Hausa and the Chadic Language Family: A Bibliography.

• Author: KAYE, ALAN S.
• Position: Review

Hausa and the Chadic Language Family: A Bibliography. By PAUL NEWMAN. African Linguistic Bibliographies, vol. 6. Koln: RUDIGER KOPPE VERLAG, 1996. Pp. xix + 152.

This bibliography, consisting of 1,821 items, is impressive. It represents decades of research by the compiler, Paul Newman, on Hausa (with forty to fifty million speakers, the first or second language in Nigeria, Niger, Ghana, Togo, and the Sudan) and many more of the approximately one hundred twenty-five Chadic languages. In this regard, it is important to keep in mind that more has been published about Hausa than all of the other Chadic languages combined. It is therefore a welcome addition to the African Linguistics Bibliographies Series, edited by Franz Rottland and Rainer Vossen, two of Germany's better known specialists in African linguistics.

Newman has done an excellent job in conserving space, while at the same time making this effort user-friendly. For example, there are an astonishing three pages of abbreviations just for the periodicals in which the items listed were published, including, not surprisingly, the JAOS (pp. xiii-xv). This is followed by three and a half pages of abbreviations for various collections and conference proceedings (pp. xvi-xix). It is gratifying to see just how much research has been done on Hausa and the Chadic subbranch of Afroasiatic, since, with so many languages still spoken, Chadic linguistics is one of the last frontiers still requiring fresh field investigations.

One of the many strengths of this bibliography is the listing of M.A. theses, doctoral dissertations, and a variety of unpublished manuscripts, such as a Hausa-Fulfulde-English vocabulary by C. J. Hanson-Smith, "Notes on the Sokoto-Fulbe" (1955), available at the Rhodes House Library in Oxford (no. 305, p. 27). Typical of hard-to-locate theses is James I. Murnane's "Aspects of Some Problems Relating to the Transliteration of the Hausa Language into Braille" (M.A. thesis, Duquesne Univ., 1974) (no. 168, p. 52). Newman wisely did not include most of what he refers to as "'pseudo-publications i.e., mimeographed papers produced for limited circulation by missionary or other groups" (p. viii).

Particularly advantageous for users is the translation of Hausa titles since, understandably, numerous publications referenced are in this language; e.g., Neil Skinner's Kamus na Turanci da Hausa: Babban Ja-Gora go Turanci = English-Hausa Dictionary: An Important Guide to English (1965)...