Hadza language

Neither lexical tone nor pitch accent has been demonstrated for Hadza. There are no known lexical minimal pairs or grammatical use of stress/tone.

Hadza has five vowels, [i e a o u]. Long vowels may occur when intervocalic [ɦ] is elided. For example, [kʰaɦa] or [kʰaː] 'to climb', but some words are not attested with [ɦ], as [boːko] 'she' vs [boko] 'to be ill'. All vowels are nasalized before glottalized nasal and voiced nasal clicks, and speakers vary on whether they hear them as nasal vowels or as VN sequences. Invariable nasal vowels, although uncommon, do occur, though not before consonants that have a place of articulation to assimilate to. In such positions, [CṼCV] and [CVNCV] are allophones, but since VN cannot occur at the end of a word or before a glottal consonant, where only nasal vowels are found, it may be that nasal vowels are allophonic with VN in all positions.

1. The nasalization of the glottalized nasal clicks is apparent on preceding vowels, but not during the hold of the click itself, which is silent due to simultaneous glottal closure. The labial [ᵑʘ͡ʔ] (or [ᵑʘʷ]) is found in a single mimetic word where it alternates with [ᵑǀ].
2. The labial ejective /pʼ/ is only found in a few words.
3. The palatal affricates may be pronounced with an alveolar onset (/t͜𝼆/ etc.), but this is not required.
4. The velar ejective /k͜xʼ/ varies between a plosive [kʼ], a central affricate [k͜xʼ], a lateral affricate [k͜𝼄ʼ], and a fricative [xʼ]. The other central ejective affricates can surface as ejective fricatives as well (i.e. [sʼ], [ʃʼ], [xʷʼ]).
5. The lateral approximant /l/ is found as a flap [ɾ] between vowels and occasionally elsewhere, especially in rapid speech. [l] is most common post-pausa and in repeated syllables (e.g. in lola, sp. rabbit). A lateral flap realization [ɺ] can also occur.
6. The voiceless velar fricative [x] is known from only a single word, where it alternates with /kʰ/.
7. [ɦ] and zero onset appear to be allophones. [w, j] may be allophones of [u, i], and what are often transcribed in the literature as [w] next to a back vowel or [j] next to a front vowel (e.g. the msg copula transcribed -a, -ha, -wa, -ya) are nothing more than transitions between vowels.
8. The NC sequences only occur in word-initial position in loanwords. The voiced obstruents and nasal consonants /ɲ ŋ ŋʷ d ɡ ɡʷ dʒ/ and perhaps /dz/ (on darker background) also seem to have been borrowed (Elderkin 1978).

A practical orthography has been devised by Miller and Anyawire (Miller et al. 2013). As of 2015, this orthography is not being used by any Hadza speakers and is therefore of limited value for communication in Hadza. It is broadly similar to the orthographies of neighboring languages such as Swahili, Isanzu, Iraqw, and Sandawe. The apostrophe, which is ubiquitous in transcription in the anthropological literature but causes problems with literacy, is not used: Glottal stop is indicated by vowel sequences (that is, /beʔe/ is written ⟨bee⟩, as in ⟨Hazabee⟩ /ɦadzabeʔe/ 'the Hadza'), which true vowel sequences are separated by y or w (that is, /pie/ 'two' is written ⟨piye⟩), though in some cases an h may be justified, and ejectives and glottalized clicks by gemination (apart from reduced ⟨dl⟩ instead of *ddl for /c𝼆ʼ/). The ejectives are based on the voiced consonants, ⟨bb zz jj dl gg ggw⟩, because these are otherwise found mostly in borrowings and thus not common. Tc /tʃ/ and tch /tʃʰ/ are as in Sandawe, sl /ɬ/ as in Iraqw. (This is ultimately a French convention.) Nasalized vowels / VN rimes are ⟨an en in un⟩. Long vowels are ⟨â⟩, or ⟨aha⟩ where they are due to an elided /ɦ/. A tonic syllable may be written with an acute accent, ⟨á⟩, but is generally not marked.

Nouns have grammatical gender (masculine and feminine) and number (singular and plural). They are marked by suffixes as follows:

The feminine plural is used for mixed natural gender, as in Hazabee 'the Hadza'. For many animals, the grammatical singular is transnumeric, as in English: dongoko 'zebra' (either one or a group). The masculine plural may trigger vowel harmony: dongobee 'zebras' (an individuated number), dungubii 'zebra bucks'. A couple of kin terms and the diminutive suffix -nakwe take -te in the m.sg., which is otherwise unmarked.

Gender is used metaphorically, with ordinarily feminine words made masculine if they are notably thin, and ordinarily masculine words made feminine if they are notably round. Gender also distinguishes such things as vines (m) and their tubers (f), or berry trees (f) and their berries (m). Mass nouns tend to be grammatically plural, such as atibii 'water' (cf. ati 'rain', atiko 'a spring').

The names reported for dead animals do not follow this pattern. Calling attention to a dead zebra, for example, uses the form hantayii (masculine hantayee, plural (rare) hantayetee and hantayitchii). This is because these forms are not nouns, but imperative verbs; the morphology is clearer in the imperative plural, when addressing more than one person: hantatate, hantâte, hantayetate, hantayitchate (substitute -si for final -te when addressing only men; see below for the verbal object suffixes -ta-, -a-, -eta-, -itcha-).

The -pe and -pi forms of nouns often seen in the anthropological literature (actually -phee and -phii) are copular: dongophee 'they are zebras'. The copular suffixes distinguish gender in all persons as well as clusivity in the 1st person. They are:

Forms with high vowels (i, u) tend to raise preceding mid vowels to high, just as -bii does. The 3.sg copula tends to sound like a -ya(ko) or -wa(ko) after high and often mid vowels: /oa, ea/ ≈ [owa, eja], and transcriptions with w and y are common in the literature.

Personal and demonstrative pronouns are:

There are some additional 3rd-person pronouns, including some compound forms. Adverbs are formed from the 3rd-person forms by adding locative -na: hamana 'here', beena 'there', naná 'over there', himiggêna 'in/behind there'.

An infix ⟨kV⟩, where V is an echo vowel, occurs after the first syllable of verbs to indicate pluractionality.

The copula was covered above. Hadza has several auxiliary verbs: sequential ka- and iya- ~ ya- 'and then', negative akhwa- 'not', and subjunctive i-. Their inflections may be irregular or have different inflectional endings from those of lexical verbs,[6] which are as follows:

The functions of the anterior and posterior differ between auxiliaries; with lexical verbs, they are non-past and past. The potential and veridical conditionals reflect the degree of certainty that something would have occurred. 1sg.npst -ˆta and a couple other forms lengthen the preceding vowel. The 1.ex forms apart from -ya begin with a glottal stop. The imp.sg is a glottal stop followed by an echo vowel.

Habitual forms take -he, which tends to reduce to a long vowel, before these endings. In some verbs, the habitual has become lexicalized (marking the 3.POST forms with glottal stop), and so an actual habitual takes a second -he. Various compound tense-aspect-moods occur by doubling up the inflectional endings. There are several additional inflections which have not been worked out.

The inflectional endings are clitics and may occur on an adverb before the verb, leaving a bare verb stem (verb root plus object suffixes).

As is common in the area, there are only a few bare-root adjectives in Hadza, such as pakapaa 'big'. Most attributive forms take a suffix with cross-gender number marking: -e (m.sg. and f.pl.) or -i (f.sg. and m.pl.). These agree with the noun they modify. The -i form tends to trigger vowel harmony, so that, for example, the adjective one- 'sweet' has the following forms:

The -ko/-bee/-bii ending may be replaced by the copula, but the e/i cross-number gender marking remains.

Demonstratives, adjectives, and other attributives may occur before or after a noun, but nouns only take their gender number endings when they occur first in the noun phrase: Ondoshibii unîbii 'sweet cordia berries', manako unîko 'tasty meat', but unîbii ondoshi and unîko mana. Similarly, dongoko bôko but bôko dongo 'those zebra'.

Verbs may also be made attributive: dluzîko akwiti 'the woman (akwitiko) who is speaking', from dlozo 'to say'. This attributive form is used with the copula to form the progressive aspect: dlozênee 'I am speaking' (male speaker), dluzîneko 'I am speaking' (female speaker).

Verbs may take up to two object suffixes, for a direct object (DO) and indirect object (IO). These only differ in the 1ex and 3sg. The IO suffixes are also used on nouns to indicate possession (mako-kwa 'my pot', mako-a-kwa 'it is my pot').

Two object suffixes are only allowed if the first (the DO) is 3rd person. In such cases the DO reduces to the form of the attributive suffix: -e (m.sg. / f.pl.) or -i (f.sg. / m.pl.); only context tells which combination of number and gender is intended. 3rd-singular direct objects also reduce to this form in the imperative singular; 3rd-plural change their vowels but do not conflate with the singular: see 'dead zebra' under nouns above for an example of the forms.

The factors governing the word order within noun phrases are not known. Constituent order tends to be SXVO (where X is an auxiliary) for a new or emphasized subject, with the subject moving further back (XSVO, XVSO, and XVOS), or simply not mentioned (XVO) the better it is established. Where context, semantics, and the verbal suffixes fail to disambiguate, verb–noun–noun is understood to be VSO.