Wandala language

Last updated
Native to Cameroon, Nigeria
Region Borno State
Native speakers
(44,000 cited 1982–1993) [1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3 mfi
Glottolog wand1278

Wandala, also known as Mandara or Mura', is a language in the Chadic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family, spoken in Cameroon and Nigeria. [2]

Contents

Geographic distribution

Wandara has 23,500 speakers in Northern Cameroon and 20,000 speakers in Nigeria. [2]

In Cameroon, Wandala is spoken in Mora and surroundings (in the Mora massif and surrounding plains) by about 23,500 speakers. It is also the lingua franca of the entire department of Mayo-Sava, by ethnic groups of the northern Mandara Mountains. [3]

Dialects

The Mura dialect represents an archaic form of the Wandala language. It is the language of the non-Islamic "Kirdi-Mora" people who live in the Mora massif. [3]

The Malgwa dialect is distinct. [2] It is spoken in the plain north of Mora (in Kolofata district) by a mixture of Kanuri, Fula, and Arab populations. [3]

Phonology

Wandala is reported to have no phonemic vowels, a rarity among the world's languages. [4] An alternative analysis is that it has three underlying vowels a i and u and six phonetic vowels [a], [i], [u], [ə], [e] and [o]. [2]

It has a rich consonant inventory, with more than forty consonantal segments. [2] There are two tones, with their functions differing among different morpheme classes. [2]

Syllable structure

Some possible syllable structures are V, N (nasal consonant), CV, Glide V, VC, CVC. Consonant clusters are not permitted in the coda. To avoid breaking this constraint, a central vowel may be inserted in word-final position. The consonant r may act as a syllabic peak, meaning the structure Cr is a possible syllable structure.

Grammar

Lexical categories

Wandala has the lexical categories of noun, verb, adjective, adverb, and predicator. [2]

Morphology

Reduplication is a major morphological process in Wandala, with different forms and functions that may be limited to one lexical category or shared across lexical categories. [2] Partial reduplication gives the plural form of verbs and adjectives, while complete reduplication gives aspectual and modal forms of verbs, or derives adverbs from other lexical categories. Phrases can also be reduplicated. [2]

All lexical categories can have suffixes. On verbs, suffixes have many functions, such as marking semantic and grammatical relations, directionality and point of view. Suffixes on nouns mark plural number, genitive relation and pronominal possession. Nouns can be derived by adding suffixes to numerals and adjectives. [2]

Wandala also has limited prefixes for nouns and one infix. The vowel a acts as an infix in the verbal system to encode verb plurality. [2]

Syntax

In the noun phrase, the head precedes modifiers, determiners and quantifiers.

The grammatical relations subject and object are distinguished, with distinct pronouns. However, lexical properties of verbs determine how the grammatical roles of nominal arguments are coded, with some verbs taking the controller as the unmarked argument, and others the affected entity.

A nominal object or nominal subject can occur after the verb, but cannot both occupy this position, so if they co-occur, one must be fronted. This encodes information structure such as topicalization, focus or switch-reference.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Khmer language</span> Austroasiatic language of Cambodia

Khmer is an Austroasiatic language spoken by the Khmer people, and the official and national language of Cambodia. Khmer has been influenced considerably by Sanskrit and Pali, especially in the royal and religious registers, through Hinduism and Buddhism. It is also the earliest recorded and earliest written language of the Mon–Khmer family, predating Mon and Vietnamese, due to Old Khmer being the language of the historical empires of Chenla, Angkor and, presumably, their earlier predecessor state, Funan.

In linguistics, reduplication is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word or even the whole word is repeated exactly or with a slight change.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hadza language</span> Language isolate of north-central Tanzania

Hadza is a language isolate spoken along the shores of Lake Eyasi in Tanzania by around 1,000 Hadza people, who include in their number the last full-time hunter-gatherers in Africa. It is one of only three languages in East Africa with click consonants. Despite the small number of speakers, language use is vigorous, with most children learning it, but UNESCO categorizes the language as vulnerable.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Crow language</span>

Crow is a Missouri Valley Siouan language spoken primarily by the Crow Nation in present-day southeastern Montana. The word, Apsáalooke, translates to "children of the raven." It is one of the larger populations of American Indian languages with 2,480 speakers according to the 1990 US Census.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Halkomelem</span> Language of various First Nations peoples in British Columbia

Halkomelem is a language of various First Nations peoples of the British Columbia Coast. It is spoken in what is now British Columbia, ranging from southeastern Vancouver Island from the west shore of Saanich Inlet northward beyond Gabriola Island and Nanaimo to Nanoose Bay and including the Lower Mainland from the Fraser River Delta upriver to Harrison Lake and the lower boundary of the Fraser Canyon.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Klallam language</span> Language

Klallam,Clallam, Ns'Klallam or S'klallam, is a Straits Salishan language that was traditionally spoken by the Klallam peoples at Becher Bay on Vancouver Island in British Columbia and across the Strait of Juan de Fuca on the north coast of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington. The last speaker of Klallam as a first language died in 2014, but there is a growing group of speakers of Klallam as a second language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Atakapa language</span> Extinct language of southern United States

Atakapa is an extinct language isolate native to southwestern Louisiana and nearby coastal eastern Texas. It was spoken by the Atakapa people. The language became extinct in the early 20th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lepcha language</span> Tibeto-Burman language of Sikkim, Nepal and Bhutan

Lepcha language, or Róng language, is a Himalayish language spoken by the Lepcha people in Sikkim, India and parts of West Bengal, Nepal and Bhutan.

Majhi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken in parts of Nepal and formerly in some small pockets of neighboring India.:1 The language is associated with the Majhi people, an ethnic group in those regions who dwell historically near the Saptakoshi River and its tributaries and elsewhere in central and eastern Nepal. The Majhi people generally subsist off of work associated with rivers, including fishing and ferrying.:2 Majhi is written using the Devanagari writing system.

Paumarí is an Arauan language spoken in Brazil by about 300 older adults out of an ethnic population of 900. It is spoken by the Paumari Indians, who call their language “Pamoari”. The word “Pamoari” has several different meanings in the Paumarí language: ‘man,’ ‘people,’ ‘human being,’ and ‘client.’ These multiple meanings stem from their different relationships with outsiders; presumably it means ‘human being’ when they refer to themselves to someone of ostensibly equal status, and ‘client’ when referring to their people among river traders and Portuguese speakers.

Pohnpeian is a Micronesian language spoken as the indigenous language of the island of Pohnpei in the Caroline Islands. Pohnpeian has approximately 30,000 (estimated) native speakers living in Pohnpei and its outlying atolls and islands with another 10,000-15,000 (estimated) living off island in parts of the US mainland, Hawaii and Guam. It is the second-most widely spoken native language of the Federated States of Micronesia.

Araki is a nearly extinct language spoken in the small island of Araki, south of Espiritu Santo Island in Vanuatu. Araki is gradually being replaced by Tangoa, a language from a neighbouring island.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Inflection</span> Process of word formation

In linguistic morphology, inflection is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and definiteness. The inflection of verbs is called conjugation, and one can refer to the inflection of nouns, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, determiners, participles, prepositions and postpositions, numerals, articles, etc., as declension.

Warndarrang (waɳʈaraŋ), also spelt Warndarang, Wanderang, Wandaran, and other variants is an extinct Aboriginal Australian language in the Arnhem family, formerly spoken by the Warndarrang people in southern Arnhem Land, along the Gulf of Carpentaria. The last speaker was Isaac Joshua, who died in 1974, while working with the linguist Jeffrey Heath.

Lele is an East Chadic language spoken in the Tandjilé Region, in the Tandjilé Ouest department, south of Kélo.

Tommo So is a language spoken in the eastern part of Mali's Mopti Region. It is placed under the Dogon language family, a subfamily of the Niger-Congo language family.

Kove is one of the Austronesian languages of New Britain which is spoken by the people of Papua New Guinea. The language is found in 18 villages with their populations totaling 9,000 people; however, most of the people are unfamiliar with the language. Instead of using the Kove language, many of them are using Tok Pisin as their daily language.

Mortlockese, also known as Mortlock or Nomoi, is a language that belongs to the Chuukic group of Micronesian languages in the Federated States of Micronesia spoken primarily in the Mortlock Islands. It is nearly intelligible with Satawalese, with an 18 percent intelligibility and an 82 percent lexical similarity, and Puluwatese, with a 75 percent intelligibility and an 83 percent lexical similarity. The language today has become mutually intelligible with Chuukese, though marked with a distinct Mortlockese accent. Linguistic patterns show that Mortlockese is converging with Chuukese since Mortlockese now has an 80 to 85 percent lexical similarity.

Nuaulu is a language indigenous to the island of Seram Island in Indonesia, and it is spoken by the Nuaulu people. The language is split into two dialects, a northern and a southern dialect, between which there a communication barrier. The dialect of Nuaulu referred to on this page is the southern dialect, as described in Bolton 1991.

Kédang is a language spoken in the Kedang region on the north coast of Lembata Island, east of Flores, in Indonesia. The language belongs to the Austronesian family and its sub-family, Malayo-Polynesian. More specifically, the language is within the Flores-Lembata sub-group. There are approximately 30,000 speakers of the language.

References

  1. at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Frajzyngier, Zygmunt (2012). A grammar of Wandala. De Gruyter Mouton.
  3. 1 2 3 Binam Bikoi, Charles, ed. (2012). Atlas linguistique du Cameroun (ALCAM)[Linguistic Atlas of Cameroon]. Atlas linguistique de l'Afrique centrale (ALAC) (in French). Vol. 1: Inventaire des langues. Yaoundé: CERDOTOLA. ISBN   9789956796069.
  4. Wolff, H. Ekkehard. "'Vocalogenesis' in (Central) Chadic languages" (PDF). Retrieved 2 December 2017.