Southern-Bantu origins

Abstract

The theme of this article is the use of linguistic data to trace some Southern-Bantu origins. The presentation deals with these origins at three levels of abstraction. The first level concerns the evolution of Proto-Bantu as postulated by two eminent comparative Africaniste. The validity of their hypotheses is assessed in conjunction with archaeological evidence. The second level of abstraction concerns seven languages from the Southern- Bantu language group, all of which stem from Proto-Bantu. The third and definitive level of abstraction concerns two socio-linguistic features of the Xhosa language, namely khwetha and hlonipha, where specific links have been identified between these forms and the original Proto-Bantu.