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Article published In:
Understanding language genealogy: Alternatives to the tree model
Edited by Siva Kalyan, Alexandre François and Harald Hammarström
[Journal of Historical Linguistics 9:1] 2019
► pp. 70–91

Visualizing the Boni dialects with Historical Glottometry

 | Leiden University
This paper deals with the historical relations between dialects of Boni, a Cushitic language of Kenya and Somalia. Boni forms the subject of Volume 10 of the Language and Dialect Atlas of Kenya (Heine & Möhlig 1982). Heine presents evidence for three subgroups within Boni, as well as several areas of convergence between dialects belonging to different proposed subgroups. In reviewing his evidence, I find that two of the three splits are not supported by the data, and therefore his conclusions on convergence must also be reinterpreted. Given the presence of numerous intersecting isoglosses, the tree diagram is an inappropriate model for describing the relations between Boni dialects, and I turn to Historical Glottometry (Kalyan & François 2018) to provide a visualization of the data.
Keywords: Boni dialectology, Historical Glottometry, wave model
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1The Boni dialect group
    • 1.2Data source
    • 1.3Theoretical background
  • 2.Review of Heine’s evidence
    • 2.1Proto-Boni phonology
    • 2.2Proposed splits
      • 2.2.1Aweer
      • 2.2.2South Aweer
      • 2.2.3Central Aweer
    • 2.3Proposed convergence areas
      • 2.3.1Southern Convergence Area
      • 2.3.2South-Central Convergence Area
      • 2.3.3Central Convergence Area
      • 2.3.4Peripheral convergence with Oromo
    • 2.4Assessment of evidence
  • 3.Glottometric analysis
    • 3.1Methodology
    • 3.2Results
    • 3.3Discussion
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 2 July 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jhl.18009.eli
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