Nama is spoken in South West Africa by approximately 115 000 people of different ethnic groups. The numerically biggest groups speaking the Nama language are the Damara (75 000) and the Nama (38 000). Certain smaller Bushman groups use Nama as well. Nama is the last survivor of the "classical Hottentott" (Khoekhoen) languages that is still spoken on a fairly extensive basis. The differences between the dialect spoken by the Nama, and the dialect spoken by the Damara south of the Huab River are negligible. This dissertation is, however, explicitly confined to Nama as spoken by the Nama people. This proforma limitation has to be made, as the material on syntax was recorded and checked with Nama informants only. The claim by certain Damara that they speak "Damara", a language not to be confused with Nama, can in our opinion not be upheld on linguistic grounds. Object and objective: Several handbooks have been published on Nama. Yet no significant progress has been made in recent years in the understanding of the nature of this language. Ever since Vedder's handwritten manuscript appeared in 1909, his "school-grammar" approach to Nama has been adopted by subsequent authors. Olpp revised Vedder's handbook in 1917. It was printed some forty-five years later, in 1963. In 1965 Rust's handbook appeared, which is based on the manuscripts by Vedder and Olpp. In 1964 Olpp's handbook was furthermore translated into Afrikaans by J.C. van Loggerenberg. His translation in turn was transcribed into the standard orthography and moderately revised by H.J.Kruger in 1972 (publication forthcoming). A scholarly re-assessment of Nama grammar by Otto Dempwolff in 1934 apparently went largely unnoticed by more recent authors. It is thus for more than sixty years that Vedder's approach to Nama grammar has been adopted almost entirely for the purpose of writing handbooks. It cannot be overlooked that a grammatical model for European languages - in particular for Latin and German - has been imposed on Nama, as will be illustrated in the next section. The result is that the handbooks fail to reveal certain underlying regularities that are essential to an understanding of the grammatical principles of Nama. Hence some serious misconceptions are prevailing in the current literature, and several accounts of grammatical processes in Nama are confusing and complicated. In this light this dissertation hopes to serve a dual purpose: It aims to provide additional descriptive material on certain aspects of Nama that have not yet been covered in existing literature; but in doing so, a satisfactory theory must be found that can adequately serve as infrastructure (working basis) for the description of Nama. The theory that is proposed is sketched in outline. It will be cause for personal satisfaction if this theory will show the way for future research and for the construction of a detailed theory of Nama grammar. Only one aspect has been selected for discussion: the NOUN-PHRASE. This topic has been chosen as nominalization is one of the most important features of Nama grammar. Nominalization is moreover that aspect of Nama syntax which is the most mispresented. This dissertation should not be seen as a theoretical work: It should rather be seen as a descriptive work on Nama. A re-assessment of some of the material available in existing handbooks should lead to a better understanding of the mechanisms at work. It is hoped that this restatement is the major contribution, as it affects all the aspects of Nama syntax, not only the NOUN-PHRASE. That material which has been recorded for the first time is presented in order to substantiate the grammatical theory. But it should also have its merit simply as a contribution towards the factual knowledge about Nama.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:uct/oai:localhost:11427/16618 |
| Date | January 1976 |
| Creators | Haacke, Wilfrid H G |
| Contributors | Westphal, E O J |
| Publisher | University of Cape Town, Faculty of Humanities, African Languages and Literatures |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Master Thesis, Masters, MA |
| Format | application/pdf |
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