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Was there ever a Southern Cushitic Language(Pre-) Ma a?1

Maarten Mous, Bayreuth/Leiden

1. IntroductionDiachronie reconstructions are based on synchronic analyses. As aconsequence, a new synchronic analysis may lead to a different viewon the linguistic history. In this article I will show how a differentperspective on the present-day Situation of the mixed language Ma'ahas consequences for the assumptions and the methodology of the re-construction of its history. I will argue that because Ma'a is a registerrather than an independent language, its lexical sources are manifold.Once w e leave aside the assumption that the source for the Ma'aregister is ideally one (Cushitic) language, we can recognise, amongothers, tw o distinct Cushitic sources: a Southern Cushitic language thatis very close to Iraqw and an Eastern Cushitic source. Conflatingthese two distinct sources has lead Ehret to postulate an independentbranch pre-Ma'a within the Southern Cushitic group but distinct fromcore Southern Cushitic. Distinguishing the two Cushitic sources for theMa'a lexicon makes such a hypothetical lang uage pre-M a'a super-fluous.The common picture of Ma'a is that of a language displaying anintruiging mixture of Cushitic roots embedded in a Bantu grammar.The Bantu element is main ly Pare. Pare is the area where the peopleused to live. Shambala (Bantu) is the dominant language where theylive nowadays. Greenberg classified Ma'a as Southern Cushitic(Greenberg 1966:49). Thomason questioned the validity of such aclassification on lexicon only when grammar points to anotherdirection. But she does not disagree on the classification of PRE-Ma'a,because she too assumes an origin in a Southern Cushitic language,that is gradually but heavily Bantuised (Thomason 1983)2 Ehret1 I am grateful to Christopher Ehret and other members of the audience atthe oral presentation of this paper, in particular Dick Hayward andHans-Jrgen Sasse, for their useful suggestions and criticism. I also thankHarry Stroomer for use of his dictionary files on Boraana-Oromo. Thefieldwork on which this article is based was sponsored by the Deutsche

Forschungsgemeinschaft, Sonderforschungsbereich 214 Identitt in Afrika,Teilprojekt A 5. Essential in her argumentation is the evidence of supposedly Cushitic

o/

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Maarten Mouscollected for his reconstruction of Southern Cushitic a large amoun t oflexical data on the individual Southern Cushitic languages, inc ludingMa'a. Assuming an original Cushitic speaking Communi ty he seesevidence for thei r former language in every instance of a Cushitic rootin Ma'a. In an addit ional table , Ehret (1980:320-337) includes recon-structions of Southern Cushitic vocabulary on the sole evidence of anattestation in Ma'a only and an Afroasiatic language outside of theSouthern Cushitic group. Thus Ma'a m-harega 'arm' and Oromo harka'arm' brings him to the reconstruction of proto-SC *haraka- 'arm'despite the lack of cognates in Southern Cushitic. See our table (3).As a matter of principle it makes of course sense to keep the n um b e rof factors involved as low as possible and to assume only oneCushitic source. The synchronic Situation, however, is atypical enoughto be cautious wi th the b l ind applicat ion of heuristic methods . Acrucial factor is the relat ion between the so-called mixed languageMa'a and the non-mixed, Bantu language Mbugu , a s explained in thenex t paragraph.

morphology in Ma'a for which she relies on Ehret. I disagree with herand with Ehret on the Cushitic nature of these elements. It goes beyondth e scope of this article to refute all the exarnples. Two wil l have to do.First, the pro-clitic locative h- is not the Southern Cushitic *ha 'this' inIR h ami 'now' (Ehret 1980:304) but the regulr reflex of the Bantulocative class 16 in Pare.Second, The non-Bantu non-lexical elements in Ma'a are not productive .Closest to productivity comes the causative suffix -ti. This suffix occurs ina number of Ma'a verbs where the Mbugu paral lel has the Pare causativesuffix -ij, which is also used for newly formed causatives. Ehret arguesthat -ti comes from a SC suffix -t expressing stative (or middle voice,which by itself mak es verbs intr an sitiv e). This suffix SC -t can befollowed by the causative suffix -iis. In such a com bi na tion the M a'acausative must have arisen after loss of the final c on son an t and reinter-pretation of the remaining -ti, cf . Ehret (1980:63). Although this scenariocannot be ruled out, it is subject to doubt. The combina t ion -t-iis indeedexists in SC languages but it is very rare, while another com binat ion witha causative suffix, -m-iis is common. Thus one would expect -m i ratherthan -ti for the Ma'a causative if i t came about through this path.Moreover for none of the Ma'a verbs in -ti has a SC cognate with a such

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W as There Ever A Southern Cushit ic Language (Pre-) Ma'a?2. A new synchronic view on Ma aSo far , researchers have concentrated their attention to the mixedlanguage Ma'a and have mentioned the existence of anothcr,non-mixed Bantu language Mbugu only in passing. However, the twolanguages cannot be seen independent from each other for the follow-ing reasons:1) All people speaking Ma'a also know Mbugu (but not the other wayaround).2) Ma'a and Mbugu share the same grammar . This grammar is mostlyPare. The Cushitic morphology that is claimed for Ma'a is notproductive (or non-existent or not Cushitic), se e note 2. For anoverview of the g r a m m a r in common of both Ma'a and Mbugu, se eMous (1994).3) Lexical i tcms in Mbugu and Ma'a are perfect parallels: tw o wordforms (one Mbugu, one Ma'a) are l inked to one shared meaningincluding metaphorical extensions, and one morphological subcate-gorisation such s noun class, verbal derivational suffix, semanticcharacterisation of complemeiits, Aktionsart . For details on Ma'a as aregister se e Mous (to appeai).Thus, Ma'a and Mbugu are one language. The m ixed language Ma'a isa Icxical register of Mbugu. The word forms of this deviant registerare:

(1) transformed Mbugu words, or(2) loans from a rnge of other languages, or(3) words of uncertain origin

Under (1) , transformed Mbugu words, I categorise words such sndat (Ma a) 'stick' from Mbugu (and Pare) ndat. Ma'a words incategory (2) arc from Zigua, Sagala, Shambala (all Bantu), Maasai(Nilotic), or Cushitic. Both (1) and (2) are well-known strategies forregister formation. Another strategy in creating a register is to coincomplete ly new words. If that has happened at all in the case ofMa'a, such cases would fall under (3).The major part of this paper will be about the Cushitic sources, butfirst we wan t to establish the mul t i tude of sources for Ma'a lexis. Foreach non-Cushitic source language of Ma'a lexis the fol lowing table

O

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Maarten Mouscontains a number of examples. The first item is Ma a, the second thesource language.3

Table (1) Ma'a loans from several sourcesSagala [from Wray (1894)]:

i-hlari (5/6) cloud

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Was There Ever A Southern Cushitic Language (Pre-) Ma'a?Maasai [from Mol (1978)]:

i-diye (5/6) dog

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Maar t en Moussingular/plural pair for cow. There is one word, w (9/10) 'cow,cattle ; and the word d (9/10) is used for 'goat ' suggesting an Oromoorigin from ree 'goat' in Boraana-Oromo.- The word i- ahlta 'room where the fire and the small stock iskept is bui l t on the word ahla 'fire', a Ma a loan from Iraqw,fol lowing the pattern of the Maasai word ol-aleta place where smal lan ima ls are kept'.Recapitulat ing we can say that Ma a is a register of Mbugu. One wayof building this register is by borrowing words from a variety oflanguages. For these lexical borrowings we must assume some contactbut not an intense and prolongued relationship. The crucial point isthat because of this register character and the way it is formed thercis no necessity to de l im i t the num be r of Cushitic sources to one outof principle when the data point to more. We wi l l now concentra te onthe Cushitic sources and show that there are at least tw o differentCushitic sources. One Southern Cushitic, one Eastern Cushitic.3. Two Cushitic sources, not oneWords that are Southern Cushit ic and not Eastern Cushitic are givenin table 2. M a n y more words could have been given here. Theselection is restricted to those words that give evidence for aparticular West-Rift Southern Cushitic source.

Table (2) Some Ma a words of West Rif t SC origini- ohl (5/6) 'cheek' < IR: /unhl; WR: /untlay-asem (5/6) *breast (female) ' < IR: iseemo (pi) WR: isamolu-harem (11/10) 'hrn' (also luxarem) < IR: xareemi (pi); WR:xadamo

we (v) buy < IR: weer-iis to seil (containing causative)'; WR:beeriis

a (v) eat < IR: /ay; WR: /agkwaha (v) be tired' < WR: kwahh-as rest ; not IR, but GOlu-habi (11/10) 'firewood' < WR: xaabi 'charcoal', IR: xa awi, GO:xaawi

ma- iba (6) 'mi lk ' < WR: iliba, IR: ilwa, Sw: maziwaihl (aj) 'unripe, bad < IR: /eetl 'fresh'; no WRbre (9) 'short rainy season' < IR: buhare 'rainy season ; no WR

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Was There Ever A Southern Cushitic Language (Pre-) Ma'a?m-lag (1/2)'wom an , wife ' < IR: lage cow-name for cow acquired

in a war, also in Mbugwe; no WRm-h (1/2) person < IR: hee; WR: hiid-m-m (1/2) (Bumbuli) 'person ' < IR: muu 'people' no WRsa (9/10) 'wind, cold IR: tsa be cool ; no WRThere are indicat ions that the Southern Cushit ic source is Iraqw, or

pre-Iraqw. First, Ma a shares some lexical innovations with Iraqw (thei t ems marked wi th 'n o W R1). Second, Ma a seems to share wi th Iraqwthe lenit ion of West-Rif t voiced stops, d > r, b > w, g > y, cf.Ehret (1980:87) or E lde rk in (1988:84), as we can see in lu-harem,we, possibly m-h and , but not in lu-habi, ma- iba. Third , thevowel e in lu-harem and yasem points to Iraqw as the source.Against Iraqw as the source language counts the item kwha betired', from W R kwahh-as, which does not exist in Iraqw, but it doesin Gorwa , the closest relat ive of Iraqw - Iraqw and Gorwa aremutua l ly in te l l igab le . T he Southern Cushitic source w as most probablypre-Iraqw at the period when the lenit ion rule w as less far advancedand w h e n kwahhas was not yet replaced.Table (3) presents some of the Eastern Cushit ic cognates for Ma a.T he Ma a w ords are take n from the Ma a register only, not fromMbugu (Pare) , which does contain some (Eastern-)Cushitic loans. Foreaxample kuri dog is Cushit ic and Mbugu, but not Ma a an d is notof our p r imary concern here.For comparison wi th Eas tern Cushi t ic I took Kenyan Boraana O r o m ofrom St room er (1994) , or O romo f rom G amta (1989) or Gragg (1982).On ly the lat ter two are indicated as such. T he choice for O r o m o isbecause it is the closest well-documented Eastern Cushitic language. Idon't mean to claim that the source language for these EasternCushit ic loans in Ma a w as Oromo .

Table (3) Eastern Cushit ic words in Ma afwaru 'sing'

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Maarten Mousi-tiro (5/6) 'liver

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W as There Ever A Southern Cushitic Language (Pre-) Ma a?The Eastem Cushitic elements in Ma'a still have to be compared to asimilar Cushitic influence in various Bantu languages in the wider area(Sagala and otherwise Taita-Bantu, Ilwana), before w e can re-evaluatethe historical interpretation of this substratum. Ehret and Nurse (1981)proposed tw o now-extinct SC languages on the basis of loan words inTaita-Bantu languages. An indication that Oromo is not the EasternCushitic Source is the Ma'a word ka-wah 'knife' from proto EasternCushitic *warhhan 'spear' - warhhan 'knife1 in Rendille - but notfrom Oromo since Oromo has woraana (Sasse 1979:37). Nor is thereevidence for an Southern Cushitic source for this root.Eastern Cushitic, represented by Oromo, and Southern Cushitic areonly distanctly related. The Eastem Cushitic cognates for Ma a couldtheoretically be retentions of Cushitic that were lost in the rest ofSouthern Cushitic, as Ehret argues in his table 2, see introduction.Some of the Ma'a loans from EC have retentions in SC and thesemay serve to show that the Ma'a words are from the EC source ratherthan from SC. The following Ma'a words are in form or meaningcloser towards EC than to the WR-SC cognate.

minda (9/10) 'house' < OR: mana, mina; W R: maram-mf lo (1/2) '(my) child' < OR: miiloo 'offspring from the

same ancestor'; BU- mela 'unmarried man's hut 'Estabiishing etymologies for Ma'a words is a tricky business. Not onlybecause of the wiJe rnge of possible source languages, but alsobecause of the effect of one of the adaptation rules: trunca te the lastsyllable(s). Such a rule has surely operated for a number of words inMa'a and can even be evidenced from synchronic Variation, forexample Ma'a kwa 'path' alternates with kwahli. Due to this rule it issometimes difficult or impossible to choose the best cognate, see (4).Such unclear cases are naturally not used in the argumentation above.(4) Methodelogical difficulties because of the truncation rule:

r (v) 'dance'

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Maarten Mous4. ConclusionIf one does not separate the two Cushitic sources, and if oneconsiders all the Cushitic material of Ma'a to be of one source, theresult automat ica l ly becomes a SC pre-Ma a as a separate branch fromcore-Southern-Cushitic and somewhat half-way between core-SC andEC.Whether one does or does not consider the possibility of separatesources for the non-Bantu vocabulary in Ma'a depends on one's viewof the synchronic Situation. Clearly m y analysis of the present-daySituation makes it easier to accept various lexical sources.Sep arating the tw o C ushitic sources does n ot exclude the possib ilitythat there once was a Cushitic language pre-Ma'a. If so, this languagewas most probably EC and the items indicated as EC loan in Ma'awould be EC retentions. On the other hand, there is no evidence fora separate branch pre-Ma a within Southern Cushit ic. Ma'a lexis shouldnot be used as sole evidence in the reconstruction of proto languages.ReferencesAgostini, Francesco, Annarita Pugliel l i & Ciise Moxamed Siyaad e.a.

1985. Dizionario Somalo-Italiano. Rome: Gangemi Editore .Ehret, Christopher. 1980. The historica reconstruction of SouthernCushitic phonology and vocabulary. (Klner Bei t rge zur Afr ikani -stik, vol. 5) Berl in: D iet r ich Reim er,

Ehret, Christopher and Derek Nurse. 1981. The Taita Cushites.Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika (SUGIA) 3: 125-168.Elderkin, E. Derek. 1988. Person and nu m b er m arkers in Iraqw verbs.

Afrikanistische Arbeitspapiere 14: 79-96.Parier. 1885. Appendix to A.D. Shaw A pocket dictionary of the Ki-Swahili Ki-Nyika, Ki-Taita and Ki-Kamba languages. London:S.P.C.K.

Gamta, Tilahun. 1989. Oromo-English dictionary. Addis Abeba : AddisAbeba Universi ty.Gragg, Gene B. (ed.) 1982. Oromo dictionary. (Monograph, vol . 12)

East Lansing (MI): African Studies Center, Michigan State Uni-versity.

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Was There Ever A Southern Cushitic Language (Pre-) Ma'a?Greenberg, Joseph H . 1966. The languages of Africa. Blooming ton :Indiana Univers i ty .Hayward, Dick [Richard] 1984. The Arbore language: A firstinvestigation. (Cushitic Language Studies, vol. 2) Hamburg: HelmutBuske.Kagaya, Ryohei. 1989. A classified vocabulary of the Pare language.(Bantu Vocabulary Series , vol . 6) Tokyo: ILCAA.LangHeinrich, F . 1925. Schambala-Wrterbuch. (Abhandlungen desHamburgischen Kolonial inst i tuts , 43; Reihe B: Vlkerkunde, Kultur-geschichte und Sprachen, 23.) Hamburg: L. Friederichsen.Meinhof , Carl . 1906. Linguistische Studien in Ostafrika X: Mbugu.Mitteilungen des Seminars f r orientalische Sprachen 9: 294-323.Mol, Frans. [1978] Maa: A dictionary of the Maasai language andfolklore English-Maasai. Nai rob i : Marke t ing and Publ i sh ing .Mous, Maarten. 1994. Ma'a or Mbugu, in : Mixed languages: 15 casestudies in language intertwining, ed. P. Bakker and M. Mous, pp.175-201. Amsterdam: IFOTT. . Ma'a s an ethno-reg'.ster of Mbugu. (To appear in Sprache undGeschichte in Afrika.)Sasse, H ans-Jrge n. 1979. The consonant phonemes of Proto-East-Cushitic (PEC): A first approx imat ion . Afroasiatic Linguistics vol.7 /1 . Mal ibu (CA) : U n d e n a Publicat ions.Stroomer, Harry. 1995. A G r a m m a r of Boraana Oromo (Kenya)(Cushitic Language Studies, vol. 11). Cologne: Rdiger Koppe.Thomason, Sarah. 1983. Genet ica l relat ionships and the case of Ma'a(Mbugu). Studies in African Linguistics vol. 14: 195-231.Wray, J.A. 1894. A n elemcntary introduction to the Taita language.London.