Sonderabdruck aus der ,,Zeitschrift für Eingeborenen-Sprachen''. Bushman Grammar. A grammatical sketch of the language of the /xam-ka-/k'e

Sonderabdruck aus der ,,Zeitschrift für Eingeborenen-Sprachen''. Bushman Grammar. A grammatical sketch of the language of the /xam-ka-/k'e

Publications and Reports

Dorothea Frances Bleek's grammar sketch 'is one of the few linguistic documents on the |xam language', published around the time of her less extensive 1929 'Comparative vocabularies of Bushman languages' (Güldemann, 2004: 385). Aside from the considerable Bleek and Lloyd materials she inherited, Dorothea conducted consequential fieldwork across southern Africa from 1910 to 1930, recorded in her 32 notebooks. Her approach with the |xam lexicon was replicated with other click languages, culminating in her 'Comparative vocabularies of Bushman languages' (1929) and posthumous 'A Bushman dictionary' (1956). Dorothea's later 'comparative' dictionary presents wordlists from 'twenty-nine languages and dialects' as well as her then-new lexical material on Tanzania's Hadza (Engelbrecht in Bleek, 1956: vi). Sandawe and Hottentot, featured in Wilhelm Bleek's 'A comparative grammar of South African languages' (1862), were excluded. Dorothea's 'pioneering' research proposed three distinct language families (Khoe, Ju, and Tuu) for Bushman languages. Her dictionary accordingly spans Khoe-Kwadi (Khoe), Kx'a (Ju), and Tuu (Westphal's '!Ui-Taa') (Güldemann & Fehn, 2014: 36; Güldermann, 2004: 385; Westphal, 1963).

Ink on paper

1928-1929

An ±A5 staple-bound booklet (TS).

Grammar (Bushman), orthography, diacritics, tones, vocabulary, noun (gender), reduplication (of the simple and emphatic forms), pronouns (relative), numerals, adverb, preposition, conjunction

Dorothea Bleek's 'Bushman grammar: a grammatical sketch of the language of the /xam-ka-/k'e' appears in volume XIX, number 2 (1929) of 'Zeitschrift für Eingeborenen-Sprachen', pp. 81-98. This research precedes Dorothea's (1873-1948) culminatory 'A Bushman dictionary' (1956), released eight years after her death (Hewitt, 2008). In Wilhelm Bleek's preface for 'A comparative grammar of South African languages' (1862), he writes that the 'Bushman tongue is [...] insufficiently known', preventing its classification more generally (Bleek, 1862: iii-v, 1, 3). Prevailing criticisms of Dorothea's final dictionary emphasise its poor arrangement, still resembling her typescript drafts, and the 'lack of explanation of the principles of retranscription' (Greenberg, 1957: 495). This opacity strays from the methodological imperatives of Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy Lloyd's 'Bushman researches' (Greenberg, 1957: 495).