced into Hausa

through Arabic, as we nowadays know them in detail.4

4 Baldi (1988)


It is enough for a Hausaist to feel proud looking back at such a

correlation between one of the most important and representative

Semitic language‟ i. e. Hebrew, and Hausa, a still little known African

idiom at that time; just few years earlier Renan,5 the eminent Semitist,

tried to establish successfully some correlation between Hebrew and

Coptic, as well as with a number of Libyan dialects:

Fig. 3 - Renan 1858

5 E. Renan, 1858. Histoire générale et système comparé des Langues

Sémitique.


If we try to match the Hausa personal pronoun system to those

above, we could immediately infer that they belong to the same

linguistic macro-family; naturally something, we have already been

acknowledged of, for the last 50 years.

The prefixes ma/mai6 formatives of derivational names constitute

one of the strong points, together with the personal pronoun

paradigm7 and the gender distinction, in favour of a Semitic origin of

the language.

Furthermore, in phonetics Schön stated that the sound ạ in Hausa

(to be interpreted as a medium high vowel), for instance in k ækà,

corresponds to Hebrew8 .ע

Charles H. Robinson, in the notes on Hausa phonology of his

Hausa grammar,9 introduced the problem of the appurtenance of this

language to some of the known linguistic families. He cited Berber

and Coptic as Hamitic languages, in accordance to the new term

introduced by Renan,10

to which he wished to add Hausa as members

of the same group, in opposition to Semitic (Arabic and Ethiopic) and

Bantu.

The features fixed as proof of linguistic affiliation are, in addition

to those already established by Schön, 1) the genitive formation by

means of n or na, common to both Berber and Coptic; 2) the

vocabulary resemble in several words that of Coptic; for instance H.

6 Ibidem pp. 9-12.

7 Ibidem p.21.

8 Schön, 1862 op.cit. p.2.

9 Hausa Grammar, 1897-1925, 13th impression London 1942, pp. 189-

190. 10

Op. cit. pp. 88-89 «We must thus assign the Egyptian language and civilisation to a distinct family, which we may call, if we will, Hamitic. To this same group belong, doubtless, the non-Semitic dialects of Abyssinia and Nubia. Future research will show whether, as has been conjectured, the indigenous languages to the north of Africa, the Berber and the Tuarek, for example, which appear to represent the Lybian and ancient Numidian, ought to be assigned to the same family […]».


so/sau “time” Copt. sop ftu “four”; H. dubu

“thousand” Copt. thba meaning “ten thousand”, etc.

He finally stated that one/third of Hausa lexicon is derived from

Semitic but he also wanted to point out what follows, which is worth

to be mentioned:

[…] at present the fact that two-thirds of the Hausa vocabulary present no similarity to any Semitic language, forms an almost insuperable obstacle to the acceptance of this theory (that Hausa is a semitic language) until such time as a careful study of the surrounding languages, and more particularly of the languages which are spoken in and on the borders of the Sahara Desert, e.g. Berber, Tuareg, Songai, &c., may prove either the existence or non-existence of connecting links between Hausa and Arabic or any other Semitic language. (Robinson 1897:189)

The publication of the notes of Gottlob Adolf Krause on Musgu

language (Musuk), by Friedrich Müller,11

established for the first time a

relation, mainly lexical, between the former language and Hausa. As a

consequence, probably on trail of this newly discovered linguistic

connection, Leo Reinich tried to compare the two Chadic languages

Hausa and Musgu to Semitic and Egyptian, in regards to personal

pronoun system, verbal conjugation and, as a new entry in the

comparative analysis, plural formation, which also, as we know,

constituted one of the columns for the foundation of Afro-Asiatic

Phylum as a linguistic family. Through such striking similarities, Hausa,

Musgu, Berber dialects and Ancient Egyptian were grouped together

under the definition of „Hamitic languages‟ as opposed to Semitic.

However, long before, the German traveller Heinrich Barth (1862)

had already put in comparison Hausa with other Chadic languages

(Logone Wandala, Bagirmi, Maba) besides Kanuri, Teda, Fulfulde and

Songhay (Nilo-Saharan) in what we can consider the perfect linguistic

comparison, since no any pre-constituted ideas on established

11

1886. Die Musuk-Sprache in Central-Afrika. Nach den Aufzeichnungen von Gottlob Adolf Krause. Wien.


classifications (actually no attempt had been made so far) could at any

rate cause a corruption of data or the results of the linguistic analysis for

those languages treated. The scope was not comparative; neither aimed

at formulating theoretical views on the origin of languages, nor to

establish relationships among them. The unique scope was to strengthen

the knowledge of African languages and cultures in the Western

countries, where the awareness of them was scanty, mainly resultant

from missionary works.12

Actually, it includes a bulk of material

concerning morphology, syntax of clauses from the everyday speaking,

nouns lists, numbers etc.; a more or less correct phonetic value was

given of every single phoneme. Though he was acquainted with

different languages of the area he travelled (Arabic, Kanuri, Teda,

Fulfulde) Hausa remained his privileged idiom, so he stated

[…] Kanuri-idiom during a period of more than two years constituted pre-eminently my medium of conversation with the natives… I dare to say, that I spoke it with a tolerable degree of accuracy and fluency, although never so well as the Hausa, which, on account of its copious as well as forcible and flexible character and from its richness in vowels, had once for all won my special predilection, which was the reason why I preferred conversing in this idiom […] (Barth 1862:xvii)

Although, as a scientific work from the linguistic point of view,

Barth‟s vocabularies are nowadays unfortunately of little use, maybe

due to the choice of glosses not properly fitting a comparative-

historical task, or due to the informants not being „pure‟ speakers,

Barth‟s work is still to be considered a masterpiece in the field of

anthropological-linguistics, particularly in consideration of the epoch

in which it was written.

12

In this regard it would be of some interest for the reader to give the following citation by Barth from his introductory remarks: «[…] my vocabularies, at least the larger ones, constitute a striking contrast to similar labours of the missionaries, because they do not represent a distinct and single dialect of each language, but each language in its general character and features, such as it lives in the mouth of the people».


Meinhof Carl (1912), studied in detail the morphological

characteristics of different languages from various geographic

contexts (and consequently different language families, the current

Afro-Asiatic, Nilo-Saharan, Khoisan), and summarised common

features like gender, polarity and noun classes markers, on the bases

of which he distinguished the Hamitic languages from the Sudanic

ones. Since his theoretical assumption turned out later on (Greenberg

1955, 1963) to be false, only the short lexical list at the end of the

publication remains of some worth. In there, Hausa forms were cited

in isolation, although some knowledge of related language was

already consolidated (for ex. Musgu – Muller 1886, Reinish 1909),

and without much consideration of the general linguistic situation of

the Lake Chad area. The languages investigated in the comparative list

are fiest of all Ful, Hausa, Schilluk, Bedauye, Somali, Masai, Nama,

in first place, besides Egyptian. Some of the items are well known

nowadays, like „Rind (meat)‟ sa „riechen (smell)‟ sunsuna AA *sn,

interrogative pronoun „Wer? Was?‟ Hausa mi; „Auge (eye)‟, very

important isogloss spread all over the Afroasiatic geographic

extension end even beyond (see Suzzi Valli & Leger 2007, Suzzi Valli

2008), presented in the two renowned forms *yrt/ill and *indo. It is

remarkable that he could already be able, with such poor data

available to him, to distinguish the above two forms. Then „trinken‟,

„blume‟, etc. This list of 77 items does not diverge significantly from

the much posterior lexical lists by Greenberg and Diakonoff as we

will see later on. The unquestionable point that immediately emerge

from the list, is that the evident lexical affinity links languages

belonging to Afro-Asiatic, and this is something that Meinhof was not

yet able to realise. So, fifty years later, with more or less the same

quantity of data a complete different theoretical view was build up.

Hausa remains, undoubtly, the prevailing source of lexical material.

In the thirties of the last century, direct connection of Hausa with the

ancient stage of HS, took hold, and Werner Vycichl (1934)

concentrated his endeavour on Hausa-Egyptian correlation. The

clamour provoked was great. Any minimal part of grammar was

analysed in detail and remarkable common features have been


revealed, most of which were taken in future decades as pillars for the

foundation of the whole Afro-Asiatic phylum.

Marcel Cohen, much later (1947), did not add much to the acquired

knowledge of Chadic at that time, and he cited only occasionally

Hausa forms in his comparative vocabulary not considering at all

Musgu, nor the above mentioned solid relations to Egyptian. He did

not consider moreover the available works of Foulkes on Angas

(1915) and Lukas on Logone (1936) and Buduma (1939).

Cohen‟s work was revised by Nina Pilszcikowa (1958, 1960), and

the assumptions taken by the French scholar were extended to other

languages (grouped under the name of Nigero-Chadian), essentially,

Karekare, Ngizim, Ngamo, Bolewa, Kanakuru. In addition, she took

into consideration neighbouring languages, non-Afro-Asiatic, called

semi-bantu (Katabe, Djaba, Piti, Tcharai, Kourama, Djandji, etc.),

from which she gathered common features treating them as

borrowings, which might have been introduced in a very remote past.

In this regard Pilszcikowa showed examples like Hausa mutum as

derived from < mu + tun the first morpheme being a noun-class

marker, feature, that obviously has not an Afro-Asiatic origin and its

probable intrusion would be not recent in time. Likewise, the case of

nama “meat” should be a trace of an ancient loan-words stock brought

in early in history. Important palatalization processes were also

documented, thanks to new data from extra-Chadic languages.

The bases for the consequent classification of African languages,

carried out by J. Greenberg short later, were definitely set down. The

comparative method was defined properly, and by that time it has

been always including not only Hausa, but at minimum two (in most

cases more than two) Chadic languages.

Hausa has never stopped, anyhow, to play a dominant role in the

comparative studies in which Chadic was included.

Igor Diakonoff speaks about Chadic mentioning only Hausa, for

instance in the phonological description of H-S and especially, as

much more fundamental, in the table of phonetic correspondences

where Semitic inventory is proposed in all stages of development

(ancient, middle) and geographically (North vs. South/Peripheral). For


Cushitic, although far from representing adequately the full group, is

proposed with Bedawye, Somali and Agau. Berber is reconstructed. In

regards to word-formation he cites the „interesting case‟ of mai- (as if

it was newly discovered, disregarding the hundred-years-before

description by Schön and others in the sequel) used in Hausa to form

adjectives, participles, abstract nouns, etc. Far from revising fully

Diakonoff‟s work, it is enough to add that all over his dissertation

Hausa is sporadically mentioned and, quite inexplicable to me, in

isolation from other related Chad(ic) languages that were already well

known by that time. In conclusion, it should have been better not to

mention „Chad‟ as a group/branch but rather just talk about „Hausa‟ as

a probable member of the H-S.

Things do not seem to change much in his next work Afrasian

Languages (Diakonoff 1988). Apart from accurate description of the

personal pronoun system, in which a bashful appearance of three new

Chadic languages (Musgu, Logone and Mubi) is recorded, and in spite

of a beautiful and exhaustive account for the Semitic branch, Chadic is

left aside, represented by Hausa alone, and the samples taken into

account are unbelievably reduced compared to the previous 1965‟s

work; in numbers, the section devoted to it is 5% of the full essay.

Joseph Greenberg started a new era. A different approach to the

comparative field was elected, based mainly on mass comparison. A huge

bulk of data was input from all known languages of the continent and

classifications eventually drawn up proved to be mostly correct. Hausa,

maybe for the first time, was not any longer considered the main source

for Chadic, or as such appeared to be. The slight difference in numbers in

favour of Hausa (29 vs 22 of Musgu) of the lexical list (1963:51-64), is

not relevant and in the general trend, we can say that quotations are

proportionally distributed among the Chadic languages with no

preference for the Hausa data, though the latter was (and still is) for sure

the best described language, compared to the rest of Chadic.

Paul Newman (1977) comparative work differs in respect to the

general trend, and Tera is the most used source with 54 entries in the

word list, followed by Hausa with 47 while the rest of languages stand

approximately between 10 and 20 entries (Kera 19 and Karekare 13


for ex.). A significant number of the reconstructed forms, especially

the most dubious cases, tend generally to liken those of Kera, as if this

language was taken as a starting point for reconstruction, otherwise

they use to conform to the Hausa words shape.

In the nineties of the last century extensive etymological dictionaries

of Afro-Asiatic and specifically Chadic, were available. All material

from almost all Chadic languages has been used, and for the first time

a fully reliable reconstruction of Chadic roots (and Afro-Asiatic) was

finally realised. As far as I could check off the lists, there is not

appreciable superiority in numbers of the Hausa lexical entries

compared to the other Chadic languages. Herrmann Jungraithmayr in

1994, with the collaboration of Dymitr Ibriszimow produced an

impressive comparative etymological dictionary as a secondary

development of the first attempt of reconstructing Chadic in 1981,

having at his disposal the extensive Chadic Word Catalogue. There is

a slightly dominance of the Hausa entries (110 out of 175 total glosses

against 95 of Bole). In two cases the reconstructed phonetic shape of

the Chadic roots is significantly influenced by one language, and this

language is Hausa. One is the gloss „dog‟ where a triradical root kn is

proposed instead of a more plausible biradical shape because «[...]

there is indeed not much evidence for –n as R3, but the Hausa plural

form karn-uka makes it probable […]»(p. 49). The other one is „eye‟,

where ydn form is proposed as representing the whole Chadic but the

final nasal is suggested only, again, by the Hausa plural form (p. 60).

Vladimir Orel and Olga Stolbova published (1995) the Hamito-

Semitic Etymological Dictionary in which an extensive stock of

material, actually 2672 glosses, was analysed, and likewise

reconstruction of Afro-Asiatic roots was tempted. The role of Hausa

in reconstruction here does not seem to be dominant, the only problem

being the scantiness of data, reported from all Afro-Asiatic branches,

used to elaborate single reconstructed roots.

The most extensive linguistic comparative work in the Afro-Asiatic

field, is that of Takács Gábor, started in 1999, pursued in during the last

ten years, and to be continued for many other years to come. More than

2500 pages published up to now, with the Ancient Egyptian as a starting


point for analysis, all possible lexical connections within Afro-Asiatic

are explored, and it lands itself very well to reconstructive purposes

although Takács did not tempt any reconstruction himself.

Hausa (alone) in relation to other HS languages (lexicon,

morphology):

- Schon 1843 (Fulani), 1862 (Hebrew); Robinson 1897 (Berber,

Coptic); Meinhof 1912; Vycichl 1934 (Egyptian); Cohen1947 (HS);

Diakonoff 1965 – 1988 (HS); Hodge 1966 (Egyptian)

Hausa in relation to other Chadic languages

- among others: Barth 1863 (Logone Wandala, Bagirmi, Maba)

besides Songhai, Teda, Kanuri (lexicon, morphology, syntax); Muller

1886 (Musgu); Pilszcikowa 1958, 1960; Greenberg 1955, 1963;

Newman 1966, 1977; Jungraithmayr (1994).

100

0

Fig. 4. Predominance of Hausa in comparative studies

_ Schön, Robinson, Muller, etc. XIX century Cohen 1947

_ Meinhof 1912, Reinisch 1909

_ Hodge 1966, Diakonoff 1988

_Diakonoff 1965

_Pilszcikowa 1958,

1965 Newman 1977

_Greenberg 1963

_Jungraith. 1994

Takacs 1999-2008_

Stolbova,

_Orel 1995

_Vycichl 1934


As we can see in this intuitive graph, the progress in Chadic

comparative studies does not always follow a regular time-line

sequence. In the beginning Hausa was the only Chadic language

studied, but in the mid-sixties an unjustified prevalence in the use of

Hausa data took over in spite of the rich existing material on other

Chadic languages. Hausa never stopped to play a dominant role up to

the end of nineties (Takacs) although this did not influence in a

significant way results of comparative analysis, apart from few very

cases as previously discussed (Jungraithmayr/Ibriszimow 1994).

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The Role of Hausa in Comparative Studies: A Historical Sketch