DENYA PHONOLOGY by Tanyi Eyong Mbuagbaw Cameroon Bible Translation Association (CABTA) B.P 1299, Yaounde, Cameroon 1996 ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS [ ] phonetic data / / phonemicised data V vowel cons. consonant cont. continuant sg. singular pl. plural lat. lateral cor. coronal strid. strident nas. nasal ant. anterior U.F. Underlying form DS Downstep H High L Low Del. Rel. Delayed Release N. Syllabic Nasal n. cl Noun class A.M Associative Marker T Tone T Floating Tone # Morpheme boundary 2 SP Soft Palate σ Syllable node R Rhyme O Onset C Coda x Segment V. ass. Vowel Assimilation V. Ct. Vowel Contraction V. El. Vowel Elision NP Noun Phrase VP Verb Phrase DET Determiner SPE Sound Pattern of English 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The data used for the analysis was first collected during the Christmas week of December 1993. More than 2000 words were collected from pastor Ncha Gabriel Bessong and Lucas Ettamambui. The data was corrected and expanded in July 1995 by the above two persons and also by some members of the Denya language committee. They are namely: Daniel Eta Akwo, and Mr. Robinson Tambi. All of them were prepared to give any assistance to see this work completed. I am indeed very grateful to them. I am very grateful to my wife who was always patient with me during the long period devoted to this work especially working long periods at night. I am also very grateful to Dr. Steven Bird and Dr. Jim Roberts for their input in this Phonology. I am very greatful to Dr. Keith Snider whose insight in African languages has helped me to complete this work. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 1. INTRODUCTION 1.1 Purpose and Scope 1.2 Language Background 1.3 Classification 1.4 Bilingualism 1.5 Pidgin and English 1.6 Occupation 1.7 Review of Literature 1.8 Manyu Literacy and Development Programme (MALDEP) 1.9 Overview of Grammar 1.9.1 Nouns 1.9.2 Derived Nouns 1.9. 3 Pronouns 1.9.4 Adjectives 1.9. 5 Verbs 5 2. VOWEL AND CONSONANT SYSTEMS 2.1 Vowels 2.1.1 The Vowel System 2.1.2 Descriptive Statement of Vocallic Allophones 2.1.3 Distinctive Feature Matrix for Vowels 2.2 Consonants 2..2.1 Denya Phonetic Consonant Chart 2.2.2 Descriptive Statement of Consonant Phonemes 2.2.3 Distinctive feature Matrix for Sonorants 2.2.4 Distinctive Feature Matrix for Obstruents 2.3 Phonemic contrast for Vowels and Consonants 2.4 The Feature Geometry of Denya 2.4.1 Laryngeal features 2.4.2 Supralaryngeal Features 2.4.3 Underspecification 2.5 Distribution of Consonants in Onset Position 2.6 Consonants in Coda Position 2.7 Consonant Distrbution in Different Positions of the Morpheme 3. PHONOLOGICAL PROCESSES 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Assimilation and Contraction in Denya 3.3 Glide Formation 3.4 Desyllabification 3.5 Consonant weakening 3.5 Reduplication 6 4. THE SYLLABLE 4.1 Specific Syllable Types 4.2 Affricates 4.3 Semi-vowels 5. TONE 5.1 Tonal phonemes 5.2 The Distribution of Tone on Nouns 5.3 Tone in the Associative Construction 5.3.1 Tone Rules 5.3.2 Mapping Rules 5.4 Tones on Verbs 5.5 Description of Tone in the Verb Phrase 5.5.1 Tone Rules 5.5.2 Mapping Rules 5.5.3 Late Phonetic Realisation 5.6 Denya Verb Tone Paradigms 5.7 Tonal Processes 5.7.1 Downdrift and Downstep 5.8 Contour Tones 6. BIBLIOGRAPHY 7 1. INTRODUCTION 1.1 Purpose and scope The purpose of this work is to describe and analyse Denya Phonology, its noun class system and detail analysis on the tones and verbs.This data was collected in December 1993 at Mukonyong (Small Nyang) in the Takamanda dialect area, during which I spent a week working on the lexical items for Denya. The data was again checked in June 1995 for further correction. However, this work cannot pretend to deal with every signifant aspect of Denya Phonology. Nevertheless, it hoped that this description will be of use to linguists interested in Bantoid languages and in the Nyang family in particular, a family for which much linguistic work needs to be done. The emphasis of this work is descriptive rather theoretical although it is difficult to described any work in a theoretical vacuum, since description involves a certain amount of analysis. The study begins with both the vowel and consonant systems in section 2. Constraints on the structure of the syllables and morphemes are treated in section 3. Morphological processes are covered in section 4. Aspects of the tonal phonology are described in section 5. Phonlogical processes are discussed in section 6. 1.2 Language Background Denya is a language spoken in the Manyu Divison of the South West Province in the Republic of Cameroon. The speakers of the language are commonly referred to as Anyang and number 16,000 (1994 estimate). They occupy the forest area of Akwaya Sub-Divison and some parts of Upper Banyang Sub-Divison. The majority of the speakers are settled on the banks of the Manyu river (Cross River) in Mamfe town westward to the border with Nigeria. There are many speakers of the language living 8 in other areas of the country. Neighbouring languages include Kenyang, Ejagham, and Kendem to the south-west, Boki to the west, Asumbo, Amasi and Menka to the north. Denya has four main dialects, Takamanda, Basho, Bitieku and Bajwa. Takamanda and Basho and named after villages located in the centre of the dialect areas. The other two, Bitieku and Bajwa received their names from their clans which speak their dialect. People from the Takamanda and Bitieku dialects usually group Basho and Bajwa as one and they refer to it as Basho or Bajwa. In my analysis, I used the Takamanda dialect because it is widely recognised as the standard dialect. For more details, see Tyhurst and Tyhurst (1983b). 1.3 Classification BANTOID Southern Bantoid Tivoid Ekoid-Mbe Jawaran Mamfe (Nyang) Beboid Grassfield Denya Kendem Kenyang Johnston (1919) classified Denya as Ekoid, a sub-group of the Cross River languages. Talbot (1926) considered it to be a sub-group of Banyangi, while Westermann (1952) classified it as Ekoid Bantu. Jacquot and Richardson (1956) noted that it is very difficult to classify Denya. Consequently they adhered to Guthrie’s (1953) classification and regarded it as a Bantoid language because it has both Bantu and Non-Bantu features. 9 In 1965, Crabb, working on Ekoid languages, claimed that these languages were Bantu because they shared some Bantu features in the noun class prefixes. In Crabb’s view, Denya is a Bantu language. Williamson (1971) classified Denya as Bantu because at this time, it was proved that both the noun prefixes and concord systems are those of Bantu. She further argued that Guthrie’s classification was based on typological and not on genetic considerations. Watters (1989) and Watters and Leroy (1989) classified Denya as Southern Bantoid, one of the members of which is the large (Wide) Bantu family. 1.4 Bilingualism Denya people living in the neighbouring languages are mostly bilingual. A vast majority of the people speak their language and Kenyang. This results from the close contact between the two languages through trade and intermarriage. In some cases, multi-lingualism is the appropriate term since many people speak Kenyang and Ejagham. The growth of the Kenyang and Ejagham language among the Denya people is as a result of Akwaya Sub-Division being inaccessible by road. Instead of trekking long distances to reach Akwaya, the Anyangs prefer to come to Mamfe for business, medical services and administrative reasons, which has brought them into contact with Kenyang (the language of Mamfe) and Ejagham. 1.5 Pidgin and English Further to the previous discussion of bilingualism among the local languages, we should also consider the use of Pidgin English and English. The majority of the people know Pidgin and those who use English are those who have undergone some sort of formal education. 10 Pidgin is frequently used as a means of communication when a group gets together with more than one language represented (at the market, in church or at the bar). English is used in official circles; schools, offices etc. However, in situations where only one language group is represented the people typically use their own language (e.g neighbours talking, social gatherings in the village, village disputes etc). 1.6 Occupation The majority of the people are subsistence farmers. They grow cash crops such as coffee and cocoa. They also grow other foodstuffs such as cocoyams, yams, rice, beans, cassava, plantain, melon, and a variety of vegetables such as eru, (a type of vegetable harvested in the forest) green vegetables, pumpkin leaves, water leaf, etc. A lot of palm oil, vegetables, pineapple, garri, rice, water fufu, are exported to Nigeria through the Manyu River and other bush tracks. Some are exported to other provinces of Cameroon. 1.7 Review of Literature The first linguistic data of Anyang is Mansfield’s (1908) comparative wordlist of six languages, which include Denya (Anyang). In 1981, Abangma worked on the use of modes in Denya discourse in which he obtained a ‘Doctorat de 3e cycle’ from the University of Yaounde. In his thesis, he worked on the consonant and vowel systems, and I have borrowed some of his data. Little was done on the syllable structure or on grammatical tone and nothing was done on the morphophonology. In 1983, Tyhurst worked on the linguistic survey of the Nyang languages. In his analysis he discussed briefly the vowel and consonant phonemes of Kenyang, Denya and Kendem and tone contrast in the three languages.