Taa ( ), also known as ǃXóõ ( ; , of which this latter name may also be spelled ǃKhong or ǃXoon), and formerly called by the dialect name ǂHoan (also known as Western ǂHoan, to distinguish from Eastern ǂHoan), is a Tuu language notable for its large number of phonemes, perhaps the largest in the world. It is also notable for having perhaps the heaviest functional load of click consonants, with one count finding that 82% of basic vocabulary items started with a click.See Sands & Gunnink (2019) "Clicks on the fringes of the Kalahari Basin Area." In Clem et al. (eds), Theory and Description in African Linguistics: Selected Papers from the 47th Annual Conference on African Linguistics. Language Science Press, Berlin, pp. 703–724. Most speakers live in Botswana, but a few hundred live in Namibia. The people call themselves ǃXoon (pl. ǃXooŋake) or ʼNǀohan (pl. Nǀumde), corresponding to the dialect they speak. In 2011, there were around 2,500 speakers of Taa.
is the word for 'human being'; the local name of the language is , from 'language'. (ǃXóõ) is an ethnonym used at opposite ends of the Taa-speaking area, but not by Taa speakers in between.Gertrud Boden, 2007, ǃQamtee ǀaa ǂXanya: 'the Book of Traditions' : Histories, Texts and Illustrations from the ǃXoon and ʼNǀohan People of Namibia Most living Taa speakers are ethnic ǃXoon or ʼNǀohan.
Taa shares a number of characteristic features with West ǂʼAmkoe and Gǀui, which together are considered part of the Kalahari Basin sprachbund.
Classification Until the rediscovery of a few elderly speakers of Nǁng in the 1990s, Taa was thought to be the last surviving member of the Tuu language family. The Tuu languages are one of the three language families that make up the typological group of Khoisan languages.
Dialects
There is sufficient dialectal variation in Taa that it might be better described as a dialect continuum than a single language. Taa dialects fall into two groups, suggesting a historical spread from west to east:Naumann (2011) "A preliminary classification of Taa dialects".
Taa dialects West Taa: Anthony Traill's West ǃXoon and Dorothea Bleek's Nǀuǁʼen East Taa ǃAma (Western) (Eastern) East ǃXoon (Lone Tree) Tsaasi–ǂHuan Tsaasi ǂHuan
Traill worked primarily with East ǃXoon, and the DoBeS project is working with ʼNǀohan (in East Taa) and West ǃXoon.
Alternate names The various dialects and social groups of the Taa, their many names, the unreliability of transcriptions found in the literature, and the fact that names may be shared between languages and that dialects have been classified, has resulted in a great deal of confusion. Traill (1974), for example, spent two chapters of his Compleat Guide to the Koon [sic] disentangling names and dialects.Yvonne Treis, 1998, "Names of Khoisan Languages and their Variants"
The name ǃXoon (more precisely ǃXóõ) is only used at Aminius Reserve in Namibia, around Lone Tree where Traill primarily worked, and at Dzutshwa (Botswana). It is, however, used by the ǃXoon for all Taa speakers. It has been variously spelled ǃxō, ǃkɔ̃ː, ǃko/ǃkõ, Khong, and the fully anglicized Koon.
Bleek's Nǀuǁʼen dialect has been spelled ǀNuǁen, ǀNuǁe꞉n, Ngǀuǁen, Nguen, Nǀhuǁéi, ŋǀuǁẽin, ŋǀuǁẽi, ŋǀuǁen, ǀuǁen. It has also been called by the ambiguous Khoekhoe term Nǀusan (Nǀu-san, Nǀūsā, Nǀuusaa, Nǀhusi), sometimes rendered Nusan or Noosan, which has been used for other languages in the area. A subgroup was known as Koon . This dialect is apparently extinct.
Westphal studied ǂHuan (ǂhũa) dialect (or ǂHũa-ʘwani), and used this name for the entire language. However, the term is ambiguous between Taa (Western ǂHũa) and ǂʼAmkoe (Eastern ǂHũa), and for this reason Traill chose to call the language ǃXóõ.
Tsaasi dialect is quite similar to ǂHuan, and like ǂHuan, the name is used ambiguously for a dialect of ǂʼAmkoe. This is a Tswana name, variously rendered Tshasi, Tshase, Tʃase, Tsase, Sasi, and Sase.
The Tswana term for Bushmen, Masarwa, is frequently encountered. More specific to the Taa are Magon (Magong) and the Tshasi mentioned above.
The Taa distinguish themselves along at least some of the groups above. Like many San peoples, they also distinguish themselves by the environment they live in (plain people, river people, etc.), and also by direction. Traill reports the following:
"westerners" "southerners" "in-betweeners" "pure people"
Heinz reports that is an exonym given by other Bushmen, and that the Taa call themselves .
The Taa refer to their language as "people's language". Westphal (1971) adopted the word "person" as the name for the Southern Khoisan language family, which is now called Tuu. The East ǃXoon term for the language is ǃxóɲa ǂâã .
Phonology Taa has at least 58 consonants, 31 vowels, and four tones (Traill 1985, 1994 on East ǃXoon), or at least 87 consonants, 20 vowels, and two tones (DoBeS 2008 on West ǃXoon), by many counts the largest segment inventory of any known language (if vowels other than oral modal vowels are counted as unique segments). These include 20 (Traill) or 43 (DoBeS) click consonants and several vowel phonations, though opinions vary as to which of the 122 (DoBeS) or 130 (Traill) consonant sounds are single segments and which are consonant clusters. DoBeS notes that analysis of syllable onsets as clusters would reduce the inventory from 122 to approximately 88 consonants.
Tones Anthony Traill describes four tones for the East ǃXoon dialect: high , mid , low , and mid-falling . Patterns for bisyllabic bases include high-high, mid-mid, mid-mid-falling, and low-low. DoBeS describes only two tonemes, high and low, for the West ǃXoon dialect. By analyzing each base as bimoraic, Traill's four tones are mapped onto [áá], [àá], [àà], and [áà]. Unlike Traill, Naumann does not find a four-way contrast on monomoraic grammatical forms in Eastern ǃXoon data.
In addition to lexical tone, Traill describes East ǃXoon nouns as falling into two tone classes according to the melody induced on concordial morphemes and transitive verbs: either level (Tone Class I) or falling (Tone Class II). Transitive object nouns from Tone Class I trigger mid/mid-rising tone in transitive verbs, while Tone Class 2 objects correlate with any tone contour. Naumann finds the same results in the eastern ʼNǀohan dialect.
Vowels Taa has five vowel qualities, . The Traill and DoBeS descriptions differ in the phonations of these vowels; it's not clear if this reflects a dialectal difference or a difference of analysis.
East ǃXoon (Traill) Traill describes the phonations of the East ǃXoon dialect as plain (e.g. ), murmured (e.g. ), or glottalized (e.g. ). The non-high vowels may also be both glottalized and murmured simultaneously , as well as strident ('sphincteric') . Two vowels, , are both strident and glottalized, yielding 26 vowels not counting nasalization or length.
Murmured vowels after plain consonants contrast with plain vowels after aspirated consonants, and likewise glottalized vowels with ejective consonants, so these are phonations of the vowels and not assimilation with consonant phonation.
Vowels may be long or short, but long vowels may be sequences rather than distinct phonemes. The other vowel quality sequences—better known as diphthongs—disregarding the added complexity of phonation, are .
All plain vowels may be nasalized. No other phonation may be nasalized, but nasalization occurs in combination with other phonations as the second vowel of a sequence ("long vowel" or "diphthong"). These sequences alternate dialectally with vowel plus velar nasal. That is, the name ǃXóõ may be dialectally , and this in turn may be phonemically , since does not occur word-finally. However, this cannot explain the short nasal vowels, so Taa has at least 31 vowels.
For example, a long, glottalized, murmured, nasalized o with falling tone is written , while a long, strident nasalized o with low tone is written , since Traill analyzes stridency as phonemically pharyngealized murmur. (Note that phonetically these are distinct phonations.)
West ǃXoon (DoBeS) DoBeS describes the phonations of the West ǃXoon dialect as plain, a e i o u; nasalized, an en in on un; epiglottalized or pharyngealized, aq eq iq oq uq; strident, aqh eqh iqh oqh uqh; and glottalized or 'tense', aʼ eʼ iʼ oʼ uʼ.
Consonants Taa is unusual in allowing mixed voicing in its consonants. These have been analyzed as prevoiced, but also as consonant clusters. When homorganic, as in [dt], such clusters are listed in the chart below.
Taa consonants are complex, and it is not clear how much of the difference between the dialects is real and how much is an artifact of analysis.
East ǃXoon (Traill) + East ǃXoon dialect: Non-click consonants (Traill 2018)William Bennett (forthcoming) 'Click Phonology', in Sands (ed.) Click Consonants, Brill, p. 102 ff. Labial Dental Alveolar Palatal Velar Uvular Glottal Plosive/Affricate voiced () [] tenuis () voiceless aspirated () prevoiced aspirated () () [] velarized () prevoiced velarizedvoiced lead, voiceless at release voiceless ejective () () () ejective clusterThe final element of all of these varies dialectically between and . () prevoiced ejective"There is voice lead followed by an ejected stop followed by an ejected velar affricate. kχʼ is [kχʼ] or [kχʼq]." Fricative () () Nasal voiced -- - glottalized Other -- -- --
Consonants in parentheses are rare.
The nasal only occurs between vowels, and only word finally (and then only in some dialects, for what are nasal vowels elsewhere), so these may be allophones. also only occur in medial position, except that the last is an allophone of rare initial . and (not in the table) occur in loans, mostly English.
Taa is typologically unusual in having mixed-voice ejectives. Juǀʼhoansi, which is part of the same sprachbund as Taa, has mixed voicing in .
Taa may have as few as 83 click sounds, if the more complex clicks are analyzed as clusters. Given the intricate clusters posited seen in the non-click consonants, it is not surprising that many of the Taa clicks should be analyzed as clusters. However, there is some debate whether these are actually clusters; all non-Khoisan languages in the world that have clusters allow clusters with sonorants like r, l, w, j (as in English tree, sleep, quick, cue), and this does not occur in Taa.
There are five click articulations: bilabial, dental, lateral, alveolar, and palatal. There are nineteen series, differing in phonation, manner, and complexity (see airstream contour). These are perfectly normal consonants in Taa, and indeed are preferred over non-clicks in word-initial position.