Multilingualism and interactives: Interjections in Hadza, Ihanzu, Gorwaa and Maasai

Multilingualism – commonly understood as an individual’s ability to use more than one language – is often viewed as a near-universal human capacity: given appropriate conditions, speakers can develop a linguistic repertoire that draws on (any) two or more language systems. In this study, we argue that, while the above assumption holds for sentence grammar, it does not extend to the language domain referred to as ‘interactive grammar’. Here, multilingualism appears to be significantly constrained. To substantiate this claim, we examine one of the interactive categories, i.e., interjections, across five Tanzanian languages from distinct language families: Gorwaa (Cushitic), Hadza (language isolate), and Maasai (Nilotic) as well as Ihanzu and Swahili (Bantu). Given a striking degree of overlap in the form-function paring of primary interjections across these languages, which is not due to shared ancestry and/or borrowing – crucially, much greater than the similarities observed in sentence grammar – we propose the following: with respect to interjections, multilingual competence does not parallel that attested in sentence grammar. Rather, by drawing on (semi-)universal gestural imitative strategies conventionalized into (more or less) “tamed” verbal forms, interjections in one language can be intelligible to speakers of other languages, even in the absence of prior exposure to that language. In doing so, interjections – and potentially certain other categories within interactive grammar – align with a broader range of non-verbal communicative strategies, whether auditory, visual, somatosensory, olfactory, or gustatory. In conclusion, we suggest that multilingualism is not a property of language as a whole, but rather a feature that applies unevenly across its various domains.

Note: This talk has not gone through a process of peer review, and findings should therefore be treated as preliminary and subject to change.