Jarawan Bantu: the mistaken identity of the Bantu who turned North

Progress in the field of peripheral Bantu linguistics has been limited almost exclusively to the Grassfield Bantu languages of the Cameroons. Another group of peripheral Bantu languages has suffered almost complete neglect by students of comparative Bantu linguistics: the so called Jarawan Bantu languages (JBL), the northernmost subgroup of the ‘Wider’ Bantu languages (BL). Although there is a wordlist labelled Dsarawa in S.W. Koelle’s ‘Polyglotta Africana’ (1854) no serious attempt has since been undertaken to study one of these languages in detail. The bibliography of Ian Maddieson and Kay Williamson (1975) is, with regard to JBL disappointingly short and comprises more ethnographic than linguistic entries. This paper intends, in following up Maddieson/Williamson (1975) to adduce further evidence for the inclusion of the JBL among the BL. App., bibliogr., notes.