Genetic Linguistics

GENETIC LINGUISTICS

It was Sergey Starostin who first revealed the opulence of the Dené-Sino-Caucasian sound system. But a language lives not only by its sounds, but by the shapes and patterns they form. The inventory of language can be uplifting, intriguing and weird.

Vowels are slurred, they alternate and they shift, become rounded and get two dots placed over them. Sounds apologize, displace, and shift between transitive, intransitive and mediopassive states while a host of affixes perform their functions efficiently.

Sounds are suffused with secrets and mystery, even to the experts. The respective reconstructions of Proto-Nilo-Saharan by the linguists Lionel Bender and Christopher Ehret differ markedly – with Bender proposing 22 consonants against Ehret’s 42.

The Niger-Congo languages with the largest phoneme inventories are Nguni- and Sotho of Southern Africa. Sesotho has 39 consonants and 9 vowels while Xhosa has 66 and 10. And you never knew that those South African languages that incorporated click consonants far surpass those who did not in number of non-click consonants.

Along with Europe’s Caucasus area, Southern Africa holds the record for languages with the highest number of phonemes. The Tuu or southern branch of San has the !Xóõ language which is the absolute champion in this regard.

Consider Nilo-Saharan again, and note how her quirks have flourished and evolved in the mouths of her daughters despite the insufferable areal onslaught and the tyranny of the Sprachbund.

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