Studies in Khoisan Syntax

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This research will address several interrelated issues in the syntax of Khoisan languages, with special attention being given to Hoa. Khoisan is a family of languages spoken in southern Africa. Many of the languages are in danger of dying out in the near future. For example, there are now only around 200 speakers of Hoa and most of these speakers are over 60. There are no children who speak Hoa. This study will attempt to deepen our knowledge of this unique language family by studying several syntactic issues. Since the Khoisan languages have had very little syntactic work done on them (either theoretical or descriptive), the proposed work must of necessity be very descriptive and exploratory. It is to be expected that the results of this research would be of value to researchers in any syntactic framework. The objectives of the research are as follows. First using data that the PI has already collected from Hoa, the PI will do fieldwork with Ju/'hoan in order to give a detailed comparison between the two languages with respect to several syntactic constructions. The syntactic aspects to be compared are the syntax of complements and adjuncts and the syntax of verbal compounds. Second, the PI will extend his syntactic work on Hoa by comparing it to the mutually intelligible dialect called Sasi, and collecting oral texts from Sasi and Hoa. Third, the PI will investigate the interaction of tone and syntax in Hoa, using pitch tracking software. The project is part of a larger project by the PI to write an accurate grammar of Hoa and to explore the syntactic relations between the various Khoisan languages. On a more theoretical level, the results of the project should eventually inform studies of the syntactic position of objects, the classification of languages into symmetrical versus asymmetrical object languages, complex predicates, the relation of compounding to verb serialization, and tone/syntax interactions. The PI is also interested in incorporating his research on African languages into graduate and undergraduate courses on a continuing basis.