An incomplete set of Professor Westphal’s papers. It is a collection of lexical and grammatical evidence for the classification of the non-Bantu languages of Southern Africa.
Professor Westphal’s conference papers and notes; as well as previously published material, explore factors which affected the historic migration lines of Bantu and Bushmen peoples in Southern Africa; inter-tribal relationships; and resulting influences on language. Professor Westphal and others spent many hours interviewing “Bushmen”, in various parts of Southern Africa; recording their languages on tape recorders, and in writing, during several research trips from 1953-1971. The writings have been used to form a card index dictionary, which was originally built up in the field, starting in 1953.
‘The index has not been updated from the tapes recordings I have subsequently made”. The collection deals with around 15 different Bushmen languages, but there is most material on the !xu language. Professor Westphal noted “the lexical evidence upon which my grouping of the non-Bantu languages of Southern Africa based has never been published.” Professor Westphal’s order has been retained in the sorting of these papers.