Читать книгу The morphology and phonology of the nominal domain in Tagbana - Yranahan Traoré - Страница 13
ОглавлениеWorld languages, following Heine and Nurse (2004), are divided into four major groups or phyla. The group Afro-Asiatic or Hamito-Semitic, the group Nilo-Saharan Phylum, the group Khoisan, and the group Niger-Congo languages. The Niger-Congo constitutes one of the largest language family in the world; the third largest language family following Thompson (2015) and the largest language family in Africa following Greenberg (1970) and Williamson and Blench (2000). Niger-Congo languages are the most important in terms of number of speakers and number of distinct languages and also in space; see Greenberg (1949–1954) and Thompson (2015). See also Williamson (1989a:21), Bendor and Rhonda (1989) for the delimitation of the Niger-Congo languages in a region of Africa. Most of the Sub-Saharan Africa languages are from this group of languages; see Stewart (1960–1970).
Varied works have tried to give the possible relations between these languages; see Koelle (1854), Giacinto Brusciotto (1659), Christaller (1875), and Greenberg (1940–1950). The Niger-Congo group contains Bantu, Kwa, Mande, Gur, and Senufo languages. Senufo languages are considered as a group of language on their own at the same level as the Gur languages according to Glottolog. In older classifications, Senufo was part of the Gur family.
Many discussions are going on the classification of the Niger-Congo languages. But the one used for the classification of the languages of this group in this work is the classification of Williamson (1989a:21) as mentioned in (1). The line (iii) in bold at the bottom of the classification is added by us according to Glottolog.
(1) Niger-Congo classification, see Williamson (1989a:21)
A. Kordofanian
B. Mande [2];
C. Atlantic-Congo
1. Ijoid (?) [4h]
2. Atlantic (?) [1]
a. North
b. Bijago
c. South
3. Volta-Congo
a. Kru (?) [4a]
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b. (New) Kwa [4b]
c. (New) Benue-Congo [4c, 4d, 4e, 4 f, 4g, 5, 6A3]
d. Dogon (?) [3b]
e. North Volta-Congo
i. Gur [3a, 3c, 3d, 3e, 3 f, 3g]
ii. Adamawa-Ubangi [6 (except 6A3)]
iii. Senufo languages
The Gur languages, formerly called and classified into the Voltaïc languages, are the ones that hold our attention. These are spoken in the Southern Mali and Burkina Faso, in the Northern Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana and Togo. More precisely the zone located between the 7° longitude West and the 4° longitude East on the one hand, the 8 ° and the 14 ° latitude North on the other hand according to Mensah and Tchagbale (1983), see Fig. 1.
Fig. 1: The map of West Africa including Côte d´Ivoire
In Côte d’Ivoire the group Gur is composed of several subgroups of languages and among these subgroups are found the Koulango, the Oti-Volta languages, the Gurunsi languages, the Lobi laguages, the Kirma-Tyurama, and the Senufo languages to which the Fròʔò (Tagbana) belongs to; see Mensah and Tchagbale (1983). According to these authors, the Senufo languages are grouped into subgroups namely the subgroup Senari, the subgroup Tagbana-Djimini, and the ←22 | 23→other languages that constitute a group, the ‘others group’ as the authors called it. The language that is about in this book belongs to this group of languages, the Senufo languages.
Located in the North, in the Badaman valley in Côte d´Ivoire, Tagbana dialects cover a linguistic area from Katiola to Tafiré via Fronan, Niakaramandougou, Timbé, and Tortya localities. This area is limited in the north by the towns of Korhogo and Ferkessédougou, in the south by the town of Bouaké, in the East and the West, respectively, by the towns of Dabakala and Mankono. Tagbana is characterized by a strong dialectal differentiation. Each village has its own tonal and melodic structure that slightly distinguishes it from the others. But they are all intelligible with one another. All speakers of these different languages (dialects) identify themselves as Tagbana speakers which has been proposed by Mensah and Tchagbale (1983) to be constituted by three groups of subdialects: the dialect around Katiola very close to that of Fronan (Fròʔò), the dialect of the region of Niakaramandougou known as (takpɛr) and the group of Tafiré. All these dialects contain subgroups as well, and about 180 000 persons speak the language.
1.3 Social and political organization
The Tagbana society is stratified into seven large families. Each family, with the exception of two which share the same surname, has a surname of its own. The Hala and Haragon share the surname Traore. The Tuo have the Touré surname; the Ouattara correspond to Tiré; Koné correspond to Hili and Camara to Ngongon. The Hili would have the mission of maintenance and organization of the seven families. They have the monopoly of political power. The social hierarchy is similar to most of African societies hierarchies. We have the children, grouped in age classes, the fathers, the heads of families, the head of village (village chief), the tribal chiefs/head, and township chiefs. All these personalities except for the children ensure the political and the social activity within the population.
The traditional social and political functions of the locality are distributed as follows: The township chief is at the top level of the hierarchy. He has unlimited powers. He is the guide of the canton, and his authority is not controversial. In other words, he is the first administrative personality of the canton.
At a lower level, roughly equal to that of the chief of the canton, there is the chief of tribe who is also in charge with some important affairs of his tribe. He is helped by the notables but he cannot substitute for the canton chief whose succession is in his descent.
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Then comes the tráfɔ́lɔ́ ‘the landlord’ or the land manager. His task is to make worships for the tribe and members of the tribe when necessary and also to organize the religious life given the different beliefs.
His level is followed by that of the village chief kàʔàfɔ̀lɔ́. He is assisted in his duties by the notables who constitute the village chiefdom. He plays the role of a judge, he settles disputes, and takes appropriate measures in agreement with its notables for a better social cohesion.
After his level, a little further down, we have the chief priest of the village whose function is to manage and purify the lands by worships in case of prohibited violations. At the lowest level of the hierarchy we have the head of family called dàlfɔ̀lɔ́ whose duty is to ensure the well-being and the good relationship within the family unit, and manage the heritage in accordance with the rules and customs.
1.4 Habitat, cultural life, economy, and religion
There are two types of agglomerations in Tagbana regions: the kàɉīōːrò ‘the camp’ and the kàːrà ‘the villages’. The first type is the type of agglomerations located far from villages. The sites are preferably chosen along rivers and on fertile land. This type of habitat includes members of the same family on a land that is theirs and on which they grow food, plants, and also breed animals. Some celebration ceremonies can take place in these agglomerations. However, all inhabitants have an apartment in the villages where meeting of major events such as weddings, funerals, large meetings, and making family decisions are held. Nowadays, the villages have been enlarged and that some have become towns.
The cultural life of the populations of Fronan is not in margin with the other Senufo languages’ cultural values. During the periods of celebration, rhythmic melodies such as nã̀gbògō, gbòfé, and sìtā serve to cheer up the population. In addition to these dances, there are other types of dances, such as hɔ̀-jùgò and kũ̀mbūō masks, which are reserved for male initiates and the mask ã̀gblí reserved exclusively for initiated women. All these forms of events are mostly traditional. The practitioners of these dances are more or less professional. They do so only on occasions of weddings, baptisms, funerals, and any other ceremonies. Note that dances from other neighbouring cultures exist as well.
The Tagbana are farmers and they live from agriculture. Their main food are cereal and yams. They also grow peanuts. Some crops are produced in large quantities for trade and export. Commercial crops include cotton, ←24 | 25→cashew nuts, and mango. They also move from the North to the South or West to grow cocoa and coffee. Note that Ivory Coast is the main producer of cacao. They are also breeders and opt for large cattle, especially oxen and pigs. This breeding is indirect. Because they are focused on field work, the livestock are entrusted to shepherds. The Tagbana also practise hunting with instruments such as arrows and local firearms such as the gun powder called gbèŋgéʔè.
Besides animism, Christianity and Islam are practised in the region. Christianity was introduced by the colonizers and Islam by the anti-colonialist Samory Toure.
Fròʔò is a dialect of Tagbana without writing conventions so far. Etymologically, Fròʔò comes from a derivational processes of the verb fùòːró ‘slip’ deverbalized to frò-ʔò ‘a slide’. Fronan could be a composition of fròʔò + nã̄, pronounced frò.ʔò.nã̄, or frònã̄ ‘fronan’. Alternatively, fròʔò ‘slip’ and nã̄ ‘designate the place or the location’, meaning ‘the place where we slide’. Not a physical slide, the way a person slips and falls down. But rather, the kind of slide here concerns the language handling, the speech. In the old days, in the culture of the Tagbana speakers, as in almost all African cultures, messages from one locality to another were sent by messengers. It was said to those who did not have a good handling of the language that they slipped. The handling included not only the speech but also the rules Fròʔò speakers obey when they have to address the elders.
The speakers of the locality of Fronan are called fùòːlò or some would say fòhòbélé. And the language is Fròʔò or Fòmũ̀ for some. According to the last general population census of the country (2014), the municipality of Fronan has around 39,000 people speaking Fròʔò.
The city of Fronan is composed of six villages, namely Darakokaha, Offiakaha, Nyenankaha, Souroukaha, Tafolo, and Kanangonon. Note that these villages are considered to have the same dialect, although they maintain some dialectal distinctions. See Fig. 2 for the map showing the place where the language is spoken.
Fig. 2: Map showing the locality of Fronan, IGT University of Cocody, Abidjan (2008)
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Some works exist on Tagbana in general. Clamens (1952) provides an overview of the main grammatical properties of the language.
Herault and Mlanhoro (1973) worked on tàkper, a Tagbana dialect spoken in the city of Niakaramandougou. In their work, they presented a phonological sketch, including a tonal study, followed by a corpus of the data on which this sketch is based.
Katia Kamara C. (1988) contains a lexicon of Tagbana with translations in German called Lexikon der Tagbana-Sprache.
Yago (1989, 1991) wrote on Tafire, another Tagbana dialect. Yago respectively describes the noun class system and the vowel nasality of Tafire. He determined seven nominal classes of the Tafire based on a template made by a noun, a pronoun, and a presentative.
Mensah and Tchagbale (1993) introduce briefly the Tagbana languages and some Gur languages, especially the Gur languages of Côte d’Ivoire. Their work consists in several corpora and in descriptions of the phonological system of these languages.
Manessy (1996a,b) proposed an elaboration of the nominal classes of Tagbana.
The collection of the data consists of IPA transcripts of words. A transcribed word is retained as part of the corpus as if it was articulated identically by 8 persons out of 10, each obeying some criteria. Informants are 40–90 years old with a perfect command of the language; people whose mother tongue is the dialect of Fròʔò and who have a perfect command also of the languages of the neighbouring localities to avoid borrowing phenomena; people whose native language is the Fròʔò and who in addition to mastering the neighbouring languages also have a language competence of neighbouring dialects. This criterion would also avoid borrowing from elsewhere that we call far-borrowed and people whose mother tongue is Fròʔò and who mastered the French language perfectly to avoid misunderstandings and problems of interpretation.
The book has several chapters. Chapter 2 deals with the sounds of the dialect and the distinctive features. In this section, an overview of the distinctive features for the consonants and vowels of Fròʔò is proposed.
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Chapter 3 deals with the syllable structures. The first section provides an overview of the underlying syllables structure and syllabification in Fròʔò. The syllable is defined as a unit of prosodic organization located in the prosodic hierarchy between the mora and the foot, and it plays an important role in the phonology of Fròʔò. The second section deals with the phonotactics, the principles of the language that describe the constraints on strings of speech sounds or segments. The goal is not to discuss the existence of the syllable but to show the way sounds are organized in syllable forms and to address some phonological effects like vowel lengthening and features sharing in the voicing for example. The third section is about loanwords and their adaptation processes according to the phonotactic restrictions. Fròʔò imports many loanwords from French and neighbouring areas, and recently also some from English when specially a Fròʔò speaker is brought to speak English words in Fròʔò. The resyllabification process is the goal of the fourth section. Resyllabification is the result of vowel, liquid metathesis, and liquid deletion. The fifth section addresses and proposes some analyses on morphophonological process which consist in the fusion which is defined as a process where monosyllabic pronouns fused in one. The segments of the resulting syllable are the compromise of the features of the fused segments. In the sixth and last section, I focus on the theoretical analysis within the Optimality Theory (OT) framework on the fusion effects where I propose an analysis.
Chapter 4 introduces the nominal classes. Every noun belongs to one of the seven nominal classes of Fròʔò. The concept of nominal class refers to a system of noun categorization around a common set of phonological properties to a given group of nouns. Classes are determined by the phonological form of their associate functional morphemes, the morphemes in an agreement relation with the head noun. Nouns consist of a root and a class marker (CM) that can be overt or covert. A typical nominal root is mono- or disyllabic regardless of its class. If it is longer, it is most probably a compound.
Chapter 5 proposes a phonological and morphological analysis of the nominal classes of Fròʔò which, as mentioned, are primarily identified on the basis of their phonological properties. The first two sections deal, respectively, with word order in the nominal phrase and the functional morphemes. The dependent morphemes of a nominal domain acquire their phonological shape by fusion of different phonological features expressing morphological features. The analytic tool of this section is the Distributed Morphology (DM) theory. DM has a core mechanism called Vocabulary Insertion (VI) which translates the morphosyntactic features into phonological ones to achieve the surface forms. What is special about Fròʔò is that several abstract morphemes are realized in VI by ←28 | 29→distinctive features. Moreover, post-VI phonology is responsible for part of the phonological form of the morphemes. In other words, both VI and post-VI phonology are responsible for the phonological form of morphemes and words. It is also proposed that an autosegmental component should be added to VI to enhance the relevance of consonantal feature concord. Alliterative concord is illustrated with dependent morphemes of Classes 1, 3 and 5. The last two sections propose a theoretical account for the phonological form of the dependent functional morphemes and a discussion.
In Chapter 6, the derivational processes in the nominal domain of Fròʔò are illustrated, however limited to the morphological process of derivation. The first section of this chapter deals with the distinction between inflection and derivation. Derivation is defined as a process of affixation of a morpheme to another lexeme with co-occurrent change of its grammatical category. The first form of derivation discusses the denominal derivation, the second one deals with deverbal nominalization and the last one deals with the deadjectival derivational effects.
Two kinds of nouns must be distinguished in Fròʔò: the simplest nouns (called simplex nouns) and the complex nouns. The latter kind of nouns is the subject of Chapter 7. Simplex nouns (SN) are those that take only one lexical root and a category n0 defining morpheme, i.e. the class marker (CM). The complex nouns have more than one lexical root. The lexical roots come from different grammatical classes. Mostly made by nouns, one element in the CN modifies or describes the other one by adding a meaning to the second element, or by giving a precise form of that noun. In Fròʔò, compounding may also imply a possessive construction. The morphologically complex nouns have a hierarchical structure. One element in the complex word is the head of the construction. DM is the theoretical model used in this chapter.
Chapter 8 contains a conclusion.
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