Abstract The Hausa word hárshèe means both ‘language’ and ‘tongue’. Language names (glossonyms) are formed with a suffix -áncíi. Names of peoples (ethnonyms) are formed with a prefix bà- in the singular and a suffix -áawáa in the plural. In this paper, we present an overview of functionally parallel expressions in other Chadic languages. We find that most Chadic languages use the word for ‘mouth’, not ‘tongue’, to mean ‘language’, and that language names are formed by a tightly-knit phrase or compound ‘mouth-of X’ rather than by means of a derivational suffix. We propose that the Hausa ethnonymic prefix bà- is a reflex of the widespread Chadic root for ‘mouth’ (*bV), having undergone a semantic development from ‘language-of X’ to ‘person-of X’. We note that the original root is still preserved in the Hausa word bàakíi ’mouth’, which contains an old West Chadic nominal suffix *-kV that would have been dropped in inalienable possession and compounds. We also propose that -áawáa, the modern-day suppletive plural of the ethnonymic prefix bà-, was originally a distinct derivational suffix indicating a community of people with common characteristics, and, further, that the -áncíi suffix now used to denote language names originally had a semantically broader meaning, connoting such qualities as style, mannerisms, and speech peculiarities.

中文翻译：

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豪萨语的语言名称和民族名称

摘要豪萨语hárshèe的意思是“语言”和“语言”。语言名称（专有名词）由后缀-áncíi组成。民族名称（民族名称）由单数形式的前缀bà-和复数形式的后缀-áawáa组成。在本文中，我们概述了其他Chadic语言中的函数并行表达式。我们发现，大多数乍得语言都使用“嘴巴”而不是“舌头”来表示“语言”，并且语言名称是由紧密的短语或复合的“ X嘴巴”而不是通过导数后缀。我们认为，豪萨人的姓氏前缀bà-是对“嘴巴”（* bV）广泛使用的Chadic词根的反映，经历了从“ X的语言”到“ X的人”的语义发展。我们注意到，原始的词根仍然保留在豪萨语bàakíi“嘴”中，它包含一个古老的西乍迪克标称后缀* -kV，该后缀将被丢弃在不可剥夺的财产和财产中。我们还建议-áawáa，即民族名字前缀bà-的现代代词，最初是一个明显的派生后缀，表示具有共同特征的人群，并且，-áncíi后缀现在用于表示语言名称最初在语义上具有更广泛的含义，其含义包括风格，举止和言语特质。