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Linguistics in the Netherlands 2024
Edited by Marco Bril and Kristel Doreleijers
[Nota Bene 1:2] 2024
► pp. 136–153

When words sail through the desert

The Songhay layer in Wolof

| Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen
| Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen
Wolof is generally classified as a North-Atlantic language within the Niger-Congo phylum. However, despite a considerable number of cognates (Merrill 2021b), this classification is more of a working hypothesis than a demonstrated fact. Linguists such as (Wilson 1989) and Lüpke (2020) consider that the Atlantic group resembles more an areal/typological class rather than a genealogical unit, thus pointing to intense dynamics of language contact in the area. In this paper, as a follow-up of Anonymous, we focus on a potential Wolof-Songhay non-genetic connection, based on triangulation (q.v. Kuorikoski & Marchionni 2016) between linguistic, historical and archaeological evidence. We further argue that Wolof is a language in layers, resulting from constant polylectal interaction between various peoples of the West Sudan world-system (Kea 2004).
Keywords: Wolof, Songhay, Dynamic Linguistics, language contact, African linguistics, Atlantic languages, lexical borrowing, language in layers, precolonial multilingualism
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Wolof-Songhay lexical parallelisms
    • 2.1Lexical parallelisms with a regular sound change pattern
    • 2.2Lexical parallelisms without regular sound change patterns
    • 2.3Lexical parallelisms between Wolof, Songhay and Fula-Sereer
    • 2.4Morphosyntactic parallelisms, the abstract concept nominalizer
  • 3.Triangulation
    • 3.1Archaeological evidence
    • 3.2Historical evidence
  • Discussion
  • Notes
  • Author queries
  • References
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