Lexicostatistical studies in Khoisan II/2: Towards a more precise phylogeny for the Tuu family

Journal of Language Relationship. 2022. Vol. 20. No. 1-2. P. 25–70.

Starostin G.

The paper is the second part of an extensive study aimed at clarifying the internal relationships within the Tuu (Southern Khoisan) linguistic family of South Africa and reconstructing a reasonably accurate Swadesh wordlist for Proto-Tuu. In this section, I first investigate the issue of extensive areal contact between two languages belonging to two different subgroups of Tuu (Nǁng and ǀ’Auni), filtering out potential borrowings from the former into the latter which may obscure both etymological judgement and lexicostatistical calculations. Next, lexicostatistical matrices and resulting phylogenetic trees are offered for the entire family, demonstrating that a ternary model, in which Proto-Tuu splits into three more or less equidistant branches (!Ui, Nossob, and Taa), is likely preferable to any possible binary models; arguments for a closer proximity between Nossob and Taa are analyzed and found generally inconclusive. Finally, some remarks are made about the reconstructibility of the Swadesh wordlist for Proto-Tuu and on some of its peculiar properties as compared to attested Tuu languages. The Appendix section contains the entire second half of the Swadesh wordlist (items 51–100) as reconstructed on intermediate levels and on the Proto-Tuu level.

Keywords: Historical Linguistics, сравнительно-историческое языкознание, койсанские языки, языки Африки, Khoisan languages, languages of Africa

Publication based on the results of: The inner and outer dynamics of cultural processes in the Oriental societies and its traditional foundations: languages, history and religion (2022)