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Article published In:
Linguistic Variation
Vol. 23:2 (2023) ► pp.318–342

Talking to animals in a moribund language

Pragma-semantics, phonetics, and morphology of conative animal calls in Tjwao

ORCID logo | Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages | University of Cape Town
ORCID logo | University of Free State
The present article is dedicated to conative animal calls (CACs) in a Kalahari Khoe language, Tjwao. By using a prototype approach to categorization, the authors test the Tjwao CACs for their compliance with the prototype of CACs posited recently in scholarly literature. The authors conclude that Tjwao CACs largely conform to the pragma-semantic, phonetic, and morphological properties associated with CACs across languages. In light of the Tjwao data, a few refinements are also proposed. These concern the potential prevalence of whistles as the most common sounds not included in the International Phonetic Alphabet, the correlation of summonses with replication and repetitions as well as front and/or close vowels, the higher frequency of summonses and dispersals among all semantic types of CACs, and the lesser extent of monosemy than previously claimed.
Keywords: Kalahari Khoe, Tjwao, interactives, conative animal calls, pragma-semantics, phonetics, morphology
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical background
    • 2.1Framework
    • 2.2Fieldwork
  • 3.Evidence
    • 3.1Pragma-semantics
    • 3.2Phonetics
    • 3.3Morphology
  • 4.Results and discussion
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 25 November 2022
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https://doi.org/10.1075/lv.22008.and
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