The Siddis are a unique Indian tribe of African, South Asian, and European ancestry. While previous investigations have traced their ancestral origins to the Bantu populations from subSaharan Africa, the geographic localization of their ancestry has remained elusive. Here, we performed biogeographical analysis to delineate the ancestral origin of the Siddis employing an admixture based algorith...

Theories of early learning of nouns in children's vocabularies divide into those that emphasize input (language and non-linguistic aspects) and those that emphasize child conceptualisation. Most data though come from production alone, assuming that learning a word equals speaking it. Methodological issues can mean production and comprehension data within or across input languages are not compar...

Abstract We give an overview of current research questions pursued in connection with ongoing project on nominal classification systems Africa, a particular focus Niger-Congo. first introduce our cross-linguistically applicable methodological approach which provides new insights into the design range gender continent. then apply these ideas to “noun class” non-canonical phenomena poorly known l...

This paper, based on original fieldwork, presents an analysis of locative morphemes in the Bantu language Mushunguli (Somalia). This is the first formal analysis of locatives in any Bantu language. The Mushunguli data motivate the claim that points of view, abstract entities consisting of a location and an orientation, are arguments of some spatial expressions. Incorporating such points of view...

Africa presents the most complex genetic picture of any continent, with a time depth for mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) lineages >100,000 years. The most recent widespread demographic shift within the continent was most probably the Bantu dispersals, which archaeological and linguistic evidence suggest originated in West Africa 3,000-4,000 years ago, spreading both east and south. Here, we have carr...

INTRODUCTION At the onset of the 20th century, ancient clinical observations of cancer epidemics in Bantu populations of Sub-Saharan Africa were discovered. They were reported from 1914 to 1960, but remained unexplained. In 1983, in San Francisco, Calif., USA, cancer epidemics were related to infections by the human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) known as AIDS disease. Yet since 1996, it...

Bantu languages generally have a noun-initial DP word order but they typically allow for demonstratives, and in some also the quantifier meaning ‘each, every’, to precede noun. Beyond this, changing relative of post-nominal modifiers which leads subtle (focus-related) changes not adjectives, numerals possessives appear before In this paper, we discuss alternations that are allowable Xitsonga th...

However, in the Mbulu area, a rural and very remote region between Lake Eyasi and Lake Manyara in Northern Tanzania, three tribes of non-Bantu origin live among Bantu tribes 3-5 . The Southern Cushitic Iraqw (approximately 500 000 people), are subsistence farmers who probably migrated from Ethiopia several centuries ago 2,3 . The Southern Nilotic Datoga (100 000–200 000people) are nomadic pasto...