Eloyi | |
---|---|
Afu | |
Native to | Nigeria |
Region | Benue State, Nassarawa State |
Native speakers | 100,000 (2021) [1] |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | afo |
Glottolog | eloy1241 |
Eloyi, or Afu (Afo) or Ajiri, [2] is a Plateau language of uncertain classification. It is spoken by the Eloyi people of Agatu LGA and Otukpo LGA of Benue State and Nassarawa State in Nigeria.
Armstrong (1955, 1983) [3] [4] classified Eloyi as Idomoid, but that identification was based on a single word list and Armstrong later expressed doubts. [5] Other preliminary accounts classify it as Plateau, [6] and Blench (2008) leaves it as a separate branch of Plateau. [7]
Blench (2007) considers Eloyi to be a divergent Plateau language that has undergone Idomoid influence, rather than vice versa. [8]
Bilabial | Labio- dental | Alveolar | Post- alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Labial- velar | Glottal | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Plosive | voiceless | p | t | k | k͡p | ||||
voiced | b | d | g | g͡b | |||||
Affricate | d͡z | d͡ʒ | |||||||
Fricative | voiceless | f | s | ʃ | h | ||||
voiced | v | z | |||||||
Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | |||||
Rhotic | r / ɾ | ||||||||
Approximant | l | j | w |
Front | Central | Back | |
---|---|---|---|
Close | i | u | |
Close-mid | e | o | |
Open-mid | ɛ | ɔ | |
Open | a |
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: date and year (link)An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation. It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pair. English has two affricate phonemes, and, often spelled ch and j, respectively.
Sibilants are fricative consonants of higher amplitude and pitch, made by directing a stream of air with the tongue towards the teeth. Examples of sibilants are the consonants at the beginning of the English words sip, zip, ship, and genre. The symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet used to denote the sibilant sounds in these words are, respectively,. Sibilants have a characteristically intense sound, which accounts for their paralinguistic use in getting one's attention.
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PalatalizationPA-lə-tə-leye-ZAY-shən is a historical-linguistic sound change that results in a palatalized articulation of a consonant or, in certain cases, a front vowel. Palatalization involves change in the place or manner of articulation of consonants, or the fronting or raising of vowels. In some cases, palatalization involves assimilation or lenition.