Oral Literature in Africa (14 page)

Lamba is perhaps particularly rich in these verbal derivatives, but similar formations could be cited for each of the Bantu languages. In the rather different case of Mongo, for instance, Hulstaert lists eighty different forms of the verb in his table of verbal ‘conjugation’, each with its characteristic format and meaning (Hulstaert 1965: table at end of vol., also chs 5–6). Madan sums up the ‘extraordinary richness’ of the Bantu verb when he writes:

Any verb stem … can as a rule be made the base of some twenty or thirty others, all reflecting the root idea in various lights, sometimes curiously limited by usage to a particular aspect and limited significance, mostly quite free and unrestrained in growth, and each again bearing the whole luxuriant super-growth of voices, moods, tenses, and person-forms, to the utmost limits of its powers of logical extension

(Madan 1911: 53).

In this way, then, a constant and fertile resource was at hand on which composers could draw according to their wishes and skill.

A second subtle linguistic instrument is provided by the system of nouns and noun-formation. The basic structure is built up on a kind of grammatical class-gender, with concordial agreement. In Bantu languages, that is, there are a number of different classes, varying from twelve or thirteen to as many as twenty-two (in Luganda), into one or other of which all nouns fall. Each class has a typical prefix which, in one or another form, is repeated throughout the sentence in which the noun occurs (concordial agreement). A simple example will make this clear. The Zulu term for horses,
amahhashi,
is characterized by the prefix
ama
- which must reappear in various fixed forms (
a-, ama
-) in the relevant phrase. Thus ‘his big horses ran away’ must be expressed as ‘horses they-his they-big they-ran-away’ (
amah
hashi akhe
amak
hulu abalekile
(Doke 1948: 289). The precision of reference achieved through this grammatical form dispels the vagueness and ambiguity sometimes inherent in equivalent English forms, and at the same time provides possibilities—which are exploited—for alliteration and balance in literary formulations.

Each of these noun classes tends to cover one main type of referent, though there are variations between different languages. In general terms we can say that names of people tend to predominate in classes 1 and 2, names of trees in classes 3 and 4, names of animals in classes 9 and 10 abstract terms in class 14, verb infinitives in class 15, and locatives in classes 16, 17, and 18 (Doke 1948: 289) There are effective ways of using this system. Sometimes by changing the prefix (and thus class) of a particular word it is possible to put it into a new class and so change its meaning or connotation. In Tswana, for instance,
mo/nna,
man (class 1) takes on new meaning when transferred to other classes, as
se/nna,
manliness,
bojnna,
manhood; while in Venda we have
tshi/thu,
thing,
ku/thu,
tiny thing, and
di/thu,
huge thing (Doke 1948: 288) Besides such straightforward and accepted instances, the transference of noun class is sometimes exploited in a vivid and less predictable way in the actual delivery of an oral piece. We can cite the instance of a Nilyamba story about the hare’s wicked exploits which ends up with the narrator vividly and economically drawing his conclusion by putting the hare no longer in his own noun class but, by a mere change of prefix, into that normally used for monsters! (Johnson 1931: 330)

Besides the basic noun class system, there is the further possibility of building up a whole series of different noun formations to express exact shades of meaning—humour, appraisement, relationships, and so on. This system is far too complex to be treated briefly, but a few instances may serve to show the kind of rich flexibility available to the speaker.

There are special forms which by the use of suffixes or prefixes transform the root noun into a diminutive, into a masculine or feminine form, or into a term meaning the in-law, the father, the mother, the daughter, and so on of the referent. Personification is particularly popular. It can be economically effected by transferring an ordinary noun from its usual class to that of persons. Thus in Zulu, for instance, we have the personified form
uNtaba
(Mountain) from the common noun for mountain,
intaba
; and
uSikhotha,
from the ordinary
isikhotha,
long grass (Doke 1948: 295). This is a type of personification sometimes found in stories where the name of an animal is transferred to the personal class and thus, as it were, invested with human character. A further way of achieving personification is by a series of special formations based, among other things, on special prefixes, derivations from verbs or ideophones, reduplication, or the rich resources of compounding.

Several of these bases are also used to form special impersonal nouns. Such nouns built up on verbal roots include instances like, say, a verb stem modified by a class 4 prefix to indicate ‘method of action’ (e.g. the Kikuyu
muthiire,
manner of walking, from
thii,
walk), or by a class 7 prefix suggesting an action done carelessly or badly (e.g. Lamba
icendeende,
aimless walking about, from
enda,
walk; or Lulua
tshiakulakula,
gibberish, from
akula,
talk), and many others (Doke 1948: 296). Reduplication is also often used in noun formation. In Zulu we have the ordinary form
izinhlobo,
kinds, becoming
izinhlobonhlobo,
variety of species, and
imimoya,
winds, reduplicated to give
imimoyamoya
with the meaning of ‘constantly changing winds’.

Compound nouns above all exhibit the great variety of expression open to the speaker of a Bantu language. These are usually built up on various combinations of verbs (compounded with e.g. subject, object, or descriptive) or nouns (compounded with other nouns, with a qualitative, or with an ideophone). Thus we get the Lamba
umwenda-nandu,
a deep ford (lit. ‘where the crocodile travels’),
icikoka-mabwe,
the klipspringer antelope (lit. ‘rock-blunter’); the Xhosa
indlulamthi,
giraffe (lit. ‘surpasser of trees’), or
amabona-ndenzile,
attempts (lit. ‘see what I have done’); or, finally, the Ila name for the Deity,
Ipaokubozha,
with the literal meaning ‘He that gives and rots’ (Doke 1948: 297–8). To these must be added the special ‘praise names’ described later which add yet a further figurative aspect to those already mentioned.

In these various formations and derivatives of noun and verb, Bantu languages thus have a subtle and variable means of expression on which the eloquent speaker and composer can draw at will. In addition there is the different question of style and syntax as well as the actual collocation of the vocabulary used, all of which vary with the particular literary genre chosen by the speaker. In general, apart from the rhetorical praise poems of the southern areas, Bantu syntax gives the impression of being relatively simple and direct. This impression can however be a little misleading: the syntactical relationships of sentences are more complex than they appear at first sight. What seems like co-ordination of simple sentences in narrative in fact often conceals subtle forms of subordination through the use of subjunctive, sequences of historic tenses, or conditionals. In this way the fluent speaker can avoid the monotony of a lengthy series of parallel and conjunctive sentences—though this is the form in which such passages tend to appear in English translations. Furthermore, Bantu expression generally is not limited, as is English, by a more or less rigid word-order: because of its structure there are many possible ways in which, by changes in word-order or terminology, delicate shades of meaning can be precisely expressed which in English would have to depend on the sometimes ambiguous form of emphatic stress. All in all, Doke concludes, ‘Bantu languages are capable
of remarkable fluency …. They provide a vehicle for wonderful handling by the expert speaker or writer’ (Doke 1948: 285)

Besides the basic structure of Bantu languages in vocabulary and morphology, there are some further linguistic features which add to its resources as a literary instrument. Perhaps most important among these is the form usually called the
ideophone
(sometimes also called ‘mimic noun’, ‘intensive noun’, ‘descriptive’, ‘indeclinable verbal particle’, etc.). This is a special word which conveys a kind of idea-in-sound and is commonly used in Bantu languages to add emotion or vividness to a description or recitation. Ideophones are sometimes onomatopoeic, but the acoustic impression often conveys aspects which, in English culture at least, are not normally associated with sound at all—such as manner, colour, taste, smell, silence, action, condition, texture, gait, posture, or intensity. To some extent they resemble adverbs in function, but in actual use and grammatical form they seem more like interjections. They are specifically introduced to heighten the narrative or add an element of drama. They also come in continually where there is a need for a particularly lively style or vivid description and are used with considerable rhetorical effect to express emotion or excitement. An account, say, of a rescue from a crocodile or a burning house, of the complicated and excited interaction at a communal hunt or a football match—these are the kinds of contexts made vivid, almost brought directly before the listener’s eyes, by the plentiful use of ideophones:

They are used by accomplished speakers with an artistic sense for the right word for the complete situation, or its important aspects, at the right pitch of vividness. To be used skilfully, I have been told, they must correspond to one’s inner feeling. Their use indicates a high degree of sensitive impressionability

(Fortune 1962: 6, on Shona ideophones)

The graphic effect of these ideophones is not easy to describe in writing, but it is worth illustrating some of the kinds of terms involved. The Rhodesian Shona have a wide range of ideophones whose use and syntax have been systematically-analysed by Fortune (1962). Among them are such terms as

k’we
—sound of striking a match.

gwengwendere
—sound of dropping enamel plates.

nyiri nyiri nyiri nyiri
—flickering of light on a cinema screen.

dhdbhu dhdbhu dhdbhu
—of an eagle
flying slowly
.

tsvukururu
—of finger millet
turning quite red
.

go, go, go, ngondo ngondo ngondo, pxaka pxaka pxaka pxaka pxaka
—the chopping

down of a tree, its
fall,
and
the splintering of the branches
.

Again we could cite the following Zulu instances:

khwi
—turning around suddenly.

dwi
—dawning, coming consciousness, returning sobriety, easing of pain, relief.

ntrr
—birds flying high with upward sweep; aeroplane or missile flying.

bekebe
—flickering faintly and disappearing.
khwibishi
—sudden recoil,

forceful springing back.

fafalazi
—doing a thing, carelessly or superficially.

ya
—perfection, completion

(Fivaz 1963)

Ideophones often appear in reduplicated form. This is common with many of its uses in Thonga to give a vivid impression of gait and manner of movement:

A tortoise is moving
laboriously—khwanya-khwanya-khwanya!

A butterfly in the air—
pha-pha-pha-pha
.

A frog jumps into a pond, after three little jumps on the

ground—
noni-noni-noni-djamaaa
.

A man runs
very slowly—wahle-wahle-wahle
.

A man runs with little hurried steps
—nyakwi-nyakwi-nyakwi
.

A man runs at full speed—
nyu-nyu-nyu-nyu-nyuuu
.

He walks
like a drunkard—tlikwi-tlikwi
.

A tired dog—
fambifa-fambifa-fambifa
.

A lady
with high-heeled shoes—peswa-peswa

(Junod 1938: 31–3)

Using this form, a Thonga writer can describe vividly and economically how a man was seized, thrown on the thatched roof of a hut, came down violently and fell on the ground:

Vo nwi!
tshuku-tshuku!
0 tlhela a ku:
shulululuuu!
a wa hi matimba a ku:
pyakavakaa

(Junod 1938: 31)

In Thonga as in other Bantu languages ideophones are constantly being invented anew, demonstrating the richness and elasticity of the language. For the Thonga, this form

expresses in a little word, a movement, a sound, an impression of fear, joy or amazement. Sensation is immediate and is immediately translated into a word or a sound, a sound which is so appropriate, so fitting, that one sees the animal moving, hears the sound produced, or feels oneself the very sensation expressed

(Junod 1938: 30–1)

In the ideophone, therefore, speakers of Bantu languages have a rhetorical and emotive tool whose effectiveness cannot be overemphasized. In vivid and dramatic passages ‘to use it is to be graphic; to omit it is to be prosaic’ (Doke 1948: 301), and, as Burbridge wrote of it earlier:

In descriptive narration in which emotions are highly wrought upon … the vivid descriptive power of
kuti
[ideophone] is seen, and
the-human appeal
is made, and the depths of pathos are stirred by this medium of expression of intensely-wrought emotion without parallel in any other language. The ideophone is the key to Native descriptive oratory. I can’t imagine a Native speaking in public with intense feeling without using it (Burbridge: 343, quoted Doke 1948: 287. For some other discussions of ideophones in Bantu languages see Jaques 1941; Kunene 1965; Hulstaert 1962; on ideophones in non-Bantu languages see below).

Also very striking are the praise names of Bantu languages. These are terms which pick out some striking quality of an object and are used for inanimate objects, birds, animals, and finally, in their fullest form, as names for people. We meet compound names that could be translated as, for instance, ‘Forest-treader’, ‘Little animal of the veld’, ‘Crumple-up-a-person-with-a-hardwood-stick’, or ‘Father of the people’. Other examples are the Ankole ‘He Who Is Not Startled’, ‘I Who Do Not Tremble’, ‘He Who Is Of Iron’, ‘He Who Compels The Foe To Surrender’, or ‘He Who Is Not Delirious In The Fingers’ (i.e. who grasps his weapons firmly) (Morris 1964: 19ff), and the Zulu ‘He who hunted the forests until they murmured’, ‘With his shields on his knees’ (i.e. always ready for a fight), or ‘Even on branches he can hold tight’ (i.e. able to master any situation) (Cope 1968: 72). Sometimes the reference is to more recent conditions and formulations, a type which occurs in Kamba praise names for girls in popular songs. These include
Mbitili
(from English ‘battery’): car-batteries are said to provide heat just as the girl’s attractiveness heats up her admirers;
Singano
(needle), praising the sharpness of the girl’s breasts; and
Mbyuki
(from English ‘Buick’): as Buicks are famous for their high-gloss black finish, this is effective praise of the beauty of the girl’s skin (Whiteley 1963: 165) Praise names, it is clear, provide a figurative element in the literature in which they appear and, like the Homeric epithet in Greek epic, add colour and solemnity. In panegyric poetry the use of praise names is one of the primary characteristics (see Ch. 5), but in all contexts the use of praise names can add an extra dimension to speech or literature and continue to flourish amidst new conditions (further comments on praise names in Ch. 16).