Goemai

Goemai
Spoken in	Nigeria (State of Plateau )
speaker	200,000
Linguistic ; classification	Afro-Asian Chadian West Chadian West Chadian A Angas-Gerka Angas – Goemai Goemai; ; ; ; ; Goemai ;
Language codes
ISO 639-3	ank

The Goemai is a Chadian language ( African Asian , westtschadisch A) in the state of Plateau in central Nigeria is a total of 200,000 persons spoken.

Its speakers refer to themselves and their language as 'Goemai'; in the older linguistic and ethnographic literature the term 'Ankwe' was used to denote the people and their language.

Goemai is a predominantly isolating language with the word order subject-verb-object .

Linguistic classification

Goemai belongs to a branch of the southern Angas-Goemai languages within the West Chadian Angas-Gerka language group. It is divided into four different dialectal varieties , which are subject to a politically and geographically motivated division.

The four dialects are Duut, Ost-Ankwe (also called Derteng), Dorok and K'wo. They are mutually understandable and deviations exist mainly on a phonological and lexical level .

Phonology

Consonants

	labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Plosives voicelessly aspirated voiceless non-aspirated voiced implosive	/ p ^h / p / p / p ' / b / b / ɓ / b '	/ t ^h / t / t / t ' / d / d / ɗ / d '		/ k ^h / k / k / k ' / g / g	[ʔ]
Fricatives voicelessly aspirated voiceless non-aspirated voiced	/ f ^h / f / f / f ' / v / v	/ s ^h / s / s / s' / z / z	/ ʃ ^h / sh / ʃ / sh ' / ʒ / j		/ h / h
Nasals	/ m / m	/ n / n		/ ŋ / ngh ¹ , ng ²
Liquid Lateral Vibrant		/ l / l / r / r
Sliding sounds	/ w / w ¹ , u ²		/ j / y ¹ , i ²

¹ syllable-initial / -medial ² syllable-final

The consonant inventory includes plosives , fricatives , nasals , liquids and gliding sounds .

In the case of obstruents, there is a distinction between voiceless aspirated , voiceless non-aspirated, and voiced and in some cases implosive sounds. This obstructive contrast is one of the most striking and typologically unusual features of this consonant system. Also striking is the realization of the velar, non-aspirated plosive / k /, which can occur both non-aspirated [k] and glottalized [k ']. There is free variation, i. H. Both variants are interchangeable in their contexts without the respective meaning changing.

It is also unusual that there are no geminates in indigenous words not borrowed from the Goemai . The liquids vary with regard to a distinction between laterals and vibrants , but this is not unusual.

A significant phenomenon in relation to the articulation of consonants is the so-called secondary articulation . Most consonants that appear initially morphemic can contain a second articulation: the labialization , the palatalization or the prenasalization. The labialization and palatalization are exclusive and cannot occur in combination; the prenasalization can be combined with the first two.

Vowels

	front	central	back
short	/ i /	/ ə / / a /	/ u /
long	/ i: / / e: /	/ ʉ: / / a: /	/ u: / /O:/ / ɔ: /

The Goemai's vowel inventory is typologically rather unusual, as it contains significantly more long vowels than short vowels. In addition to seven long vowels (/ i: /, / ʉ: /, / u: /, / e: /, / o: /, / ɔ: / and / a: /) there are only four short (/ i /, / u /, / ə / and / a /). There are different realizations of the vowels, which indicate dialectal variations. However, it is not always clear whether it is a matter of different realizations of the same phoneme or the representation of different phonemes.

Regarding the front and rear vowels / i /, / i: /, / u / and / u: / there is no variation in the different dialectals. The sound / ʉ: /, on the other hand, varies in terms of its realization and becomes / ɨ / in the Dorok dialect. In general, it appears that the distinction between long and short vowels in Dorok has been eliminated. The three long closed vowels / i: / / u: / and / ʉ: / are simply represented here as short / i /, / u / and / ɨ /. The situation is similar with the middle back vowels / o: / and / ɔ: /, which in Dorok become too short / o / and / ɔ / (alternatively / oCo /). In other dialects, such as B. K'wo and Duut, on the other hand, remain long vowels.

Because of these clear variations, it is rather questionable to what extent the vowel length really is a distinctive feature in Goemai.

There are two different groups of diphthongs : the first group consists of only two diphthongs, [ʉa (a)] and [ʉə]. The second, rather seldom occurring group contains the sounds [au], [ou], [ai], [ei] and [o: i], whereby it is noticeable that the respective second component always only [u] or [i] is. A special feature is that the two diphthong groups can occur together, e.g. B. to be seen in the three consecutive vowels in the word / mʉài / ("colleague" / "'companion").

Sounds

Goemai is one of the tonal languages . Thus, all lexical units as well as almost all affixes and clitics are associated with inherent tone gradients that differ in meaning. A distinction is made between two tone levels (high B and low T) and a falling tone course (high-low HT). There is also a middle tone (M), which can occur during assimilation processes, and a rising tone course (low-high TH), which only exists in some words.

The different tones have both lexical and grammatical functions, with the grammatical tone often neutralizing the lexical tone. Lexically there are many tonal minimal pairs , most of which belong to different parts of speech.

The Goemai's sound inventory has similarities with the sound inventory of other West Chadian languages such as B. Hausa , although in general the two are rather dissimilar. In contrast, the tonal system of similar languages such as that of the northern Angas-Goemai language differs more strongly. Unlike many westtschadische languages, Goemai has no tonal marking tense , aspect and modality to the subject pronouns . Goemean pronouns always have an unchangeable tone: the high tone / ní / in the 3rd person singular and a rising tone in all other pronouns.

Even if tones play an important role in Goemai, the tone is often not the only decisive factor. In most cases, the tone complements another important segmental mark.

orthography

The difference between aspiration and non-aspiration between aspirated and non-aspirated obstruents is spelled out by adding an apostrophe to the non-aspirated consonant. Implosives are also identified by adding an apostrophe. In addition, the apostrophe is used to represent the voiceless glottal plosive ([ʔ]) preceding the vowels. This is only written down if it occurs within the word.

At the request of the speaker, the velar nasal is written as / ngh / in the initial but as / ng / in the final word position in order to avoid possible confusion. The phenomenon of secondary articulation is also recorded orthographically.

Differences in vowel length are shown in the orthography. For short vowels it is expressed by single letters (e.g. the two short vowels [ɔ] and [o] are written / o /) and for long vowels by double letters (e.g. the long vowel [ɔ:] is written / oo / written). The different tones are represented as follows: high tones with an acute , low tones with a grave accent , falling tones with a circumflex and rising tones with a hatschek .

morphology

The words in Goemai consist in most cases of only one morpheme , which in turn only contains one syllable . In addition to this majority of mono-morphematic and monosyllabic words, there are also some polysyllabic words and morphemes that can arise through various processes. One of these processes is derivation (in this case with non-productive plural affixes), in which new words can be created by adding affixes ( tied morphemes ).

Another process is partial reduplication , in which parts of the word base are doubled. In Goemai, the initial consonant is mostly reduplicated, followed by the deep vowel / ə / (example: simple form = ɗɔ́ŋ (“to be good” / “to be beautiful”) → reduplicated form = ɗə̀.ɗɔ́ŋ or tə̀.ɗɔ́ŋ (“ beautiful")). There is also prefixing, whereby prefixes (in this case always in the form of consonant vowels) are added to a word stem, and clitization , which causes neighboring words to merge phonetically with one another. Clitization exists z. B. in the following sentence:

a) mʉə̀p fú ʉə́s = ʰɔ́k mé: t mé: t.

3rd person plural scatter (in the past tense) bones (clitized) aimlessly (reduplicated)

("They scattered the bones aimlessly.")

A final word formation process to be performed here is composition . During composition, free morphemes are put together to form a new word. The following examples illustrate the word formation process of the composition:

a) màt ("the woman") + ʃ ^h à: r ("the friendship") = mà.ʃ ^h à or màt.ʃ ^h à ("the friend", "the lady")

b) hà: m ("the water") + ʃíŋ ("the mixture") = hà: m.ʃíŋ ("the gruel")

c) ɗə̀m ("this time") + téi ("still") = ɗə̀m.téi or ɗə̀n.téi ("already", "already")

Chadian languages usually have a very detailed system of morphological plural marking on nouns. The Goemai, however, has no such general and obligatory plural marking and thus differs from other Chadian languages. As a result, there are many words that lack a numerical marker , even though it is relevant and important. The two numbers singular and plural can also exist in the Goemai, but the marking is not done according to a careful system. The following words exemplify existing singular and plural forms of nouns:

a) Singular: kwárám ("slave") → plural: shárám ("slave")

b) Singular: réép ("girl", "daughter") → plural: zàráp ("girl", "daughters")

c) Singular: kʼá ("head") → plural: kʼék ("heads")

Unlike other languages, verbs generally have no morphological identifiers. In addition, the distinction between verb classes in Goemai again differs from that of many other Chadian languages, as the distinction here is not based on the segmental and suprasegmental form of the verbs.

syntax

Goemai is one of the isolating languages , whereby word classes are determined on the basis of various syntactic criteria , such as with regard to distributive and combinatorial possibilities. A certain syntactic stability also contributes to the identification of the word classes, as there is a strict, fixed order of the words and the constituents . The order of the constituents is always AVO (= agent- verb- object ) / SV (= subject- verb), which has the sole function of expressing grammatical relations . The following sentences serve to illustrate the strict word order:

a) Fu̠án swár.

Rabbit (subject) to laugh (verb, in the past tense )

("The rabbit laughed")

b) Fu̠án máng pʼáng.

Rabbit (agent) take (verb, in the past tense) stone (object)

("The rabbit took a stone.")

c) Mu̠èp póe mu̠èp hààm.

3rd person plural (agent) to give (verb, in the past tense) 3rd P. pl. (Object) water (object)

("They gave them water")

There are three open word classes that can be infinitely expanded through word formation mechanisms: nouns, verbs and adverbs . Nouns usually have concrete referents rather than abstract referents , but there are in-derived nouns that refer to activities and abstracts . Verbs are usually used to express changes in mental state. Adverbs are used to express quantity, space, time, aspect and also the manner and personal evaluation. In addition to these three open word classes, there are also other closed word classes in Goemai: pronouns , attributes , ideophones , spatial prepositions , particles and conjunctions as well as some developing procilitics , enclitics and prefixes . Most lexical expressions only belong to a single word class.

Unlike in many other languages, nouns are not marked with case , person , gender or noun class . This fact is mainly due to the isolating nature of the language. However, the gender is marked with the 2nd person singular and with the logophoric pronouns and is therefore very limited. Logophoric pronouns can create a relationship depending on the perspective of a situation . In both of these cases where there is a gender mark, the grammatical gender is the same as the natural gender.

There are also some derived and un-derived nouns that have distinctive feminine forms. The derived nouns are converted into feminine forms using the noun màt (example: gòeshà (“friend” (female or male)) vs. màshà (“female friend” / “girlfriend”)). In the case of non-derived nouns, the distinction between male and female nouns is made using distinctive lexemes (example: là (“child” (female or male)) vs. réép (“girl”)).

literature

Ethnologue entry for Goemai
Hellwig, Birgit (2003) Fieldwork among the Goemai in Nigeria: discovering the grammar of property expressions . STAGE
Hellwig, Birgit (2003) The grammatical coding of postural semantics in Goemai (a West Chadic language of Nigeria) . MPI Series in Psycholinguistics [dissertation Nijmegen]. [the introduction contains info about the geography, demography, and sociolinguistics of Goemai; chapter 2 is a grammatical sketch of Goemai]
Hoffman, Carl (1970) Towards a comparative phonology of the languages of the Angas – Goemai group. ' Unpublished manuscript.
Kraft, Charles H. (1981) Chadic wordlists . Berlin: Dietrich Reimer (Marburg Studies in Africa and Asia Studies, Series A: Africa, 23, 24, 25). [contains a phonological sketch of Goemai and also a Goemai word list]
Wolff, Hans (1959) 'Subsystem typologies and area linguistics.' Anthropological Linguistics , 1, 7, 1-88. [phonological inventory of Goemai (Duut dialect)]

Single language

↑ Raymond G. Gordon, Jr, ed. 2005. Ethnologue: Languages of the World . 15th edition. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics.
↑ Birgit Hellwig: A Grammar of Goemai . Ed .: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG. Berlin / Boston 2011, ISBN 978-3-11-023828-0 .
↑ Birgit Hellwig: A Grammar of Goemai . Ed .: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG. Berlin / Boston 2011, ISBN 978-3-11-023828-0 .
↑ Birgit Hellwig: A Grammer of Goemai . Ed .: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG. Berlin / Boston 2011, ISBN 978-3-11-023828-0 .
↑ Birgit Hellwig: A Grammar of Goemai . Ed .: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG. Berlin / Boston 2011, ISBN 978-3-11-023828-0 .
↑ Birgit Hellwig: A Grammar of Goemai . Ed .: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG. Berlin / Boston 2011, ISBN 978-3-11-023828-0 .
↑ Birgit Hellwig: A Grammar of Goemai . Ed .: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG. Berlin / Boston 2011, ISBN 978-3-11-023828-0 .

[1] Raymond G. Gordon, Jr, ed. 2005. Ethnologue: Languages of the World . 15th edition. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics.

[2] Birgit Hellwig: A Grammar of Goemai . Ed .: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG. Berlin / Boston 2011, ISBN 978-3-11-023828-0 .

[3] Birgit Hellwig: A Grammar of Goemai . Ed .: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG. Berlin / Boston 2011, ISBN 978-3-11-023828-0 .

[4] Birgit Hellwig: A Grammer of Goemai . Ed .: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG. Berlin / Boston 2011, ISBN 978-3-11-023828-0 .

[5] Birgit Hellwig: A Grammar of Goemai . Ed .: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG. Berlin / Boston 2011, ISBN 978-3-11-023828-0 .

[6] Birgit Hellwig: A Grammar of Goemai . Ed .: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG. Berlin / Boston 2011, ISBN 978-3-11-023828-0 .

[7] Birgit Hellwig: A Grammar of Goemai . Ed .: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG. Berlin / Boston 2011, ISBN 978-3-11-023828-0 .