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- Language Family: Kwa
- Topic #1: Classification
- Topic #2: Historical Linguistics
Pushing back linguistic time in the Trans-Volta: movement, assimilation and loss
This paper attempts to reconstruct the geographical distribution of the Ghana-Togo-Mountain languages before the Ashanti incursions of the 1870s, which caused considerable disruption of the population. Migration stories and assimilation of other groups are examined first for Heine’s KA group of languages, then for the NA group. Finally the evidence for languages having disappeared from the area is considered. It is concluded that indeed a number of languages have disappeared, but those that remain have moved very little in the past two or three centuries, although the populations that speak them have changed considerably. Because of the nature and circumstances of the change in population, it is clear that the distribution of languages on the map reflects movements of people much older than any that might be recovered through oral tradition.
Cette article essaye la réconstruction de la distribution sur le plan géographique des langues montagnardes Ghana-Togo avant les invasions des Achanti dans le dix-neuvième siécle, qui avaient des résultats majeures pour les peuples du pays. On discute les histoires orales de migration et de l’assimilation des étrangères parmi les parleurs des langues du groupe KA de Heine, et puis parmi ceux des langues du groupe NA. On examine aussi l’evidence pour la disparution des langues. On conclut que bien que plusieurs langues ont disparu, ceux qui se parlent encore ont été essentiellement stabile au point de vue géographique, malgré des changements importants dans les populations parleurs. En conséquence de ces changements, la distribution approximative de ces langues doit être plus ancienne qu’on peut découvrir au moyen des traditions orales.