Talk:Taita Cushitic languages

Fig. 4

In Derek Nurse's Fig. 4., he clearly notes that Taita Cushitic and South Nyanza each constitute subgroups of an extinct group of the South Cushitic languages. Nurse also explains the spread of Southern Cushitic-speaking agro-pastoralists from Ethiopia into the Great Rift Valley between the third and second millennia BC as well as their subsequent assimilation [1]. Middayexpress (talk) 15:21, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

A clarification tag isn't for a ref, but for clarification. — kwami (talk) 03:56, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Actually, the ref doesn't say what you claim it does, so I took out the comment altogether. Your edit to South Cushitic is more accurate. I'll move the tag there. — kwami (talk) 04:01, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Actually, Derek Nurse explicitly states what is indicated in the wikitext:

Taita Cushitic is an extinct subgroup of the South Cushitic languages. It is believed to have been spoken by Southern Cushite agro-pastoralists from Ethiopia, who in the third millenium BC began migrating southward into the Great Rift Valley. According to Derek Nurse, the Taita Cushitic subgroup belongs to the same extinct group as the South Nyanza subgroup of the South Cushitic languages. He adds that it is likely that the Cushites inhabiting the Taita Hills were completely assimilated only recently since the lateral consonants in South Cushitic loanwords that were borrowed by speakers of the Bantu Taita language were still pronounced as such within living memory. However, those laterals have now been replaced.

This can clearly be seen in the linked Fig. 4., as well as the text on page 34 of that same Derek Nurse book [2] and in Nurse's paper Extinct Southern Cushitic communities in East Africa [3]. Regarding Ehret, he actually co-wrote with Nurse one of the main works on Taita Cushitic [4]; so it's rather odd that you have no problem with Nurse but apparently do with Ehret. At any rate, I've contacted the resident professional linguist User:A.Tamar Chabadi to help further clarify the matter. Middayexpress (talk) 16:32, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

kwami, what is the contestation here? As far as I could tell, he near thoroughly quotes his sources. Also, Middayexpress, you need to cite (Merritt 1975) in the references. Here is the correct citation below:

Merritt, E. H. (1975). A History of the Taita of Kenya to 1900. PhD Dissertation, Department of History, Indiana University. Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms. - A.Tamar Chabadi (talk) 21:00, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks User:A.Tamar Chabadi, and  Done. Middayexpress (talk) 21:10, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

I have two main problems. First, "According to Derek Nurse, the Taita Cushitic subgroup belongs to the same extinct group as the South Nyanza subgroup of the South Cushitic languages". That is not true. Nurse merely lists Taita and South Nyanza as extinct members of South Cushitic. Perhaps he clarifies elsewhere, but the claim is not supported by that clip. Second, what is "South Nyanza"? Names should not be included if they're not defined. I keep tagging it for clarification, and Middayexpress keeps deleting the tag, so now I am simply reverting his edits as disruptive.

A lesser problem is that the origin of the South Cushites should be in the South Cushitic article. A summary might be repeated here, but not a content fork, and we should be careful we do not imply that it's the Taita Cushites we are talking about. Middayexpress said that the Southern Cushites who left Ethiopia spoke Taita. And also South Nyanza.

As for Ehret: While Nurse is a respected linguist, Ehret is not. People even get upset when they appear in edited volumes with him, because they worry that association with their names might lend him unwarranted authority. Perhaps he is appropriate here, since he's coauthoring with Nurse, but I wouldn't want to cite anything authored by Ehret alone. — kwami (talk) 21:14, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

In his Fig. 4, Nurse clearly labels Taita Cushitic (not Taita) and South Nyanza (his nomenclature) each as a subgroup of an extinct group of the South Cushitic languages. This was also just confirmed above by User:A.Tamar Chabadi, a professional linguist. The provenance of the Taita Cushites is likewise certainly germane, as is Ehret's linguistic analysis. Middayexpress (talk) 21:35, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

You need to actually read your sources. There is no group called "extinct". There are extinct languages. And no, Chabadi did not confirm it. — kwami (talk) 21:38, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Nurse obviously doesn't call the South Cushitic group itself "extinct"; that's just how he labels its status. It's also pretty pointless arguing that A.Tamar Chabadi did not confirm the validity of what I wrote, when she explicitly indicates as much both above and on her talk page ("Your sources check out...great job! I also listed the correct citation for (Merritt 1975)" [5]). Now below as well. Middayexpress (talk) 22:11, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Status isn't classification, obviously.

I was talking about what he said here, since here is where we're having this discussion. — kwami (talk) 22:36, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

You're now edit warring over South Nyanza languages. I tagged two claims that failed verification: That it was spoken in Ethiopia 5ka, and that it's in the same group as Taita. Also, on the map there is no "South Nyanza", but there is "Nyanza Rift", which presumably means it's a subgroup of Rift. Are they the same thing? We'd know if we knew what either of them is, but we don't, because you have not provided an adequate reference. — kwami (talk) 21:42, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Actually, you were page blanking there. Those tags are also spurious, as demonstrated above. Middayexpress (talk) 22:11, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

I merged the page, because it had no substantial content. You wrote an article on South Nyanza languages, with no indication of what those may be. What *are* they? What are they called? What is the evidence for them? Etc. I'll give you some time to find out, and if you can't, turn the article back into a redirect. As for the tags, I tagged false claims as dubious and unsupported. You really do need to *read* the sources you use, so you understand what they say. — kwami (talk) 22:16, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

All of the above was (and is) already indicated on the South Nyanza languages page you indeed blanked. Middayexpress (talk) 22:43, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

I must respectfully disagree with you about Ehret, kwami. Ehret is quite respected and has even been vindicated by genetic studies. While some disagree with his most controversial work, his tome on Nilo-Saharan, of which the criticism of a wide semantic net/ field is rather true in some instances (the same can be said of some of Bender's eytma), he does excellent work. I have my own criticisms of Ehret's Nilo-Saharan tome, but it is a monumental work that must be taken into account when dealing with Nilo-Saharan going forward. It will likely be later refined, if not by Ehret, then by someone after him. Also, it must be mentioned that he and Bender came up with fairly the same proto-forms. Ehret is considered among the 'gods' of the African lingusitics field.

Also, about South Nyanza, it is a geographical term used to define a group of South Cushitic languages [6]. There are actually two Taita Cushitic languages observed in the substrata of the Dawida and Saghala Bantu languages in the Taita Hills, TC-A and TC-B. Also, yes, it is implied by the formatting of the chart that South Nyanza and Taita Cushitic form a cognate grouping under an unnamed and extinct branch of South Cushitic. - A.Tamar Chabadi (talk) 21:59, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

It may be implied, but we can't tell if it was intended. We'd need some actual text to know. (There's "Nyanza Rift" on the map. Might that be South Nyanza + Taita? Can't really tell.) Also, without some indication of what South Nyanza was, as opposed to just where it was, we really don't have the substance of an article.

I don't know of anyone who works with Nilo-Saharan languages who thinks highly of Ehret. Maybe I just don't know enough Nilo-Saharanists? But no-one has picked up or refined his work, and he didn't take into account existing work that in many cases falsifies his conclusions. The descriptions I've heard of his work have not been positive. (I won't go further in the spirit of BLP.) The few times he's made claims about languages I know, it's been some of the shoddiest work I've seen, and the conclusions obvious nonsense. Others have had the same reaction when he makes claims about languages they work on. So, if he's teamed up with Nurse, I'll trust Nurse to ensure that the work has merit, but I wouldn't accept Ehret alone as a RS.

You mention "substrata" in Taita, and that's what I remember reading earlier, but this latest ref speaks only of borrowing. So, is it thought that the Cushitic influence in Taita Bantu is due to retention during language shift, or to just borrowing, or can't we tell? — kwami (talk) 22:13, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Nurse doesn't merely imply that Taita Cushitic and South Nyanza are subgroups of an extinct South Cushitic language group. He explicitly indicates this in his Fig. 4. The oral traditions of the Taita Bantus themselves indicate that two populations inhabited the Taita Hills prior to the arrival of their own ancestors ("two pre-Taita peoples"), and most scholars identify these earlier inhabitants as Southern Cushitic speakers [7]. Middayexpress (talk) 22:43, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

(1) "Explicitly indicates"? It's an implication which may or may not have been intended. Before we make an explicit statement, we need to verify that is what he intended. For all we know Taita and South Nyanza are subgroups of Rift, and the work 'extinct' was merely added where there was room. (2) Which doesn't answer the question. — kwami (talk) 22:45, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

There's two ways to read the chart: (1), as Middayexpress has been doing, is to assume that the word "extinct" is replacing the label of an unnamed node, so that South Cushitic consists of Mbuguan, Dahaloan, Rift, and "extinct", the last perhaps to be identified with the "Nyanza Rift" of Map 3. (But what is "South Rift"?) (2) is to assume that the word "extinct" is merely the status of the languages, and not a node (which Middayexpress has also said?), so that Rift consists of East Rift, West Rift, South Nyanza, and Taita Cushitic. Since Middayexpress reads it one way, and I read it the other, the author's intent is evidently ambiguous. — kwami (talk) 23:07, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

You guys caused me to have an edit conflict. I was putting together my response to kwami when it informed me that the both of you still had been going at it, hahaha. It is rather difficult to see how the chart would be in error and they not see that it is/ was. I see it as Middayexpress sees it. The figure/ chart clearly shows, by format, what the author meant. It shows South Nyanza as a sister to Taita Cushitic under an unnamed and extinct node of South Cushitic. Notice how the other groupings are formatted. About Ehret, Ehret has been cited by many linguistic authors as a source. A major genetic assay concerning Nilo-Saharan and Cushitic speakers by Tishkoff et al. 2009 has pretty much vindicated his methodology and dates. Christopher Ehret has been near spot on in his claims. Others have been premature in their zeal to cry him down for his methods. He is a great luminary of Linguistics despite protests by those who chose to lag behind. When they are so fortunate to have their methodology supported in a major, highly regarded genetic study then we will talk. See here [8] for a discussion. It is a blog I regularly follow. About the substrata in Taita Hills Bantu, it was not merely contact, the Cushitic speakers were subsumed, for one reason or another, by the Bantu speakers of the region fairly recently as is mentioned. The language of the Cushitic speakers had some substratal effects on the Bantu languages that assimilated them. A similar situation to Meroitic and Old Nubian.

Also about South Rift, read here [9]. By the way, Dahalo is no longer considered South Cushitic. - A.Tamar Chabadi (talk) 23:30, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Well, I won't debate you on Ehret, except to note that you're the first linguist I've met who had any respect for him, and that the quality of the work I'm competent to judge agrees with what others have said.

As for your new source, that appears to contradict your interpretation of the chart: Taita is grouped with Rift, and either there is no South Nyanza, or it's the same as Nyanza Rift, which does not form a group with Taita but with East and West Rift. It would appear that the chart is just the table in the new ref flattened, so that Rift and Greater Rift are conflated. No indication that Nurse or Ehret think that Taita and South Nyanza form a clade. As for Dahalo, people have been arguing that for decades. When you say "no longer", do you mean there is now consensus on the issue? I don't think I've seen anything since Kießling (2001), though that and Tosco are probably enough to remove it from the South Cushitic tree. — kwami (talk) 23:45, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

I assure you, I am not the only one who thinks respectfully of Ehret, kwami. But moving past that, the new source has forced me to revise my earlier thought. I only had the chart at the time, so that is what I was basing my statements upon. The chart itself does indicate that the two, Taita Cushitic and South Nyanza, are grouped together as sister languages, but the newer source with likely newer information points me to a change of opinion because of new information that was lacking before. About Dahalo, the general trend is away from the South Cushitic affiliation. Most Afroasiaticists, see it as East Cushitic or 'peripheral' East Cushitic. See Maarten Mous. 2012. Cushitic. In Zygmunt Frajzyngier and Erin Shay (eds.), The Afroasiatic languages, 342-422. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Also see, Gene Gragg (2011) [10] - A.Tamar Chabadi (talk) 00:24, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Good (though I still read the chart as only saying they're two of four branches of Rift; if he meant anything other than that, his editor did a bad job). But that still leaves us with the problem of what South Nyanza is supposed to be. — kwami (talk) 00:28, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Not to annoy you with Ehret, kwami, he has an expanded chart of the Southern Cushitic languages (2011) [11]. It is cited by other authors who have published more recently. I will see if I can squeeze out a bit more information and post it later. - A.Tamar Chabadi (talk) 01:19, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for that Ehret classification tree, User:A.Tamar Chabadi. Like Ehret and Nurse (1981), it divides the Taita Cushitic languages into a "Taita Cushitic A" and "Taita Cushitic B", grouping both under the Rift languages. It's unclear where or how "South Nyanza" fits into this, so I've replaced the Taita Cushitic/South Nyanza dichotomy with Taita Cushitic A/Taita Cushitic B and re-directed South Nyanza languages to the South Cushitic page. Middayexpress (talk) 14:43, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Hi, Middayexpress! Yes, you are most welcome. Good job there. - A.Tamar Chabadi (talk) 18:03, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks! Middayexpress (talk) 18:07, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

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