Plant Naming Strategies and Plant Utility among the Datooga Community of Tanzania

Due to their centrality in the life of the Datooga community, the study focuses on plants in the community. Specifically, the study focuses on two aspects: the linguistics of plant naming and the plant utility across the community using an ethnolinguistic approach. Through the jungle-walk-and-identify method, plants and their names were identified. Through interviews, the plant utility was identified in the community. Data was collected in Chaggana village of Igunga district, Tabora region and Gheetanyamba village of Mbulu District, Manyara region. The first village had the Buraediga Datooga speakers, and the second village had both the Barabaiga and Gisamjanga Datooga speakers. Morphologically, the study found that, unlike the Bantu family plant names, which show a variation in their integration into the Bantu grammar, Datooga plant names are in harmony with the nominal grammar of the language. From an ethnolinguistic perspective, the morphological properties of the plant names provided various information about the plants, notably the size and growth pattern of the tree, which was manifested using the feminine gender prefix uda-. Information about the shape of a plant, annular shape of a plant, was manifested using the -oji- plural formative. Compounding morphology helped in delivering linguistic information related to plant texture, plant habitat, among others. Finally, various forms of plant utility were found in the community. Central was the cultural utility where plants were divided into the cold vs thorny category. The cold category had the coldest and the colder category based on cultural significance. Other forms of utility included medicinal utility and economic utility. Thus, within plant names in the culture, various linguistic and extra-linguistic information is manifested in the language.