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...

The current distribution of Bantu languages is commonly considered to be a consequence of a relatively recent population expansion (3-5kya) in Central Western Africa. While there is a substantial consensus regarding the centre of origin of Bantu languages (the Benue River Valley, between South East Nigeria and Western Cameroon), the identification of the area from where the population expansion...

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...

This paper is concerned with two types of word-level asymmetries and their interaction: leftright asymmetries and stem-word asymmetries. Two left-right asymmetries are examined from a wide range of languages, one morphological (the predominance of suffixation over prefixation), one phonological (the preference for anticipatory over perseverative phonology). Since phonological processes are ofte...

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...

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...

Previous reports from South Africa have drawn attention to the heavy iron intake, and to the high frequency of hemosiderin deposition in the liver and other organs of the indigenous Bantu population (1, 2). In addition, observations in different Bantu population groups have demonstrated elevated levels of serum iron and total iron binding capacity in Bantu adults of both sexes. Saturation is ve...

Pygmy populations are among the few hunter-gatherers currently living in sub-Saharan Africa and are mainly represented by two groups, Eastern and Western, according to their current geographical distribution. They are scattered across the Central African belt and surrounded by Bantu-speaking farmers, with whom they have complex social and economic interactions. To investigate the demographic hi...

Morphological parsers are typically developed for languages without contrastive tonal systems. Ha, a typical Bantu language of Western Tanzania, proposes a challenge to these parses with both lexical and grammatical pitch-accent that would, in order to describe the tonal phenomena, seem to require an approach with a separate level for the tones. However, since the Two-Level Morphology (Koskenni...

Cloning and sequencing of the gamma-globin gene of a sickle cell anemia patient homozygous for the Bantu haplotype has revealed a gene conversion that involves the replacement of an A gamma sequence by a G gamma sequence in the promoter area of the A gamma gene. This event is similar to another gene conversion believed to be responsible for the very high homology between gamma-globin genes, sug...