Clement Doke
| Clement Martyn Doke | |
|---|---|
| Born |
16 May 1893 Bristol |
| Died | 24 February 1980 (aged 86) |
Clement Martyn Doke (16 May 1893 in Bristol, United Kingdom – 24 February 1980 in East London, South Africa) was a South African linguist working mainly on African languages. Realizing that the grammatical structures of Bantu languages are quite different from those of European languages, he was one of the first African linguists of his time to abandon the Euro-centric approach to language description for a more locally grounded one. A most prolific writer, he published a string of grammars, several dictionaries, comparative work, and a history of Bantu linguistics.
The Doke family had been engaged in missionary activity for the Baptist Church for some generations. His father Reverend Joseph J. Doke left England and travelled to South Africa in 1882, where he met and married Agnes Biggs. They returned to England, where Clement was born as the third of four children. The family moved to New Zealand and eventually returned to South Africa in 1903, where they later on settled in Johannesburg.
At the age of 18, Clement received a bachelor's degree from Transvaal University College in Pretoria (now the University of Pretoria). He decided to devote his life to missionary activity. In 1913, he accompanied his father on a tour of north-western Rhodesia, to an area called Lambaland, now known as Ilamba. It is situated at the watershed of the Congo and Zambesi rivers, part of the district lay in Northern Rhodesia and part in the Belgian Congo State. The Cape-Cairo Railway threaded through its eastern portion; otherwise, travelling mostly had to be done on foot.
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