ABSTRACT
The Chadic language family, which is a constituent part of the Afroasiatic phylum, contains some 140 languages spoken in the sub-Saharan region west, south and east of Lake Chad. The exact number of languages is not known since new languages continue to be discovered while other supposedly independent languages turn out to be mere dialects or terminological variants. The most important and best-known Chadic language is Hausa. Other Chadic languages are considerably smaller, ranging from a quarter of a million speakers to less than a thousand. Most of the languages at the lower end of the spectrum are now seriously endangered. The languages in the family fall into three major branches plus a fourth independent
branch. The West Chadic Branch, which includes Hausa, contains about 60 languages divided into seven groups. All of these languages are spoken in northern Nigeria. The Biu-Mandara (or Central) Branch contains over 45 languages, assigned to eleven groups, extending from the Gongola and Benue river basins in Nigeria to the Mandara Mountains in Cameroon. The East Chadic Branch contains about 25 languages belonging to six groups. These are scattered across central Chad in a southwest-northeast direction from the Cameroon border to the Sudan border. The Masa Branch consists of a single group of some half a dozen closely related languages spoken between the most southeasterly Biu-Mandara languages and the most southwesterly East Chadic languages. A comprehensive list of Chadic languages organised by branch and group is given in Table 36.1. Within each group, the languages are listed alphabetically rather than according to closeness of relationship. Names in parentheses indicate alternative nomenclature or dialect variants. Although the relationship of Chadic (originally only Hausa) to other Afroasiatic lan-
guages was proposed some 150 years ago, it has gained general acceptance only within the last quarter of a century. The inclusion of Chadic within Afroasiatic is based on the presence of features such as the following: (a) a formative t indicating feminine, diminutive and singulative; (b) an n/t/n ‘masculine/feminine/plural’ agreement marking pattern in the deictic system; (c) an m-prefix forming agential, instrumental and locational nouns;
(d) formation of noun plurals inter alia by a suffix -n and an infix -a-; (e) a common pronominal paradigm; (f) a pattern of suppletive imperatives with the verbs ‘come’ and ‘go’; (g) shared gender specification of individual words; and (h) cognate items for basic vocabulary including ‘body’, ‘die’, ‘drink’, ‘fire’, ‘know’, ‘name’, ‘water’ and ‘what’. Some scholars have suggested that Chadic is the most distant Afroasiatic family member (apart from Omotic), while others have suggested an especially close tie with Berber; but, so far, such proposals have been made essentially on impressionistic grounds. Chadic languages belonging to separate groups appear quite different from one
another, reflecting the great time depth within the family; nevertheless, they invariably can be identified as Chadic because of shared core features. In describing common Chadic characteristics, it should be kept in mind that these features are neither present
necessarily for Proto-Chadic. All Chadic languages, as far as we are aware, are tonal. One finds simple two-tone
systems (Margi), two tones plus downstep (Kanakuru), three tones (Tera) and three tones plus downstep (Ga’anda). Vowel systems range from two vowels, /@/ and /a/ (as in Mandara), to seven vowels, /i e e a O o u/ plus distinctive vowel length (as in Dangla). Cross-height vowel harmony of the common West African type is rare in Chadic but it does occur, inexplicably, in Tangale. A typical Chadic feature is to have a different number of vowel contrasts depending on the position within a word. Old Hausa, for example, had two vowels initially, three plus vowel length medially and five vowels without a length contrast finally. Most Chadic languages have a set of glottalised consonants (usually laryngealised or implosive) in addition to the voiced and voiceless ones. Goemai and a few other languages in the same subgroup have the unusual feature of contrasting ejective and implosive consonants at the same position of articulation, e.g. /p’/ vs /ɓ/, /ť/ vs /ɗ/. While the glottal stop /?/ occurs as a phoneme in many languages, it invariably represents a secondary historical development: it is not reconstructable for Proto-Chadic. Finally, one should note the widespread presence of lateral fricatives (/ɬ/ and /ɮ/) throughout the family. They have been lost in the East Chadic Branch and in some sub-branches of West Chadic, but elsewhere they are extremely common. In the realm of morphosyntax, Chadic languages typically have pluractional verb
stems (formerly called ‘intensives’) that indicate the plurality of action, i.e. action done a number of times, by a number of subjects or affecting a number of objects. These pluractional stems are formed by reduplication, gemination and/or by insertion of an internal -a-, e.g. Ga’anda ɓ@l-‘kill’, ɓ@ɓal-‘kill many’. In a few languages, the use of pluractional stems has become grammaticalised, resulting in ergative-type number agreement, i.e. obligatory use of pluractional stems with plural subjects of intransitive verbs and plural objects of transitive verbs, e.g. Kanakuru nà ɗòpè gámíníì ‘I tied the rams’; (ɗope < *ɗoppe); gámíníì wù ɗòpò-wú ‘the rams are tied’; cf. wù ɗòwè gámíì ‘they tied the ram’; gámíì à ɗòwè-ní ‘the ram is tied’. The Kanakuru examples illustrate another distinctive Chadic feature (but with scattered distribution), namely the so-called ICP (‘Intransitive Copy Pronoun’) construction. In various languages, all or some intransitive verbs optionally or obligatorily suffix a pronoun that copies the person and number of the subject. In Ngizim, for example, the use of the ICP is optional and adds an extra meaning of completeness to the verb phrase. In Kanakuru, on the other hand, the use of the ICP is obligatory with all intransitive verbs, but limited to certain tenses, e.g. kà pòrò-kó ‘you went out’, not *kà pòró; kíléì à tàɗè-ní ‘the pot broke’, cf. à tàɗè kíléì ‘he broke the pot’. Note that ICPs in Chadic are different from reflexive pronouns in both form and function, the latter typically consisting of the noun for ‘head’ or ‘body’ plus a possessive pronoun and occurring syntactically as the direct object of a transitive verb. Verbs in Chadic typically employ derivational extensions indicating action in, towards,
down, up, away or totally or partially done. Sometimes the extensions are more grammatical in nature, indicating benefactive, perfective or transitivisation. In some languages, such as Tera, the extensions are separate particles; in some, such as Margi, they are semi-bound suffixes; in others, such as Hausa, they have become fused into the verb stem. Grammatical gender in Chadic is a fairly straightforward phenomenon that goes back
to Proto-Chadic (and more distantly to Proto-Afroasiatic as well). The many Chadic
all having dently a number of times at the level of language, group, subgroup and cluster. Languages that have gender invariably distinguish two genders (masculine and feminine) and in the singular only. Gender distinctions are absent in the plural. In the pronominal system, gender is typically marked in the second as well as the third person. Regarding word order, Chadic languages are prepositional and place the possessor
following the thing possessed. Many languages distinguish inalienable possession formed by simple juxtaposition from alienable possession, which makes use of a connecting particle, e.g. Tera ɮ@mnd@-ro ‘your ear’ vs kaskar ɓa-ro ‘your sword’. Attributive adjectives usually follow the noun being modified and numerals invariably follow the noun. The most common order for verbal sentences is S(ubject)–V(erb)–O(bject), this almost certainly being the basic order in Proto-Chadic. SOV in Chadic is unattested. VSO does occur in a small number of Biu-Mandara languages spoken in the Nigerian-Cameroon border region; evidence suggests that this represents an areal innovation rather than being an archaic feature of the family.
