Anthony Traill

Who was Anthony Traill?

Professor Anthony Traill was a linguist, who was the world's foremost authority on a San language called !Xóõ. He published widely on this language, including a dictionary of the language. !Xóõ is famous for having probably the largest consonant inventory of any language on the planet.

For the most part, Traill's publications addressed the phonetics of !Xóõ in relation to related San languages. He also contributed importantly to the Khoisan and Bantu instrumental phonetic literature on tone with respect to voice and breathy voice.

Traill was Professorial Research Fellow at Wits University for nearly the decade since he was Professor and Chair of Linguistics, in the Department of Linguistics, at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. He spoke highly competent !Xóõ, having conducted research in the !Xóõ communities of Botswana on nearly 100 field trips over more than 35 years. He also spoke Zulu, Tsonga, Tswana and Afrikaans.

Traill developed one of the bumps that adult native !Xóõ speakers have on his larynx after speaking the language, with its unwieldy phonemes, for a long time.