The Contributions of Linguistics to the Study of History in Africa
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8977048 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Derek Nurse (Memorial University of Newfoundland, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1997 |
| Volume | 38 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 359-391 |
| Publication date | 1997-11-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Journal of African History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8537 • E-ISSN: 1469-5138 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0021853797007044 |
| OpenAlex | W2069970119 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 31 |
The work of historical and comparative linguists has long interested African historians. By classifying languages into families, linguists provide models of their historical development that may point to historical events and processes that occurred among peoples speaking those languages. Once classified, linguists can then reconstruct earlier forms of present languages, thus providing direct evidence of words, their meanings and historical influences in the past. Finally, linguists seek to explain innovations that are revealed in their reconstructions by pointing to a combination of internal linguistic developments and different forms of contact that occurred among speakers of different languages. Simple classification, based largely on counting cognate words in related languages (a technique known as lexicostatistics), is still a very common activity, however, and thus the one most historians rely on, but lexicostatistics gives only a very limited, and often deceptive, view of language history. Historians should thus be aware of its limitations as well as the potential of a number of important techniques now employed by linguists, including the Comparative Method, reconstruction of ancestral languages, and contact models
Cognate · Comparative method · Historical linguistics · Language contact · Linguistics · Point (geometry · Computer Science · Historical Linguistics and Language Studies · History · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Mathematics · Multilingual Education and Policy · Philosophy
The Macro-Sudan Belt and Niger-Congo Reconstruction
Molecular Perspectives on the Bantu Expansion
Beyond Babel
African Archaeology
La question bantoue
Against Eurocentrism
The genetic relationship between Alune, Lisabata, Luhu, and Wemale (Western Seram, Indonesia)
History and prophecy
When Did Feasting Emerge on the Eastern African Coast? New Perspectives from Historical Linguistics and Archaeology
Into the Minds of Ancients
Bakgomong
A phylogenetic analysis of stable structural features in West African languages
Past and Presentism
Food production, environment, and mobility among Late Iron Age Nguni-speakers of South Africa
Conceptualizing vegetation in the Bantu Expansion
Prehistory and the present
The Power of Language and the Language of Power
Sibling Rivalry? The Intersection of Archeology and History
Genetics and African Cattle Domestication
African Archaeology, Multidisciplinary Reconstructions of Africa’s Recent Past, and Archaeology’s Role in Future Collaborative Research
Finding Meaning in Ancient Swahili Spatial Practices
Neolithic Pottery Traditions from the Islands, the Coast and the Interior of East Africa
Leza, Sungu, and Samba
Towards a critical interdisciplinarity? African history and the reconstruction of universal narratives
Pots, Words and the Bantu Problem
Moving Histories
Untangling the Many Roots of West African Mangrove Rice Farming
Farmers in Pre-Colonial Coastal Guinea
Implicit Personality Conceptions of the Nguni Cultural-Linguistic Groups of South Africa
Middle to Late Holocene Paleoclimatic Change and the Early Bantu Expansion in the Rain Forests of Western Central Africa
The Language of Classic Maya Inscriptions
| Unique citing works | 31 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,19 |
| Citation span | 2000 - 2024 (25) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 29 |