Wolof hip

[Alice Faber]

--On Monday, November 29, 2004 11:03 AM -0500 "James A. Landau"
<JJJRLandau at AOL.COM> wrote:

> In a message dated   Sat, 27 Nov 2004 02:58:43 -0500,  Benjamin Zimmer
> <bgzimmer at RCI.RUTGERS.EDU> quotes:
>
>>  Date: Mon, 13 Sep 93 16:30 MET
>>  From: <WERTH at alf.let.uva.nl>
>>  Subject: RE: 4.694 Etymology of OK
>>
>>  And if the explanation of an African origin for
>>  such a quintessential Americanism as OK isn't enough of a cultural
>>  shock, Dalby also suggests that the positive and negative interjections
>>  uh-huh and uh-uh also have an African origin. He says that these kinds
>>  of inter- jections are particularly common in Africa, and points out
>>  that not only are they more common in American English than in British
>>  English, they're also more common in Afrikaans than in European Dutch!
>
> This one particular Dalby suggestion seems plausible for the following
> reason: "negative uh-uh" (which for clarity I will spell "unh-uh") in
> English has a glottal stop.  The only other word in English that I know
> of that has a glottal stop is "uh-oh", also an interjection.  It seems
> odd that English should have exactly two vocabulary items with a
> phonological feature (the glottal stop) not found in European languages.
>
> But if Wolof is full of words with glottal stops, it would make sense that
> two such words might enter American English complete with the unusual (to
> English-speakers) glottal stop.

But affective interjections often have sounds that aren't part of the
normal phonological inventory. In English, we have clicks (in "tsk tsk",
and whatever it is one says to horses that we want to do something), velar
fricatives ("yecch"), as well as the glottal stops in "uh oh" and "unh uh".
For some speakers, ejectives are the norm for word-final released voiceless
stops. Hebrew also uses a click in one alternative for "no". In all of
these instances, contact explanations are certainly *possible*, but they
are by no means necessary.


--
Alice Faber
Haskins Labs, 270 Crown St, New Haven, CT, 06511
T: (203) 865-6163 x258 F: (203) 865-8963
faber at haskins.yale.edu