ABSTRACT

This chapter provides a brief, non-exhaustive overview of the history of African language studies from the early nineteenth century. It focuses on how scholars, particularly those from Germany, transformed the field from a humanistic pursuit to a discipline steeped in natural scientific methodologies. The transformation, which occurred around the turn of the twentieth century, shifted the discipline away from its roots in text-based, philological study, and towards an emphasis on the body's physical production and articulation of sound. The chapter examines the change using the example of the Phonetics Laboratory that officials at the Hamburg Colonial Institute established in 1910 at the request of Carl Meinhof, then Europe's foremost specialist in African languages. As the late Patrick Harries pointed out, most African ethnic categories did not exist before the late nineteenth century, when missionaries researched and standardized their languages. Relationships between African and European missionary linguists were fraught with issues of power imbalance and white domination.