Kwadi language

Kwadi /ˈkwɑːdi/ is an extinct "click language" once spoken in the southwest corner of Angola. It became extinct around 1960. There were only fifty Kwadi in the 1950s, of whom only 4–5 were competent speakers of the language. Three partial speakers were known in 1965, but in 1981 no speakers could be found. Salvage work was carried out 2014 with two remembers who had acquired the language from an old speaker while they were children.^[3]

Although Kwadi is poorly attested, there is enough data to show that it is a divergent member of the Khoe family, or perhaps cognate with the Khoe languages in a Khoe–Kwadi family. It preserved elements of proto-Khoe that were lost in the western Khoe languages under the influence of Kxʼa languages in Botswana,^[4] and other elements that were lost in the eastern Khoe languages.^[1]

The Kwadi people, called Kwepe (Cuepe) by the Bantu, appear to have been a remnant population of southwestern African hunter-gatherers, otherwise only represented by the Cimba, Kwisi, and the Damara, who adopted the Khoekhoe language. Like the Kwisi they were fishermen, on the lower reaches of the Coroca River.^[5]

Kwadi was alternatively known by varieties of the words Koroka (Ba-koroka, Curoca, Ma-koroko, Mu-coroca) and Cuanhoca.

Kwadi is tentatively reconstructed as having the seven oral vowels /a ɛ e i ɔ o u/ the three nasal vowels /ã ĩ ũ/. Diphthongs seem to have been (/ai/), /ao/, /au/, /oa/, /oe/, /oɛ/, /ua/, /ui/ and /ãĩ/, /ũã/. The status of /ao/ is not certain, and /oa/, /ua/ may have been allophones.^[3]

The tone system is unclear, due to limited data and to the poor quality of recordings. At least two tones (high and low) are necessary to explain that data:^[1]

[ʔáú] 'dog', [ʔáù] 'fish'

[k’ó] 'meat', [k’ò] 'man, male'

The following consonants are attested. Those is parentheses are doubtful: they are either found in only a single lexeme, or are plausible allophones of another consonant.^[3]

Only dental clicks remain. Proto-Khoe–Kwadi *ǃ, *ǂ, *ǁ are replaced with non-click consonants such as /c, tɬ, c’, tɬ’, x’, ʔʲ/.^[1]

In disyllabic words, the second consonant is predominantly /m/, /n/, /l/, /d/, /b/, and it is possible those were the only consonants allowed within morphemes in native words, as would be typical for the area.^[3]

Kwadi has personal pronouns for first and second person in singular, dual, and plural numbers. Pronouns have subject, object, and possessive cases.^[6] 1st person plural may have distinguished clusivity. Object pronouns are suffixed with -le/-de, except for the first person dual object pronoun, which is just mu. Possessive pronouns are the same as the subject form, except for the first person singular possessive pronoun, which is tʃi. Third person pronouns are simply the demonstratives, which are formed with a demonstrative base ha- followed by a gender/number suffix.^[7]

The known possessive pronouns are tʃi 'my' and ha 'his'. From the Khoe languages, it's not expected that all pronouns have distinctive possessive forms.

Kwadi nouns distinguished three genders (masculine, feminine, and common), as well as three numbers (singular, dual, and plural).^[8] Some nouns form their plural with suppletion. For example: tçe "woman" vs. tala kwaʼe "women". The attested paradigm of nominal suffixes for masculine and feminine nouns is given below.

• Kwisi people

• Kwadi basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database

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