paper presented to the 34th Colloquium on African Languages and Linguistics (CALL 34),

Leiden University, 23-25 August 2004

Variability and Compounding of Affixes in Hehe

Animal Names (Tanzania)
Martin T. Walsh1
Department of Social Anthropology
University of Cambridge

Introduction

Noun class affixation in Bantu languages can be both substitutive and additive. The substitution
of one noun class prefix for another is the most typical process used to signal pluralization and
other changes of meaning. The addition of a second prefix to a word already formed with a
prefix is also common, though generally restricted to particular contexts that vary by language
(Maho 1999: 57-60).

Process Example

Substitutive Swahili m-ti ‘tree’ > mi-ti ‘trees’

NPx + stem > NPy + stem NP3 + -ti > NP4 + -ti
Additive Swahili ji-ti ‘large stick’ > ma-ji-ti ‘large sticks’
NPx + stem > NPy + NPx + stem NP5 + -ti > NP6 + NP5 + -ti

The additive process usually involves no more than two prefixes, one tacked onto another. In this
paper I present a case in which the additive process has no such limit, but can produce complex
nouns by stacking up more than two noun class prefixes and other miscellaneous affixes
(Meeussen’s ‘medials’). The language concerned is Hehe, and this runaway additive process is
most fully developed in the names of different kinds of animals (excluding humans). There are a
number of other interesting features to this case: the process is not only highly productive but
also subject to local variation as well as manipulation by informants, resulting in the innovation
of both simple and compound affixes. My description and analysis of these features is
necessarily preliminary, but I hope will provide some signposts for further research.

The Hehe Language: Past and Present Research

There is no doubt that Kihehe is a Bantu language lacking any peculiar or particularly interesting
features (Redmayne 1964: 37)

Hehe (ikihehe, Guthrie’s G62) is spoken by around three-quarters of a million people, most of
whom live in Iringa, Kilolo and Mufindi districts in south-central Tanzania.2 Nurse classifies
Hehe together with Bena (G63), Sangu (G61), Wanji (G66), Kinga (G65), Kisi (G67), Pangwa
(G64) and Manda (N11) in his Southern Highlands subgroup (1988, 1999). It is especially close
to Bena, and these two are sometimes treated as forming a dialect continuum (Priebusch 1935;

1
E-mail address: kisutu@btinternet.com.
2
Population estimate based on figures in the online 14th edition of the Ethnologue and Tanzania’s 2002 Population
and Housing Census (see http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=HEH and
http://www.tanzania.go.tz/census/iringa.htm).
Redmayne 1964: 37-38; Nurse 1979: 114-115). Regional dialects of Hehe can be distinguished
on the basis of (at least) phonetic and lexical differences: these include local varieties spoken by
the Sungwa and other people of the Udzungwa Mountains (Madumulla 1995: 9), and the speech
of the Kosisamba of the Rift Valley, whose historical neighbours included Sangu, Kimbu (F24)
and Gogo (G11) speakers. The Hehe were not united politically until the second half of the 19th
century (Redmayne 1968: 37-44; Redmayne & Ndulute 1970: 795): since then, however, the
central dialect of Kalenga – the seat of the Hehe chiefs – has been spreading at the expense of
other varieties.

Despite work by linguists and others since the late 19th century (e.g. Last 1885; Velten 1899;
Velten 1899; Spiss 1900; Dempwolff 1908; 1911/12; 1914; Redmayne 1969; Redmayne &
Ndulute 1970; Mudemu undated; Nurse 1979; Crema 1987: Walsh & Moyer 2000), knowledge
of Hehe and its varieties remains patchy. Translations of the scriptures have only just begun to be
published using a simple orthography based largely on the writing of Swahili (The Bible Society
of Tanzania 1999). There are no modern grammars or dictionaries of the language and its
patterns of intonation are largely unstudied (cf. Nurse 1979: 114-115; Odden & Odden 1985,
1999). Like Bena and some other Southern Highlands languages Hehe has a reduced system of 5
vowels with distinctive vowel length (Nurse 1988: 102). Whether or not it has a pitch accent
(restricted tone) system and both fixed and conditional vowel length as described for Kinga
(Schadeberg 1973) and Sangu (Bilodeau 1979: 116-150) remains to be determined.

The data on which this paper is based were collected opportunistically as part of an
anthropological study of certain aspects of Hehe ethnobiology and culture. I became aware of
innovation in Hehe noun class prefixes in January 2003 towards the end of field research, when
reviewing animal names recorded by my long-term assistant in Iringa town, Justin John Kitinye.
Before leaving Iringa I asked a number of other assistants and informants to write down animal
and especially bird names to compare with earlier collections. I have since reviewed the relevant
literature on Hehe (see references above; also Allen & Loveridge 1933; Bangs & Loveridge
1933; Jackson 1936; Swynnerton 1946; Kimaro et al. 2001; Topp-Jørgensen et al. 2001),
together with available information on related languages (e.g. Brain 1980; Stronach et al. 1994)
and in particular my own material on Sangu (1985 and recent field notes). The resulting data,
assembled unsystematically and recorded imperfectly, are sufficient to demonstrate the
significance of multiple affixation in Hehe animal names, if not to answer all of the questions
that it raises.

Hehe Noun Class Prefixes and Other Affixes

The following table summarises the main features of the inherited Hehe noun class system,
showing the augments (preprefixes) and concord prefixes as well as the basic nominal prefixes.
The augments, which have some deictic uses (cf. Nurse 1979: 108), need not be considered
further here. The semantic associations shown are merely the most obvious and not the results of
comprehensive analysis (cf. the results of an earlier study of Hehe noun class semantics, Worsley
1954: 286-287). The singular / plural pairings that are indicated are the most typical.
.
Noun Aug- Nominal Concord Semantic Associations
Class ment Prefix Prefix (sg. = singular; pl. = plural)

1 u- mu- a- sg. people and their roles

1a u- Ø- a- sg. kinship terms
2 a- va- va- pl. of class 1, 1a
3 u- mu- gu- sg. trees and shrubs; time and the calendar; some body
parts

2
 Noun Aug- Nominal Concord Semantic Associations
Class ment Prefix Prefix (sg. = singular; pl. = plural)

4 i- mi- gi- pl. of class 3

5 i- (l)i- li- sg. body parts; some small plants
augmentatives
6 a- ma- ga- pl. of class 5, 14, 20
mass nouns and plurals
7 i- ki- ki- sg. cultural products and behaviours
some diminutives, e.g. small plants and animals
8 i- fi- fi- pl. of class 7
9 i- N- (y)i- sg. large animals; wild vegetables and herbs
loanwords (often with Ø- as the nominal prefix)
10 i- N- (t)si- pl. of classes 9 and 11
11 u- lu- lu- sg. grasses, sedges and reeds; long and thing objects,
distance; descriptive qualities
12 a- ka- ka- sg. diminutives
13 u- tu- tu- pl. of class 12
14 u- wu- wu- sg. liquid and sticky substances, foods; abstract qualities
15 u- ku- ku- verbal infinitives
16 a- pa- pa- locative, proximity to a place or time
17 u- ku- ku- locative, motion to or from a place
18 u- mu- mu- locative, inside a place
20 u- gu- gu- sg. augmentatives (rarely used in ordinary speech)

Whereas most Hehe nominal prefixes are used substitutively in ordinary words, some of them
can also be used additively in certain contexts. These include the locative prefixes (classes 16,
17, and 18) and the class 6 prefix when it is used as a mass plural.

Other affixes in regular use are the special prefixes mwa- and se-, which prefix agnatic descent
group names and indicate the gender of the person being addressed or referred to, e.g.
mwamuyinga for a man, semuyinga for a woman - Muyinga in this example being the name of
the putative ancestor of the Hehe royal family or patrilineage (Dempwolff 1908: 82-83;
Redmayne 1964: 66-67).

An infix with possessive sense, -nya-, is also widely used to form complex nouns that are
typically descriptive and suggest the possession of a particular quality. It occurs in both animate
and inanimate nouns in most of the noun classes, including classes 1 and 2, e.g. munyaluhala,
‘clever person’, < luhala, ‘intelligence’ (class 11). The class 9 names of many kitchen herbs are
formed in this way, e.g. two names for the edible leaves of Corchoros olitorius: nyaluhanga <
luhanga, ‘sand’ (class 11), and nyamugunda < mugunda, ‘field’ (class 3), both presumably
indicating the environments in which these wild plants are found. With a class 3 prefix the first
of these becomes munyaluhanga, recorded as a name for Pseudolachnostylis maprouneaefolia,
a plant which provides building poles and a fish poison from its fruits (Walsh & Moyer 2002).

Miscellaneous affixes of this kind are referred to as ‘medials’ by Meeussen (1967: 95; cf.
Maganga & Schadeberg 1992: 189). Together with the regular (and some irregular) noun class
prefixes they play an active role in the additive process which is most fully developed in Hehe
animal names and described in the next section.

3
Runaway Affixation and the Innovation of Prefixes

In this section I will describe the additive process and related innovations, and in the next section
discuss at greater length some of the ways in which these might have developed. First let me
give some examples: the following table shows different versions of Hehe names for a number of
bird species.

Stem & Singular4 Plural Noun Source5

Reference3 class

-fyosi lufyosi fyosi 11/10 Itimbo (Mufindi),

Speckled Itimbo (Dabaga),
Mousebird, Masisiwe, Kidabaga
Colius striatus lufyosi fivalufyosi 11/8 Idodi
kilufyosi filufyosi 7/8 Mbigili
kilufyosi filufyosi ~ 7/8 Nzihi
fivalufyosi
-hema nyakihema ? 9/? (Last 1885; Dempwolff
Ostrich, 1914; Velten 1899)
Struthio camelus nyangihema nyangihema 9/10 Kinyika
nyakahema nyakahema 9/10 Malinzanga
nyakahema manyakahema 9/6 Nyabula, Idodi
nyakahema gavanyakahema 9/6 Idodi
mwangahema ? ?9/? (Dempwolff 1914)
limwangahema ? 5/? (Dempwolff 1914)
ngamuhema ? 9/? (Dempwolff 1914)
ling’amuhema ? 5/? (Dempwolff 1911/12)
-lumbi ng’akilumbi ? 9/? (Spiss 1900)
Pied Crow, nyakilumbi nyakilumbi 9/10 (Dempwolff 1914;
Corvus albus Redmayne & Ndulute
1970), Masisiwe
nyakilumbi manyakilumbi 9/6 Nyabula, Idodi
nyakilumbi gavanyakilumbi 9/6 Idodi
kinyakilumbi ? 7/? (Dempwolff 1911/12)
linyakilumbi manyakilumbi 5/6 Mbigili
linyakilumbi manyakilumbi ~ 5/6 Nzihi
ganyakilumbi ~
gavanyakilumbi
-nunu, -nunwi kilununwi filununwi 7/8 Itimbo (Mufindi),
sunbirds, Igowole
Nectarinia & kimwalununu fimwalununu 7/8 Masisiwe, Nyabula,
Anthrepetes spp. Mbigili
kimwalununu fimwalununu ~ 7/8 Idodi
fivamwalununu

3
Some of the identifications were provided by my long-term research assistant (who was born in Nzihi); other birds
were readily identified in the field and/or through his and other informants’ descriptions.
4
Here and elsewhere I have sometimes revised the spelling of names, especially those from older sources, in order
to conform to standard Hehe orthography.
5
Most place names indicate informant’s place of birth, though not subsequent residences. The informant from
Itimbo in Mufindi district, for example, had lived and worked in many different parts of Iringa region and his lexical
knowledge was correspondingly mixed. Malinzanga is the location in which the Masisiwe informant worked and
had learned some terms. Tosamaganga identifies a pupil at the secondary school there whose place of birth was not
recorded by my local assistant.

4
 Stem & Singular4 Plural Noun Source5
Reference3 class

kimwalununu fivamwalununu 7/8 Nzihi

-popolo nziva lupopolo nziva lupopolo 9/10 Mbigili, Tosamaganga

Emerald-spotted nziva lupopolo ~ nziva lupopolo ~ 9/10 Nzihi
Wood Dove, yilupopolo sivalupopolo
Turtur chalcospilos kipopolo fipopolo 7/8 Masisiwe, Igowole,
Kinyika
kilupopolo filupopolo 7/8 Idodi
-tema lutema ? 11/? (Spiss 1900; Bangs &
small and medium- Loveridge 1933)
sized raptors esp kilutema filutema 7/8 Itimbo (Mufindi),
kites & Masisiwe, Nyabula,
sparrowhawks, Kidabaga, Mbigili,
Accipitridae Tosamaganga
kilutema filutema ~ 7/8 Idodi
fivalutema
kilutema fivalutema 7/8 Nzihi
kingalutema fingalutema 7/8 Kinyika
-titu kidege kititu ? 7/? (Redmayne 1964)
widow-birds, kimwawutitu fimutitu 7/8 Itimbo (Mufindi)
Euplectes spp. kinyamwititu ? 7/? Wasa
kimwititu fimwititu 7/8 Mbigili
kimwititu fivamwititu 7/8 Nzihi
limwititu gavamwititu 5/6 Nyabula
-vatwi luvatwi mbatwi 11/10 Masisiwe
nightjars, kiluvatwi filuvatwi 7/8 Mbigili
Caprimulgidae liluvatwi ~ gavaluvatwi ~ 5/6 Nzihi
lingaluvatwi gavangaluvatwi

These eight stems are a fraction of the total that could be shown, including the names of
mammals, reptiles and different kinds of invertebrates. I have selected these particular bird
names because, among other things, they illustrate the progressive stacking of prefixes and other
affixes as well as the variation in forms that can be elicited from different informants and
sometimes from the same person.6

In its most basic manifestation the additive process adds new singular and plural prefixes to an
existing singular noun. This process can be repeated, optionally combining these prefixes with
other affixes. Almost all of the primary noun class prefixes appear to be involved in this process,
excluding the human classes (1, 1a, 2), the infinitive (15), the locatives (16, 17, 18), and the
archaic augmentative (20). I assume that at least some sequences of -nga- should be read as /ŋa/,
and -ngi- as /ŋi/, representing combinations of N + ka and N + ki respectively (informants were
generally inconsistent in their transcription of the velar nasal, written ng’ in Swahili).

Plural prefixes do not often appear in word-internal position for the obvious reason that the
additive process usually builds upon singular nouns. There are, however, some exceptions to

6
I had more than ten informants who provided significant information on Hehe bird names but rather fewer for
other animals. In cases where the name of a less widely-known animal has been elicited from only one informant
then both zoological identification and recognition of the original nominal stem can be difficult. Sometimes it is
also hard to distinguish compound from complex nouns without further linguistic information.

5
this. Some names incorporate the class 6 prefix, e.g. kimaganga, ‘a kind of flying insect’ <
-ganga; limanjonjo, ‘Grey-headed Sparrow, Passer griseus’ < -jonjo; limambalago, ‘Red-
backed Scrub Robin, Erythropygia leucophrys’ < -valago. By contrast the class 4 prefix was
only elicited once in internal position. This was in the name gavamisululu, given as an
alternative for gavamusululu (with the expected class 3 prefix), the plural of limusululu, ‘small
kingfishers, Alcedinidae’ < -sululu. I interpret this as a slip of the tongue, interesting nonetheless
(see below).

As might be expected, the possessive infix -nya- features in many of the complex names. More
unusual is the appearance of what I take to be the descent group prefix mwa- (mwi- before the
class 5 prefix). This is perhaps the loose equivalent of prefixing English animal names with the
title ‘Mr’, though I can find no example of the Hehe gender prefix occurring in initial position in
animal names. There are also no unequivocal examples of the feminine prefix se- being
employed in animal names. A possible candidate is an old name for the Spotted Hyena, Crocuta
crocuta, ‘insegumbi’ (nsegumbi) in one recorded version, ‘usegumbe’ (wusegumbi) in
another. This would assume a stem that is related to the root of mugumba, ‘childless woman’
(class 1), the gender specificity of which would make a feminine prefix appropriate.7

One set of prefixes has clearly been innovated. These are shown in the following table alongside
their regular equivalents:

Noun Aug- Nominal Concord Semantic Associations

Class ment Prefix Prefix (sg. = singular; pl. = plural)

5 i- (l)i- li- sg. body parts; some small plants; augmentatives

6 a- ma- ga- pl. of class 5, 14, 20; mass nouns and plurals
6 NEW gava- ga- INNOVATION pl. of class 5 animal names
7 i- ki- ki- sg. cultural products and behaviours; some diminutives
8 i- fi- fi- pl. of class 7
8 NEW fiva- fi- INNOVATION pl. of class 7 animal names
9 i- N- (y)i- sg. large animals; wild vegetables and herbs; loanwords
9 NEW yi- yi- INNOVATION sg. animal names
10 i- N- (t)si- pl. of classes 9 and 11
10 NEW siva- si- INNOVATION pl. of class 9 animal names

Three of the new forms are plural class markers (6, 8, 10) and one a singular prefix (9). They are
clearly all related to and possibly derive in part from the regular concord prefixes for the same
classes. The new plural prefixes are noticeably atypical for Hehe with their CVCV shape: the
probable source for the second part of these is the class 2 nominal prefix va-. I will say more
about this in the next section, as well as commenting on the regional distribution of this set of
innovations.

Discussion and Some Directions for Analysis

The examples presented above and brief description of their main components point to a number
of interesting features in addition to the basic process of additive affixation. How can we explain
the different aspects of this process? In this section I will make some preliminary observations
and offer a number of tentative hypotheses.
7
Bastin (1994: 20) proposes a protoform *-jegumbi to explain Hehe nsegumbi and attestations of –zumbi in Nyiha
(M23) and Lwena (a K20 language spoken in Zambia). However, *nj does not produce #/ns/ in Hehe as Bastin
claims, but /nz/. This would also fail to explain wusegumbi as a variant of the same name. The posited link with
the Lwena term, which is defined as ‘mongoose sp.’, also looks weak on semantic grounds.

6
I have already noted that the medial -nya- is a common component of complex nouns in
different classes, including animates (both human and non-human) and inanimates. It is readily
used to form descriptive names of animals, of which the following class 9 nouns are a sample:
nyalupala, ‘Lion, Panthera leo’ < -pala, ‘to scratch’; nyamuhanga, ‘Aardvark, Orycteropus
afer’ < luhanga, ‘sand’; nyagala, ‘zebra mouse, Lemniscomys spp.’ < -gala; nyamwilu, ‘Black-
necked Spitting Cobra’, Naja nigricollis’ < -ilu ‘black’.8 Given that many different kinds of
nouns are formed in this way, it might be thought of as the paradigm for additive processes.
However, the infix -nya- is only involved in some of the complex animal names, and it is often
difficult to assign a meaning to its use in these. This can be illustrated by cases in which -nya- is
apparently interchangeable with other affixes, e.g. nyakahema vs. ngamuhema, nyakilumbi vs.
ng’akilumbi, kinyamwititu vs. kimwawutitu (taken from the table of bird names). Even in
relatively transparent forms like nyamuhanga (see above) it is difficult to explain the choice of
affix (noun class prefix) which follows -nya- and precedes the stem (why has the class 11 prefix
of luhanga been replaced by a class 3 prefix?).

A more compelling hypothesis, and one which might explain a number of the features of additive
affixation in Hehe, is to trace its source to the reduction of binomial animal names and their
conversion into monomials. As in many other systems of ethnobiological classification,
binomials are readily generated in Hehe. Informants typically give a number of animal names in
this form, especially when asked for detailed lists and descriptions of animal kinds. The
following are examples of binomial bird names:

Binomial Derivation

kidege kititu < kidege, ‘bird’ + -titu, ‘black’

widow-bird, Euplectes spp.
kihuna kikomi
Green-winged Pytilia, Pytilia
melba
kitundulu ndumbwe
? male Paradise Whydah,
Steganura paradisaea
kitundulu wukanga
? Peter’s Twinspot, Hypargos
niveoguttatus
< kihuna, ‘African Firefinch,
Lagonostica rubricata’
< kitundulu, ‘cordon-bleus,
waxbills, and paradise whydahs’
< kitundulu, ‘cordon-bleus,
waxbills, and paradise whydahs’
+ -komi, ‘large’
+ *-tumbwe, ‘whydahs and
paradise flycatchers’
+ *-kanga, ‘guineafowls’ (i.e.
spotted birds)

Binomials are formed by adding a nominal or adjectival modifier to a primary lexeme. As these
examples suggest, concord between the first and second elements of a binomial is only required
when the modifier is an adjectival stem. Nominal stems can take their own noun class prefixes
and these need not agree with the class of the primary lexeme. Choice of the second prefix seems
to be often governed by semantic considerations (e.g. wukanga might be loosely translated as
‘spottiness’).

Binomials can in turn be converted into monomials by deleting the stem of the primary lexeme
and adding its noun class prefix (or a homologue of the same) to the secondary lexeme. The
result is replacement of the binomial with a new lexeme which has formed from it. My principal
research assistant (from Nzihi) provided an unsolicited illustration of this process when we were
discussing the new prefixes that he employed in some animal names (see above). He illustrated

8
Some of the animal names of this kind were probably euphemisms in origin that have subsequently replaced
inherited terms for the same species.

7
their use by converting a series of class 9/10 bird names (based on the primary lexeme nziva,
‘dove’) into monomials with the new prefixes, as shown in the next table:

Binomial New Monomial

nziva igongo ~ nzivigongo > yigongo, pl. sivagongo

< nziva + igongo, ‘the Rift Valley’9
Speckled Pigeon, Columba guinea
nziva ludanda > yiludanda, pl. sivaludanda
< nziva + danda, 9/10, ‘blood’
Laughing Dove, Streptopelia senegalensis
nziva lukesa > yilukesa, pl. sivalukesa
< nziva + -kesa (etymology opaque)
ring-necked doves, Streptopelia spp.
nziva lupopolo > yilupopolo, pl. sivalupopolo
< nziva + -popolo, ‘dove sp.’ (from a widespread root)
Emerald-spotted Wood Dove, Turtur chalcospilos
nziva lutute > yilutute, pl. sivalutute
< nziva + -tute, ‘dove sp.’ (from a widespread root)
Dusky Turtle Dove, Streptopelia lugens
nziva luwono > yiluwono, pl. sivaluwono
< nziva + luwono, 11/10, ‘Castor Oil, Ricinus communis’
Namaqua Dove, Oena capensis
nziva musosa > yimusosa, pl. sivamusosa
< nziva + musosa, 3/4, ‘tree sp.’
Green Pigeon, Treron australis

The general process of binomial reduction in these and other (reconstructed) examples can
summarised by the following formula:

(NPx + stem1) + (NPy + stem2) > NPx + NPy + stem2

Simple deletion of the primary lexeme is probably not an option for semantic reasons.
Combining the constituent lexemes of a binomial into one makes good sense (!) both
morphologically and semantically. It also avoids the creation of a monomial assigned to a noun
class incompatible with its new role as a free-standing animal name. Many secondary lexemes
have nominal prefixes which are appropriate to their function as the modifying terms in
binomials, but which are rarely employed in monomial animal names and look out of place if
they are (e.g. class 3, 11 and 14 prefixes).

Many secondary lexemes are also based on adjectival and nominal stems that are widely used in
lexemes other than animal names, in which case their simple conversion into monomials would
produce confusion with other words. Imagine, for example, birds with banal names like kititu,
‘black object’ (from kidege kititu) and luwono, ‘castor oil plant’ (from nziva luwono). This
would also work against the substitution of one prefix by another, i.e. replacement of the
secondary lexeme’s original prefix by the prefix taken from the primary lexeme. In the
hypothetical examples already given this would produce kititu (again) and mbono, which is the
everyday word for the oil of the castor plant and hardly appropriate as a bird name.

9
Igongo is a traditional Hehe name for the Rift Valley and part of what is now Ruaha National Park. The initial i-
of this name is a prefix sometimes used with place names. It has apparently been dropped in the new monomial
form, which builds on the stem -gongo.

8
Under these circumstances it is understandable that the conversion of binomials into monomials
should generally follow the formula given above. However, in cases where there is concordial
agreement between the two lexemes that comprise a binomial, this would still create a problem.
The reduction of kidege kititu, for example, would produce the sequence #kikititu. As far as I
am aware, prefixes are never repeated in this way in Hehe. Deleting one half of a CVCV prefix
like this would simply bring us back to one of the problems that we have already described. A
possible solution in cases like this is to insert another affix, e.g. the gender prefix mwa- or the
medial -nya-, giving the following formula:

(NPx + stem1) + (NPx + stem2) > (NP +) Affix + NPx + stem2

I have shown the outer prefix in the resulting monomial as optional. The omission of this prefix
might provide an opportunity for the word’s reassignment to another class, initially perhaps the
default class 9.10 Regularization of such words by adding a new outer prefix would provide a
further opportunity for class reassignment.

We can hypothesize that the creation of monomials in the ways outlined above is and has been a
common process. This might explain the doubling of prefixes in many animal names as well as
the fact that the first of these prefixes (adjacent to the stem) often belongs to a class which is not
normally used in animal names. The class 11 prefix seems to be found more frequently than any
other in this position, reflecting perhaps one of the semantic functions of class 11 (the
description of qualities) and the role of this prefix in forming secondary lexemes in binomials.
Some of the constructions using mwa- and -nya- might also be explained by this model, though
both of these affixes are evidently capable of generating complex nouns in other ways as well –
hence their occurrence in words other than animal names.

This hypothesis does not explain all of the features that I have described, such as the innovation
of new class markers, including the CVCV plurals. It looks as though once Hehe deviated from
the normal pattern of substitutive and additive affixation, then the process really did ‘run away
with itself’ and develop a logic of its own. This may not be the best way of expressing it, but I
suspect that something of the kind has happened. In some instances affixes (prefixes and
medials) do appear to have been progressively added onto nominal stems, building increasingly
complex words. Many of the simpler forms that I elicited came from informants born in and
around the Udzungwa Mountains, the line of highlands that run the length of Uhehe (Hehe
territory) and define its southern boundary. More complex forms, including the new noun class
prefixes, appear to be used more in central and especially northern areas including the Rift
Valley. This suggests that the process has developed further in the north – though this should be
treated as no more than a preliminary impression based on limited data collected from a small
and skewed sample of informants.

Whatever the case, the available lexical data defy attempts to reconstruct the accumulation of
affixes over time. This is particularly so in the case of the longer and more complex lexemes
which vary considerably in their constituents. The reason for this seems to be that affixation has
not only developed incrementally, but that other processes have also played a part in producing
the patterns that we see today. The new noun class prefixes are evidently based on the regular
concord prefixes – with perhaps additional influence from similar nominal prefixes in Gogo. The
second element in the CVCV plural prefixes is probably modelled on the class 2 nominal prefix.
Its distribution suggests that this may be a recent innovation. It is possible, though, that other

10
The few animal names in Sangu which are prefixed with mwa- are indeed assigned to the class 9/10 pair.

9
complex morphemes have been innovated in the past and can be traced in contemporary animal
names. This may well be the case with some of the -nga- sequences found within them.

Another striking innovation is the complex morpheme, ngamu-, that Dempwolff (1908: 82)
described as prefixing animal names in Hehe folk tales but not in ordinary speech. In one story,
for example, the following forms appear: ngamupala, ‘Lion, Panthera leo’ (instead of the usual
nyalupala, class 9); ngamubala, ‘Honey Badger, Mellivora capensis’ (vs. libala, class 5);
ngamusungula, ‘Cape Hare, Lepus capensis’ (vs. sungula, class 9, and kisungula, 7); and
ngamufifi, ‘Spotted Hyena, Crocuta crocuta’ (vs. fifi, class 9, and lififi, 5). Other complex
forms in the same story include kingamusungula for the hare and lingamufifi for the hyena
(Dempwolff 1914: 133-135). More examples can be found in the other tales transcribed by
Dempwolff, including the impressive mwangamudembwe, ‘Elephant, Loxodonta africana’, and
its simpler form ngamudembwe (vs. regular ndembwe, class 9). The ordinary forms of animal
names also occur in some stories and it is clear that story tellers elaborated them to differing
degrees.11

Complex forms like these seem to have been developed and applied though analogy rather than
just the piecemeal accumulation of affixes over time. This is probably the case with at least some
contemporary versions of names. The available evidence suggests that some sequences of affixes
have been copied across from one name to another, and that sometimes the names of related or
similar animals have been (and are) modified like this in parallel. Consider, for example, the
following list of names for large birds:

nyakahema, ‘Ostrich, Struthio camelus’

nyakakwangala, ‘? eagle sp.’12
nyakalenge ~ linyakalenge, ‘Pied Crow, Corvus albus’
nyakalumbi ~ linyakilumbi, also ‘Pied Crow, Corvus albus’
nyakapinde ~ linyakapinda (sic.), ‘Ground Hornbill, Bucorvus leadbeateri’

An analogous pattern can be seen in Sangu, in which many large or ground-dwelling birds have
class 9 names prefixed by nkha-, nkhalu-, and nkhamu-:

nkhahema, ‘Ostrich, Struthio camelus’

nkhahove, ‘Pied Crow, Corvus albus’
nkhahududu, ‘Ground Hornbill, Bucorvus leadbeateri’
nkhalugonga, ‘sandgrouse, Pterocles spp.’
nkhalugwada, ‘Secretary Bird, Sagittarius serpentarius’
nkhalukwangala, ‘unidentified raptor sp.’
nkhalupaga, ‘unidentified vulture sp.’
nkhalutema, ‘Black Kite, Milvus migrans’
nkhaluvatu, ‘nightjar spp., Caprimulgidae’
nkhamuditu, ‘African Open-billed Stork, Anastomus lamelligerus’
nkhamunyonga, also ‘African Open-billed Stork, Anastomus lamelligerus’
nkhamuwonelo, ‘Great Snipe, Gallinago media’

11
I do not know whether these or other complex forms of animal names are still used by story tellers in the way that
Dempwolff’s data suggest. Analogous forms do not appear in modern Sangu folk tales (e.g. those recorded by
Bilodeau 1979 and Bechon 2000).
12
One informant identified this as an alternative name for the Secretary Bird, Sagittarius serpentarius, otherwise
called nyakiko.

10
It is unlikely that groups of names such as these have developed from binomials. Instead they
appear to comprise covert semantic categories which have been defined by the copying of the
same or similar sequences of affixes. The existence of such patterns in both Hehe and Sangu also
raises the possibility that such paradigms have been borrowed and copied between languages.
Sangu animal names exhibit some features similar to the Hehe case as described in this paper,
but to a much lesser extent. Unfortunately insufficient data are available on animal names in
other Southern Highlands languages to determine whether these are inherited processes or
whether particular words and patterns have been borrowed by individual languages. If the latter
is the case, then it may be significant that Hehe and Sangu – which are not especially close in
genetic linguistic terms13 – meet in the Rift Valley and nearby northern areas which seem to be
the source of at least some of the innovations in Hehe.

Rather like some of Dempwolff’s story tellers, contemporary Hehe speakers appear to be adept
in manipulating the affixes in animal names, treating all of them – noun class prefixes, other
affixes, and various sequences of these – as members of a single morphological set. This should
be evident from data presented above, especially the table of different versions of Hehe bird
names. Not only can quite different forms be elicited from different speakers, but also from the
same informants on single occasions. There was considerable variation, for example, in their use
of the new noun class prefixes, and some informants produced many more unusual singular /
plural pairings than others. They were not necessarily conscious of these and other
inconsistencies, some of which at least seemed to reflect residential mobility and experience of
different local speech communities within Uhehe.14 Conscious or not, though, the overall
impression is one of creativity and not confusion. These are clearly very active and productive
processes in Hehe, and might well challenge the view that it is a Bantu language that lacks any
peculiar or particularly interesting features.

Conclusion

Based as it is on limited data and a preliminary description, this paper raises more questions than
it answers, though I have tried to suggest some of the directions in which analysis might proceed.
To conclude this discussion I would like to touch on another set of issues that I have been
skirting around. In his 1954 paper, ‘Noun-classification in Australian and Bantu: Formal or
Semantic?’, Peter Worsley used the example of Hehe to argue that nominal classification in
Bantu has semantic motivations comparable to those found in Australian languages.15 This is
now well established, though the study of this aspect of Bantu is perhaps not as developed as it
could be (Katamba 2003: 114-119). The relative importance of formal and semantic processes
remains an issue in the study of individual languages as well as in comparative and historical
work. Unfortunately we lack the conceptual tools to analyse semantics with anything like the
degree of confidence that we can examine morphology. My discussion in this paper has focused
on the formal processes of nominal affixation in Hehe. It should be clear, however, that semantic
factors have played and continue to play an important role in the development and maintenance
of these processes. I suspect that one of the most interesting and difficult challenges for future
research on the Hehe case will be the further description and elucidation of these.

13
The verbal morphology and tense and aspect systems of Hehe and Sangu are much more different than a
comparison of phonology, nominal morphology and their vocabularies would lead one to expect.
14
It should also be borne in mind that some inconsistencies may be an artefact of the ways in which lexical data
were elicited and/or recorded.
15
For a more recent overview of nominal classification in Australian languages see the papers collected in Harvey &
Reid (1997).

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Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to my research assistant in Iringa, John Justin Kitinye, whose work on Hehe
ethnozoology first brought the subject of this paper to my attention. Special thanks are also due to the
following for the linguistic data they provided: Francis Saidi Ndimwa (Hehe animal names), the late
Richard Kassim Kihongole, I. J. Kimaro, Elmer Topp-Jørgensen (Hehe mammal names), Samwel Kahise,
Musa Kazimoto, Paulo Kibuga, Dominic V. N. Kihwele, Josephat Kisanyage, Alphonce D. Longo,
Magnus Maliva, Henry Anderson Mwandisi (Hehe bird names), Gabriel S. Mgassi, Augustino Mwadasi
(Sangu bird names), and Raphael Shinangonele (Sangu, Hehe and Wanji bird names). Among many
colleagues who have helped in different ways I would especially like to thank Roger Blench and Peter
Worsley for their intellectual contributions to the work in progress.

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