Clement Martyn Doke
Clement Martyn Doke ( born May 16, 1893 in Bristol, United Kingdom, † February 24, 1980 in East London, South Africa) was a South African linguist who focused on African languages in particular. He realized that the grammatical structures of Bantu languages are quite different from the European languages and was therefore one of the first Africanists the Euro -centric approach to language description. As a prolific author, he has published numerous grammars, dictionaries, comparative work, and a history of Bantu linguistics.
Missionary in Lambaland
The Doke family was engaged for generations in the missionary work of the Baptist Church. His father, Rev. Joseph J. Doke, had left England in 1882 and had traveled to South Africa where he met and married Agnes Biggs. They returned temporarily to England, where Clement was the third of four children. The family then moved to New Zealand in 1903 and finally returned to South Africa where she most recently settled in Johannesburg.
At the age of 18 Clement earned a Bachelor of Transvaal University College, Pretoria. He decided to devote his life to missionary work. In 1913 he accompanied his father on a trip to the North -Western Rhodesia in an area called Lambaland, which is known as Ilamba today. It lies on the watershed between the Congo and Zambezi, which at that time was a part of Northern Rhodesia and the other part in the Belgian Congo. In the East Cape to Cairo Railway ran through the area, but otherwise, travelers had to move mainly on foot.
Pastor William Arthur Phillips of the Nyasa Industrial Mission in Blantyre had there in 1905 a Baptist mission station established, which supplied an area of 65,000 square kilometers and 50,000 inhabitants. The Dokes should find out whether the mission could be transferred to Lambaland of the Baptist Union of South Africa. On this trip, Dokes father infected with typhoid fever and died shortly afterwards ( Gandhi attended the memorial service and spoke to the mourners ). Clement took over his father's role.
The South African Baptists decided to take over the mission station Kafulafuta, with Pastor Phillips was superintendent there. Clement Doke returned in 1914 as a missionary to Kafulafuta back; his sister Olive two years later followed him.
The Lamba language
Doke was frustrated by his inability to communicate with the Lamba. Written were merely a translation of the Book of Jonah and a collection of 47 hymns. However, he quickly mastered the language and published in 1917 his first book Ifintu Fyakwe Lesa (God's things, an introduction to the knowledge of the Scriptures ) to Lamba. To complete his language studies, he enrolled at the branch of the Transvaal University College in Johannesburg for an MA in. His master's thesis was published as The Grammar of the Lamba language ( grammar of the Lamba language). This book is still held in the traditional grammatical terms, since Doke had not yet developed his innovative method of analysis and description of Bantu languages. His later Textbook of Lamba Grammar ( Textbook of Lamba grammar ) is far superior in this regard.
Clement Doke was also ethnological interest. In 1931 The Lambas of Northern Rhodesia ( The Lamba Northern Rhodesia ), which is still one of the most outstanding ethnographic descriptions of the peoples of Central Africa. For Doke was the literacy part of evangelization, because the people had to be able to read in order to understand the message of the Bible. But only in his retirement he was able to complete the translation of the Bible into Lamba, the ( The Word of God ) was published in 1959 under the title Amasiwi AwaLesa.
University of Witwatersrand
In 1919 he married Hilda Lehmann, who accompanied him back to Lambaland. They infected by her work with both malaria and the doctors forbade her to stay in Lambaland. Even Clement Doke realized that he could no longer work in the fields expect longer and went in 1921. He was recruited by the newly -founded University of the Witwatersrand. To qualify as a teacher, the family moved to England, where he enrolled at the School of Oriental and African Studies. Its main languages were Lamba and Luba, but there was no suitable examiner, he finally had to switch to Zulu.
Doke took his 1923 work on the new Department of Bantu Studies, University of Witwatersrand on. In 1925 he received his doctorate with a dissertation on the phonetics of the Zulu language and promoted to senior lecturer. In 1931 he was appointed to the Chair of Bantu studies and thus also directed the Department of Bantu Studies. This Faculty acted as a catalyst for the admission of black Africans at the University: In 1925, the first time a limited number was approved in Summer Course for African Studies. Doke also supported the setting of Benedict Wallet Vilakazi, because he believed that a native speaker was essential for language acquisition. They sparked a storm of protest from the public. Both published jointly dictionary Zulu -English, which was first published in 1948. It still is one of the best examples of the lexicography of a Bantu language.
At the University of Witwatersrand was the later, South African linguistics professor Dr. Ernst Oswald Johannes Westphal among his pupils, who in the fifties as a lecturer and professor at the London School of Oriental and African Studies ( an institute of the University of London) a name, as the world's leading expert made of Bantu and Khoisan languages .
At the request of the Government of Southern Rhodesia Doke investigated the dialectal variation of the national languages , and made recommendations for a " Unified Shona ", which became the basis for standard Shona. He worked a uniform spelling out based on the Zezuru, Karanga and Manyika dialects. Dokes spelling was never fully accepted, and the South African government introduced an alternative spelling, which Shona was written 1935-1955 with two competing spellings.
Developed during his tenure and promoted Doke a method of linguistic analysis and description of the Bantu languages , which was based on the structure of these languages. This " Doke " model to this day remains one of the dominant models for linguistic work in South and Central Africa. His classification of the Bantu languages was for many years the prevailing view of the relationships of African languages . Doke was also one of the pioneers in the description of click consonants in the Khoisan and Bantu languages and developed a series of phonetic symbols for it.
Doke worked at the University of Witwatersrand until his retirement in 1953. 1972 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Rhodes University and the University of Witwatersrand.
The former missionary always remained connected to the Baptist Church. It was in 1949 elected president of the South African Baptist Union and spent a year to visit churches and mission stations. His inaugural address he used to condemn the newly introduced apartheid legislation: " I warn our government seriously think that the spirit behind its apartheid laws and the way they now introduce discriminatory measures of all kinds, bring a disaster on our beautiful country is. "
Selected Publications
- Ifintu Fyakwe Lesa (God's things, an introduction to the knowledge of the Scriptures, in Lamba ), 1917.
- The Lambas of Northern Rhodesia: A Study of Their Customs and Beliefs. London: George G. Harrap, 1931.
- Report on the Unification of the Shona Dialects. Government of Southern Rhodesia: Government Blue Book, 1931.
- Bantu linguistic terminology. London; New York, Longmans, Green, 1935.
- Textbook of Lamba Grammar. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1938.
- Outline grammar of Bantu. Johannesburg: University of the Witwatersrand, 1943.
- Zulu - English Dictionary. Johannesburg:. Witwatersrand University Press, 1948 (together with Benedict Wallet Vilakazi )
- The Southern Bantu languages . London; New York: Oxford University Press, 1954.
- Amasiwi AwaLesa ( Bible translation in Lamba ). In 1959.
- Contributions to the history of Bantu linguistics. Johannesburg:. Witwatersrand University Press, 1961 (together with DT Cole )
- Trekking in South Central Africa from 1913 to 1919. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1993.