2008年度第11回AA研フォーラム

Abstract： How much information is needed in order to communicate successfully? The answer to this question will shed some light on the fascinating communication strategies of !Xun people of southwestern Africa. !Xun are traditional hunter-gatherers, belonging to what used to be called “Bushmen people”. The language is part of what is commonly known as the Khoisan family. It will be shown that although !Xun looks like any other language, in that it has lexical items and grammatical items, there is one significant difference to most other languages: In !Xun ,hardly any grammatical item is obligatory. The language shows great freedom with regard to the information which has to be conveyed in an utterance. Most of the information must be inferred from the context. Grammar may be used to play with, language may be used to convey hidden meanings, other than obvious ones. The question that this raises is the following: Is !Xun unique, constituting a type of its own, or are there other languages which show a similar typological profile?