Kwadi language

Kwadi /ˈkwɑːdi/ is an extinct "click language" once spoken in the southwest corner of Angola. It became extinct around 1960. There were only fifty Kwadi in the 1950s, of whom only 4–5 were competent speakers of the language. Three partial speakers were known in 1965, but in 1981 no speakers could be found. Salvage work was carried out 2014 with two remembers who had acquired the language from an old speaker while they were children.^[3]

Kwadi
ǃKwaǀtse
Native to	Angola
Ethnicity	Kwadi
Extinct	1960s-80s
Language family	Khoe–Kwadi[1][2] Kwadi
Dialects	Zorotua
Language codes
ISO 639-3	kwz
Linguist List	kwz
Glottolog	kwad1244

Although Kwadi is poorly attested, there is enough data to show that it is a divergent member of the Khoe family, or perhaps cognate with the Khoe languages in a Khoe–Kwadi family. It preserved elements of proto-Khoe that were lost in the western Khoe languages under the influence of Kxʼa languages in Botswana,^[4] and other elements that were lost in the eastern Khoe languages.^[1]

The Kwadi people, called Kwepe (Cuepe) by the Bantu, appear to have been a remnant population of southwestern African hunter-gatherers, otherwise only represented by the Cimba, Kwisi, and the Damara, who adopted the Khoekhoe language. Like the Kwisi they were fishermen, on the lower reaches of the Coroca River.^[5]

Kwadi was alternatively known by varieties of the words Koroka (Ba-koroka, Curoca, Ma-koroko, Mu-coroca) and Cuanhoca.

Phonology

Vowels

Kwadi is tentatively reconstructed as having the seven oral vowels /a ɛ e i ɔ o u/ the three nasal vowels /ã ĩ ũ/. Diphthongs seem to have been (/ai/), /ao/, /au/, /oa/, /oe/, /oɛ/, /ua/, /ui/ and /ãĩ/, /ũã/. The status of /ao/ is not certain, and /oa/, /ua/ may have been allophones.^[3]

Tones

The tone system is unclear, due to limited data and to the poor quality of recordings. At least two tones (high and low) are necessary to explain that data:^[1]

[ʔáú] 'dog', [ʔáù] 'fish'

[k’ó] 'meat', [k’ò] 'man, male'

Consonants

The following consonants are attested. Those is parentheses are doubtful: they are either found in only a single lexeme, or are plausible allophones of another consonant.^[3]

		Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Lateral	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Nasal		m	ŋǀ	n		ɲ	ŋ
		mb		nd		ɲɟ	ŋɡ
Stop	voiceless	p, pʲ		t, tsʷ		c	k, kʷ	(q)	ʔ, ʔʲ
	voiced	b		d, dʷ		ɟ	ɡ, ɡʷ
	aspirated	pʰ	ᵑ̊ǀʰ	tʰ		cʰ	kʰ
	glottalized		ᵑ̊ǀˀ	tʼ		cʼ	kʼ
Affricate		(pf)		ts	tɬ		(kx)
				dz
				tsʰ	(tɬʰ)
				tsʼ	tɬʼ			qχ’
Fricative	voiceless	f	(θ)	s		( ʃ )	x	χ	h
	voiced	v	(ð)
	glottalized						xʼ
Trill								ʀ̥
Approximant		w			l	j

Only dental clicks remain. Proto-Khoe–Kwadi *ǃ, *ǂ, *ǁ are replaced with non-click consonants such as /c, tɬ, c’, tɬ’, x’, ʔʲ/.^[1]

In disyllabic words, the second consonant is predominantly /m/, /n/, /l/, /d/, /b/, and it is possible those were the only consonants allowed within morphemes in native words, as would be typical for the area.^[3]

Morphology

Pronouns

Kwadi has personal pronouns for first and second person in singular, dual, and plural numbers. Pronouns have subject, object, and possessive cases.^[6] 1st person plural may have distinguished clusivity. Object pronouns are suffixed with -le/-de, except for the first person dual object pronoun, which is just mu. Possessive pronouns are the same as the subject form, except for the first person singular possessive pronoun, which is tʃi. Third person pronouns are simply the demonstratives, which are formed with a demonstrative base ha- followed by a gender/number suffix.^[7]

Personal Pronouns

		singular	dual	plural
1st		ta	ʔamu ~ hamu	ʔala (EXCL) ʔuhina, hina (INCL?)
2nd		sá	uwa ~ huwa	ʔu ~ hu
3rd	masc	háde	hawa	hau
	fem	hɛɛ (< ha-e)		haʔe

The known possessive pronouns are tʃi 'my' and ha 'his'. From the Khoe languages, it's not expected that all pronouns have distinctive possessive forms.

Nouns

Kwadi nouns distinguished three genders (masculine, feminine, and common), as well as three numbers (singular, dual, and plural).^[8] Some nouns form their plural with suppletion. For example: tçe "woman" vs. tala kwaʼe "women". The attested paradigm of nominal suffixes for masculine and feminine nouns is given below.

	singular	dual	plural
Masculine	-dɛ	-wa	-u
Feminine	-e		-ʔɛ
Common	-(n)dɛ		-ʔV

See also

• Kwisi people

References

1. Fehn, Anne-Maria. (2020). Towards a reconstruction of Proto Khoe-Kwadi: The challenges (and benefits!) of applying the historical-comparative method to archival data. Handout of paper presented at the Zoom meeting of the KBA Network, 15 October 2020.
2. Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Khoe–Kwadi". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
3. Anne-Maria Fehn & Jorge Rocha (2023) Lost in translation: A historical-comparative reconstruction of Proto-Khoe-Kwadi based on archival data. Diachronica 40:5, p. 609–665.
4. Güldemann, Tom (August 2006). Changing profile when encroaching on hunter-gatherer territory?: towards a history of the Khoe–Kwadi family in southern Africa. Historical linguistics and hunter-gatherer populations in global perspective. Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
5. Roger, Blench (1999). "Are the African Pygmies an Ethnographic Fiction?". In Biesbrouck; Elders; Rossel (eds.). Challenging Elusiveness: Central African Hunter-Gatherers in a Multidisciplinary Perspective (PDF). Leiden. pp. 41–60. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-01-26. Retrieved 2011-10-26.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
6. Güldemann, Tom (2013). "Morphology: 3.5 Kwadi". In Vossen, Rainer (ed.). The Khoesan Languages. Routledge Language Family Series. New York: Routledge. pp. 261–263.
7. Fehn, Anne-Maria (24 November 2020). Preliminary notes on Kwadi grammar and implications for the morphological reconstruction of proto Khoe-Kwadi. Berlin Colloquium on African Linguistics.
8. Westphal 1971: 395

External links

• Kwadi basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database