SEKTION XI: AFRIKANISTIK, INDONESISCHE
UND SÜDSEESPRACHEN
SEKTIONSLEITER: H. JUNGRAITHMAYR
THE DEVELOPMENT OF FULANI STUDIES
A LINGUIST'S VIEW
by Robert G. Armstrong, Ibadan
I. INTRODUCTION
The fascination of Fulani culture derives not from its having a conjectural source outside of Africa but rather from its elaborate, deep, and many-sided expression of Africa itself
The Fulfulde language (or Pulaar) is native to the Senegal River valley and the
Fouta Toro savannah area to the west of it. Greenberg (1949-50, 1963) and
Westermann (1952) are in agreement that Fulfulde is closely related to Serer-Sin
and Wolof, of Senegal. It is therefore a member of the West Atlantic sub-family of
the Niger-Congo family of African languages. We may know by this that Fulfulde is
genetically related to more than a thousand languages lying to the east and south¬
east of it all the way across Africa. The paper is largely devoted to supplying the detailed lexical, phonological and grammatical evidence to support this statement.
It draws heavily on recent studies by such scholars as Klingenheben (1963), Arnott
(1970), Noye (1974), D. Sapu, A. Wilson, Guthrie, de Wolf, Mukarovsky, Doneux
and many others.
Today the Fulb'e are spread over an enormous area. They include the extreme
social types to be found anywhere in West Africa: from nomadism to the organizing cadres of great cities and empires and big businesses; from ancient, proselytizing
Islam to paganism; from ancient, superb literacy in Fulfulde and Arabic to total
non-literacy. Despite this social diversity, they see themselves as one; and they re¬
sist the widespread view that they consist of two groups, one caucasoid (Mediter¬
ranean) and one black. This paper argues for the view that there is only one Fulb'e population, that it is basically black, that it is characterized by a wide range of
physical types produced by ancient mixture with Berber and perhaps other Medi¬
terranean peoples. Only one language characterizes the Fulb'e, namely Fulfulde or
Pulaar; and it is a very strong unifying force.
II. THE GENETIC AFFILIATION OF FULFULDE
Typologically speaking, the genetic affiliation of Fulfulde is suggested by the
fact that it is a noun-class language of a kind that is widespread in Black Africa and
XX. Deutscher Orientalistentag 1977 in Erlangen
448 Robert G. Armstrong
nowhere else. It differs from the Bantu and most West Atlantic languages in mark¬
ing the classes and their concords with suffixes rather than with prefixes. Suffixing systems exist, however, in various languages of ah the sub-families of Niger-Congo, so this feature does not isolate Fulfulde. The well-known initial consonant alterna¬
tion system of Fulfulde characterizes at least ten more languages of the West
Atlantic sub-family, and several of these have even more elaborate forms of it than does Fulfulde. Consonant alternation is therefore a feature that unites Fulfulde with the Niger-Congo family.
Particular grammatical ways of stmcturing relative clauses and clauses in report¬
ed speech provide syntactic evidence linking Fulfulde to the Eastern Kwa and to
the Benue-Congo languages. Mukarovsky (1963) showed the detailed phonological,
lexical and syntactic correspondence of Fulfulde to Proto-Bantu. Doneux has
recently done the same think for Fulfulde and the West Atlantic languages, to
which it is of course closely related.
III. EXCURSUS ON GREENBERG, GUTHRIE, MUKAROVSKY AND DONEUX
There has been a good deal of controversy over the position of Fulfulde among
African languages. Some of the most substantial contributors to the discussion are
compared with each other in the Excursus. Guthrie's attempt to isolate the Bantu
languages from West Africa is refuted by the abundant materials which he has given
us. Mukarovsky's recent (1976) excision of Fulfulde, Wolof and Serer from West
Atlantic and Niger-Congo is refuted by his own earlier work and by Doneux's de¬
tailed study of West Atlantic.
IV. LEXICAL COMPARISONS
The paper closes with a consideration of forty-four words from the basic vocabu¬
lary of Fulfulde which have close cognate reflexes in many Kwa and Benue-Congo
languages including Proto-Bantu. Eleven sound correspondences characterize the
comparisons across many widely scattered languages. One of the most evocative of
these comparisons is that between the various words for "person":
Wolof nit
Fulfulde ned'd'o
Yomba eni
Igala öne
Proto-Benue-Congo -neto
Proto-Bantu -ntu (Cf. mu-ntu, plural ba-ntu)
This set attracted the attention of Greenberg and Meeussen in their debate of 1974.
It is asserted that a very strong prima facie case is made for the genetic affiliation
of Fulfulde to the Niger-Congo family. We may guess that the connection with the
eastern languages was broken between five and ten thousand years ago, or before
the desiccation of the Sahara Desert was complete. A great labour of detailed com¬
parison lies ahead of us in order to fill in the picture, but the fruitful direction of
research on the genetic relationship of Fulfulde is surely first towards the West
Atlantic and then, more broadly, towards the Niger-Congo languages.
The Development of Fulani Studies - A linguist's View 449
REFERENCES
Greenberg, Joseph, The Languages of Africa (The Hague: Mouton, 1964).
Greenberg, J., and A. E. Meeussen, "Bantu and its Closest Relatives", (a debate), Studies in African Linguistics, Supplement 5, 1974, pp. 115-124 (Un. of California, L.A.).
Greenberg, Joseph, "Studies in African Linguistic Classification", Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, Vol. V, 1949, Vol. VI, 1950.
Westermann, Diedrich, Review of Greenberg, 1949-50, in Africa, Vol. 22, 1952, p. 253.
Klingenheben, August, D/«5prac/!e der Fu/. (Hamburg: 1963).
Arnott, David W., The Nominal and Verbal System of Fula.
Noye, "Dominique, Cours de Foulfoulde. (Paris and Maroua: Geuthner, 1974).
Mukarovsky, Hans G.,Die Grundlagen des Ful und das Mauretanische, (Wien: Herder, 1963).
Mukarovsky, Hans G.,A Study of Western Nigritic. (University of Vienna, 1976/77).
THE BALINESE BARIS DADAP, ITS TRADITION AND TEXTS
(A PRELIMINARY STUDY)
by D. Hinzler, Leiden (Niederlande)
The baris dadap is one of the many varieties of baris dances in Bali. The word
baris means in this case „row", or „military formation". This refers to the fact that
the dancers are arranged in two rows. Dadap or dadap is the name of the wooden
boat-shaped shield, held by the dancers, curled over at the end and supplied with
one or two circular handles at the back. At right angles to the upper part of the
shield is a piece of leather with a tuft of hair on top of it. So-cahed wayang-figures are punched out into the leather (fig. 1). Because of this the shield is sometimes
called wayang and the dance wayang baris dadap. The word dadap can also be
associated with a sacred tree (arythrina indica), called kayu dadap or kayu sakti in Balinese. Its leaves and branches play an important role in the Balinese ritual. It is
as yet unknown, however, if the shield is made from the wood of the dadap-tree
and thus derives its name from the tree.
Both concepts — baris and dadap — are first met with in Old and Middle Java¬
nese literature (Bhomakavya VIH,3; A:idung 5unda II, 56, 118, 134; 111,49: IVang-
bang Mdeya 2:52a,53b,56a; 3:6b,95b;'). In the ^5 and Wwe even find descrip¬
tions of the shields: they are provided with a golden brim and white or coloured
fly-whisks. The shield is used for parrying during fights with kris or sword. The
descriptions of the shields of the texts fit in nicely with some of the shields depict¬
ed on the 17th/18th centuries wayang beber scrolls from Central Java. We are re¬
ferring to the Pacitan scrolls^, viz. scroll 3 part 4 and scroll 4 part 2 (fig. 2,3), copies of which are made by Supomo^, and to the Kajoran-'^scroU 2 part 2 (fig.4,5) that is now in Gelaran. The shields are crowned by figures (a woman, a bull's head,
a one-eyed ogre's head and a bulged-eyed wayang puppet), and have a tuft of hair
on top. These shields also have very much the same shape as the Balinese dadap-
shileds, so we may conclude that cfarfflp-shields are depicted on the scrolls.
In the WW and on the scrolls the dadap is particularly used by the main charact¬
ers of the story — Panji and his adversary. Nowadays there still exists a war-dance
1 R. Friederich, Bomakawja, VBG 24 1852; A. Teeuw, Het Bhomakavya, 1947; C. C. Berg, Kidung Sunda, BKI 83, 1927; 1-161; S. O. Robson, Wangbang Wideya, Bibl. Indon. 6, 1971.
2 R. A. Kern, De Wayang Beber van Patjitan, TBG LI, 1909, 338-357; G. A. J. Hazeu, Eine
"Wayang Beber" VorsteUung in Jogjakarta, Int. Arch. Ethn. XVI, 1904, 128-135; Photogr.
"Archeological Survey of Indonesia" 7900, 7901.
3 Photogr. "Marzuki", II f2.
4 Slide "Marzuki", 12,14.
XX. Deutscher Orientalistentag 1977 in Erlangen
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