BOLE-ENGLISH-HAUSA DICTIONARY AND ENGLISH-BOLE WORDLIST
The Bole Language
Bole is a language of the Chadic family spoken in northeastern Nigeria in Yobe, Gombe, and Bauchi States. Newman (1977), with minor revisions in Newman (1990), classifies Bole more specifically as Chadic > West Chadic > West-A > Bole/Angas major group > Bole group. Among its closest linguistic relatives are Karekare, Ngamo, and Maka in Yobe State, Kirfi, Galambu, and Pero in Bauchi State, Kanakuru in Borno State, and Tangale (among others) in Gombe State. The Hausa name for the Bole language is Bolanci, the name found in much of the published literature on Bole. There are two major dialect areas: Fika, spoken in Yobe State, north of the Gongola River, and Gombe, spoken in Gombe and Bauchi States, mainly south of the Gongola River.4 This dictionary is based on the Fika dialect. In the Fika dialect, the language is referred to as B˘ P kk ‘Language of Fika’. The Gombe dialect refers to the language as B˘ D L d ‘Language of “Aunt” Ladi’, the traditional mother of the Bole people. The Fika dialect refers to the Bole people as Am Pikk (m.sing.), ni Pikk (f.sing.), n m P kk (pl.) ‘one(s) of Fika’. The terms B˘l (pl. B˘l w ) are also used, primarily in the Gombe region. Ethnologue gives a 1990 population figure of 100,000, whereas Gimba (2000:1) proffers an estimate of 250,000-300,000. Whatever the exact figure, the Bole are numerically a significant ethnic group in northern Nigeria. Unlike most of their geographic neighbors, the Boles have been Muslims throughout their known history, and their traditional leader, Moi Pikka (Emir of Fika) has been one of the most prominent figures in the traditional political scene of northern Nigeria since pre-colonial times. As the title Moi Pikka implies, the
4 The only work explicitly addressing dialect differences is Gimba (1990). Data in Benton (1912), Abraham (1929), and Kraft (1981) are from the Gombe dialect. Data in Lukas (1969, 1970-72, 1971) are from the Fika dialect.
xi xii Bole-English-Hausa Dictionary and English-Bole Wordlist political and administrative capital of the Bole emirate was Fika (Pikka in Bole), located in what is now southern Yobe State. This was the capital from at least the beginning of the 19th century until 1924, when, during the reign of Moi Mammadi (Mahammadu Ibn Idrissa) the British colonial administration transferred the administrative center of Fika emirate from Fika town to Potiskum (Palmer (1929), cited in Ibriszimow (1996: 211)). The earliest lexical information on Bole is a list of 253 items in Koelle (1854), who referred to the language as P∫ka. The first work on Bole lexicon meeting modern linguistic standards was that of R.C. Abraham on the Gombe dialect in Abraham (1929), which, unfortunately, has never been published.5 Abraham’s work, in addition to an extensive vocabulary, fully marked for tone and vowel length, contained grammatical notes and a large number of sentences and phrases. Kraft (1981), also from the Gombe dialect, is a list of about 430 items. This remained the largest published lexical work on Bole until appearance of the works described in the next section.
Background on This Dictionary
The present work is the first dictionary of Bole published outside Nigeria. It is the successor of two earlier dictionaries produced by Ajami Press in Potiskum, Yobe State, Nigeria both authored by Alhaji Maina Gimba, Malam Baba Ali†, and Madu Bah, edited by Russell G. Schuh. The Bole-English-Hausa Dictionary, FIRST EDITION, 2004, was, in effect, a preliminary work based on research done from 2002-2004 as part of the Yobe Languages 6 7 Research project. The SECOND EDITION, 2009, was much expanded in terms of number of entries and in forms of entries, which, for example, included notations on grammar and phonology and illustrations of use that were absent from the 2004 edition. The current dictionary is based on the 2009 edition, but it includes several hundred new entries, in particular many idioms, modern loanwords, and items relevant to Bole culture, such as traditional titles and place names. The number of examples of use has been massively expanded, grammatical and phonological information has been augmented, and Hausa glosses have been added to nearly all entries where Hausa was previously omitted. There are now over 5100 headwords, excluding “duplicates” that are pronunciation variants of other entries.
5 John E. Lavers (1992: 30) laments this fact, noting that this was “the first study of an African language by Abraham…the Bolanci study has lain unpublished, unused, and unknown even until very recent times.” 6 This project was funded by a grant from the US National Science Foundation (award #BCS- 0111289, Russell G. Schuh, Principal Investigator). 7 Work on Bole and other languages leading to the SECOND EDITION was funded by a grant from the US National Science Foundation (award #BCS-05553222, Russell G. Schuh, Principal Investigator).
Introduction xiii
Orthographic Conventions and Remarks on Phonology
Bole uses the same spelling system as Hausa for the most part. The main difference between the alphabet for Bole versus Hausa conerns the letters “p” and “f”. Neither language has a contrast in voiceless labials. In Hausa the voiceless labial is generally pronounced as a bilabial fricative [ɸ], written “f”. The Bole voiceless labial is usually a stop, pronounced [p] and written “p”. Compare the written forms of the following cognate items:
Bole: Pìkkà Hausa: Fπk ‘Fika town’ p til fπtil ‘lamp’
The distinctions between long and short vowels and distinctions between tones are both important for correct pronunciation and for distinguishing the meanings of words in Bole. Native speakers of Bole, however, know the correct vowel lengths and tones of words without having to see them written, and like publications in Hausa intended primarily for native speakers, publications in Bole have generally not marked vowel length and tone. In order to make the dictionary more useful to those who are not fluent speakers of Bole, however, vowel length and tones are marked for all Bole words and illustrative material. Marking of vowel length and tone consists of small diacritic marks above the letters. Native speakers of Bole who do not need these markings to know the correct pronunciation of words may simply ignore them. Marking of tones and vowel lengths are as follows:
LONG VOWELS have a macron above the vowel, short vowels have no marking for length: Long vowel: Short vowel: s‰ni ‘honey’ s ni ‘year’ sh ri ‘craving’ sh ri ‘Acacia tree’ b y ‘beard’ buyo ‘blowing’
LOW TONES have a grave accent ( ` ) over the vowel, HIGH TONES have no accent marks, FALLING TONES have a circumflex accent ( ^ ), and RISING TONES have a hachek ( ): HIGH-HIGH: korya ‘measurement’ LOW-LOW: k ry ‘storm’ z wa ‘stick’ z w ‘competition’ HIGH-LOW: asàr ‘afternoon’ LOW-HIGH: àsar ‘unfortunate loss’ g r ‘lizard’ g re ‘granary’ FALLING: b r ‘pillow’ HIGH: dir ‘threshing’ RISING: m ‘you (plural)’ HIGH: ’ya ‘thing’
NOTE ON CONTOUR TONES AND VOWEL LENGTH: Rising tones and Falling tones occur only on “heavy” syllables, that is, syllables of the form CONSONANT-VOWEL-CONSONANT (as in b r ‘pillow’, sǒn-kò ‘your age’) or syllables with a long vowel. In words like zâ ‘cubit’ and mǎ ‘you (plural)’, the ^ and tone marks are sufficient to showthat the vowel is long, and hence
xiv Bole-English-Hausa Dictionary and English-Bole Wordlist a macron as an indicator of vowel length is omitted. In general, Bole excludes long vowels from closed syllables (syllables ending in a consonant). There are, however, a few words that have long vowels in closed syllables with a Rising tone. In order to show that these words have a long vowel, the vowel is doubled, e.g. něem ‘hippopotamus’. In fact, it is a little difficult to tell whether such words are actually one or two syllables, so the doubled vowel is also a signal of that feature of pronunciation. The table below lists all the alphabetical symbols used in this dictionary in the order that they appear in lexical entries. For words differing in vowel length, short vowels precede long; for words differing in tone, Low tone precedes High. Symbols represent normal IPA values unless otherwise noted. 8 aí p íum gourd plant end nd k‰ arrival a d dog eng ngud lazy person b bab paternal aunt enj nj l sleeping ɓ k duiker enz nz no yesterday bc c‰c church f d did fly (insect) o od beans πi bat sp. p p p persperation e em this one (m) r r ru augur beetle g g gg road s ssuwa African myrrh ch h km yawning gsh sh shonge plant sp. i d communal prayer t ttok worm, grub dj j j a title u zur dust k k ki crow w w wya grumbling l l la spider y y y sand m m m person híy íy la guinea corn emb mb upper arm, wing z z z winged termites n n˘nu mother
aThe symbol ’ represents a glottal stop, IPA [ʔ]. All words with orthographic initial vowels are pronounced with initial glottal stop. Since this is 100% predictable, we follow the standard Hausa orthographic practice and do not write it in this position. A few words (fewer than five in current data) have a medial singleton glottal stop, e.g. pò’um ‘gourd plant’. The most common appearance of medial glottal stop is as a geminate. The main sources of this are as a variant of ’y, esp. before front vowels (b íí = b íyíy ‘elder brothers’), Hausa loans
8 All digraphs are treated as alphabetical sequences. For example, words written with initial mb- are alphabetized after words beginning with ma- and before words beginning with me-. Words beginning with sh- are alphabetized after words beginning with se- and before words beginning with si-. The symbol ’y is alphabetized as a separate unit, following y, since it is the palatal counterpart to and in the glottal series.
Introduction xv with medial in Hausa (saíí ‘weaving’ < Hausa s ). and pluractional forms of CV verb stems (mà’’angò ‘they returned’—cf. māwò ‘he returned’). bThe symbol c represents IPA [tʃ], English “ch”. In native words, it basically is a variant of sh (IPA [ʃ]). It is most commonly heard in geminate sequences, e.g. gusshe = gucce ‘stones’, but in a few words there is variation between singleton sh and c, e.g. sh nji = c nji ‘pumpkin’. cThe glottal fricative h is rather marginal as a phoneme in Bole. It is found almost exclusively in loanwards, and most words with initial h have an acceptable or preferred variant without the h, e.g. hant = ant ‘button’. In current data, there are fewer than five words with medial h, e.g. lah m ‘counterfeit item’. dThe symbol j represents IPA [dʒ], English “j”. In many words j and z are in free or idiolectal variation, e.g. j j = z z ‘porcupine’, but nonetheless, these sounds must be recognized as separate phonemes since this variation is not accepted in many words containing one or the other sound. Variant pronunciations are noted for all words where they have been observed. eIn word initial position, the written sequences mb, nd, ng [ŋg], nj, nz are best viewed as unit phonemes. They contrast phonetically with a syllabic nasal followed by a voiced obstruent, e.g. n doluw˘yi ‘I dug it up’ vs. ndoluw˘yi ‘he likes it’. Words beginning with these sounds behave like simple nasals in that they facilitate LOW TONE RAISING (see Remarks on Phonology below), e.g. k n ndig r s mpe nd ri ‘Proverb: he failed to deal with the (hard) ruins so he took it out on the grass hut’ from nd ri ‘grass hut’ with LH tones. Plain voiced obstruents block LOW TONE RAISING, e.g. Leng ni d jin/*dajin ‘Lengi is a novice’. However, written NC in medial position behaves like a sequence, with the N closing the first syllable. Thus, a verb such as gàndu ‘lie down’ is a class A2b verb, which has a heavy first syllable (see Categories of Dictionary Entries below). fThe velar nasal, ŋ, is contrastive with m and n only in word final position (k ram ‘Jerusalem cricket’, kond r n ‘military boots’, g ra ‘tall, deep’) and it always assimilates to place of articulation of a following consonant in the same phrase, e.g. g ram b z ‘depth of the well’. gThe digraph sh represents IPA [ʃ], English “sh”. Parallel to j vs. z (see note d), many words have free or idiolectal variation between s and sh, e.g. s m = sh m ‘coughing’. However, many words have one or the other sound without variation, hence both s and sh must given phonemic status. hThe symbol ’y is a glottalized palatal glide. Though IPA representation would probably be [ʔʲ], phonologically it parallels and as a glottalized stop at the palatal place of articulation.
English and Hausa Definitions and Examples
Every Bole headword has as complete an English definition as we have been able to supply. Distinct but related English senses have numbered definitions, e.g. nd (1) weight; (2)
xvi Bole-English-Hausa Dictionary and English-Bole Wordlist responsibility for s.o. or s.t. Words that are homophonous in Bole but have unrelated English senses are listed as separate entries numbered with superscripts, e.g. dòm1 ‘blood’ and dòm2 ‘front’. A special case of multiple definitions involves verbs. Many Bole verbs can be used transitively or intransitively, sometimes requiring different expressions in English. In these cases, we have a single definition line for English, but we have separated the transitive and intransitive English renderings with a semicolon, e.g. rgzu raze, destroy; collapse. In cases where the same respective verbs in Bole and English can be used both transitively and intransitively, we have shown this, usually with examples of each function, as in pòyyu tr., intr. break into pieces, shatter ex p yyut kam he broke the pot; kam p yyuw the pot broke. We have included many examples of headwords in context. A majority of the examples were created explicitly for the dictionary, but many are drawn from texts. Examples are essentially of two kinds. Most are meant to clarify aspects of meaning and use, e.g. pisshok very small amount ex onn dr pisshok he gave me very few peanuts, which shows the type of item that the word can be applied to and word ordering. A large number, however, are not examples of the headword per se but are standard expressions, proverbs, or riddles in which the headword is, in some sense, the “key word” in the expression. Most of these are labeled “Expression”, “Proverb”, “Riddle”, sometimes with a literal translation followed by an explanation of usage, e.g. biik cage for chickens, chicken coop ex b rm ko s yakk , ka w g biik Proverb: if your camel gets lost, you’ll (even) look in a chicken cage (“desperation leads to extremes”). Nearly all entries include a Hausa gloss. Hausa glosses are not marked for tone or vowel length. For most entries, the Hausa consists of a one-to-one equivalent to the Bole, e.g. nd˘ri scorpion (red) | Hausa kunama. In some cases, where Hausa seems not to have a one- word equivalent, there is a brief explanatory phrase, e.g. p ll w a gift of food from one’s girlfriend | Hausa abincin da budurwa ke dafa wa saurayinta [“food that a young woman cooks for her boyfriend”]. In entries where there are multiple English translations that correspond to different Hausa words, the Hausa words are numbered parallel to the numbers of the English definitions, e.g. rto (1) a split, a tear, a crack; (2) piece(s) of split firewood | Hausa (1) tsage; (2) faskare. For the following classes of entries, we have chosen to give a generic label in Hausa rather than a Hausa equivalent; note that these labels are italicized, whereas actual Hausa glosses are in regular type: amsa amo (ideophone): shit indicates redness ex dài shit bright red | Hausa amsa amo bayanin siffa (ideophonic adjective): d nt r short and strong | Hausa bayanin siffa sarauta (title): k call a man’s traditional title | Hausa sarauta sunan gari (name of a town): Gr Tinj a town in Yobe State | Hausa sunan gari sunan mace (woman’s name): t woman’s name | Hausa sunan mace sunan namiji (man’s name): M m man’s name | Hausa sunan namiji
Introduction xvii
Words in the first two categories have idiosyncratic meanings, most of which are language specific. Some of the words, esp. ideophones, probably do have close Hausa equivalents (for example, Hausa jā wur is equivalent to Bole dài shit ‘bright red’). However, rather than provide Hausa glosses for some ideophones while giving others generic glosses or leaving them unglossed, we have chosen to use the generic glosses above for all of them. We have applied a similar rationale to the other word categories. For example, the man’s name Hàbu is essentially identical in Hausa and Bole (though the Hausa version has a long final vowel), but hypocoristics and pronunciation variants for many names differ in Hausa and Bole, making it difficult or impossible to say that a particular form in Bole is equivalent to a particular form in Hausa. For example, the Bole name Madù and the Hausa name Mammàn are both variants of the name Mùhammadù, but it makes little sense to say that these variants of the base names are “equivalent” in the respective languages. A number of words, mainly types of foods, that recur in definitions do not have good equivalents in English but have exact counterparts in Hausa. Since it is assumed that many users of this dictionary will have some familiarity with Hausa, we have chosen to use the Hausa words (in italics) in the English definitions. The items in question are the following:9 fura (Bole denjè) millet flour, cooked and formed into balls that are broken up and mixed into a liquid, preferably cultured milk, but sometimes water kunu (Bole àtti) a “gruel” made from finely ground flour, cooked to a relatively thin consistency, usually with a flavoring such as tamarind or lime juice miya (Bole biyè) a “sauce” or “stew”, usually with a vegetable base, such as okra, sorrel, baobab, tomatoes, etc. and often with meat or fish, served accompanying tuwo tuwo (Bole ottò) staple food made from guinea corn or maize flour, rice, or another starch base, cooked to a stiff consistency zana (Bole k ra) a mat made from interwoven heavy grass, used as a fence, granary liner, and in other functions
9 Alternatively, we could have used the Bole words, giving an explanation under the basic headword. We have chosen not to do this, first, as noted, because we have assumed that the Hausa words would be familiar to many users, and second, because this Bole dictionary has emerged as part of a larger project involving dictionaries from five other languages. Explaining the Hausa words, then using them in all the dictionaries, gives a unified way to refer to the same concepts across languages.
xviii Bole-English-Hausa Dictionary and English-Bole Wordlist
Categories of Dictionary Entries
Verbal entries
Verbs are entered in the form that they would have in the PERFECTIVE, with a masculine singular subject, with no extensions (such as TOTALITY or VENTIVE), and with the PERFECTIVE marker –wo removed. The grammatical category information for verbs includes the verb classes, which are as follows: 10 A1 = verbs with two root consonants, a short root vowel, and final –u stem vowel in the PERFECTIVE; A2 verbs all have final –u stem vowel in the PERFECTIVE and have the following sub-classes: A2a = verbs with two root consonants and a long root vowel; A2b = verbs with three stem consonants; A2bg = verbs with two stem consonants, the second being a geminate; A2c = verbs with more than three stem consonants; B = verbs with two root consonants, a short root vowel, and final - stem vowel in the PERFECTIVE; B2 = verbs with a geminate second consonant or more than two stem consonants and final - stem vowel in the PERFECTIVE; C = verbs with one root consonant and final -ī stem vowel in the PERFECTIVE; D = verbs with one root consonant and final - stem vowel in the PERFECTIVE. Examples:
A1: motu ‘die’ (motu-wò ‘he died’) A2a: g˘nu ‘become silent’ (g˘nu-w ‘he became silent’) A2b: nku ‘stoop’ (nku-w ‘he stooped’) A2bg: nòssu ‘rest’ (nòssu-wò ‘he rested’) A2c: bòngìru ‘turn’ (bòngìru-wò ‘he turned’) B: p t ‘go out’ (p t -w ‘he went out’) B2: m ss ‘remain’ (m ss -w ‘it remains’) C: nd ‘go’ (nd-w ‘he went’) D: m ‘return’ (m -w ‘he returned’)
VERBAL NOUNS: Each verbal entry includes at least one verbal noun, notated “v.n.” These are deverbal nominals. There are certain default types, e.g. most A1 verbs have a verbal noun ending in –she with varying tone patterns (duru ‘hop’, durshe ‘hopping’); many A2 verbs have a verbal noun with HH tones ending in –o (nku ‘bend down’, unko ‘bending down’); etc. For any particular verb, however, the verbal noun is not predictable, e.g. doru ‘toss’ has verbal nouns doro and dòrshè (cf. durshe ‘hopping’ above, with HH tones). In addition to these deverbal nominals, every verb also has a gerund (something like English -ing nominals) that is predictable depending on verb class. Since gerund forms are predictable, they is not included in verbal entries.11
10 The classification system is adapted from the system developed for Bole in Lukas (1970- 72). 11 The gerund is the form of the verb used in the FUTURE TAM. See VERB FORM APPENDIX.
Introduction xix
12 PLURACTIONAL VERBS: Every verb, in principle, has a pluractional form. The default pluractional for all verbs in all verb classes is to reduplicate the first CONSONANT-VOWEL of the verb, e.g. pà-pàtāwò ‘he repeatedly went out’, -nku-w ‘he repeatedly stooped’. These are not included in dictionary entries since they are 100% predictable in both form and function. Some verbs have one or more additional pluractionals, usually differing functionally in some respect from the default, e.g. kàrā- ‘cut, slaughter’ has pluractionals kàrrā- and kàgìrā- ‘slaughter repeatedly’. Special pluractionals are noted in the entries for the base verbs and are also included as separate headwords.13 14 EXTENSIONS: Bole has three verbal extensions, the VENTIVE, the TOTALITY, and the ADDITIVE. The VENTIVE indicates an action initiated at a distance from the point where it is relevant. This extension often gives the sense of “motion toward the speaker”, e.g. ka tamb- un-g o? ‘have you become lost (in coming here)?’ (VENTIVE suffix underlined). The TOTALITY usually has the sense of doing to completion or irreversibly, e.g. g jju-t k m t r ‘he bought up the tomatoes’ (with the TOTALITY suffix underlined--cf. g jj k m t r ‘he 15 bought some tomatoes’ with no extension. The ADDITIVE appears to be multi-functional, but the functions are unified in that they all add an additional element to the predicate. With the verb alone, the ADDITIVE translates as “repeat VERB”, e.g. z -d-wo ‘he put it down again’. It often functions as a sort of pronoun referring to some known adjunct, such as an instrument, a means, or a time, e.g. k˘ri l Bamoi k ppu-d íy la y ‘the farm that Bamoi planted guinea corn on’. VENTIVE may co-occur with TOTALITY or ADDITIVE, but TOTALITY and ADDITIVE are mutually exclusive. Because of the complex system of Bole verb morphology, which codes the independent variables of class, TAM, extensions, pronominal direct and indirect objects, and, in some cases, type of subject, the form of a verb as it appears in examples often differs considerably from the dictionary headword. See VERBAL APPENDIX for a table showing all the relevant forms of verbs with all morphological configurations.
Noun and adjective entries
GENDER: A reconstructable feature for Chadic languages is grammatical gender. Bole has essentially lost gender as a fixed property of lexical items, but it is still reflected in a number
12 Pluractional verbs are derived forms that indicate plurality or repetition of action or actions affecting a multiplicity of beings. For explanation and illustration of the concept, see Newman (1990, 2012). See Gimba (2000) for discussion of pluractionals and functions associated with various pluractional types in Bole. 13 Many class C and D verbs (monoconsonantal roots) have special pluractionals that require plural subjects. These are entered with the PERFECTIVE plural subject suffix –an, e.g. tà’’-an- ‘(they) repeatedly ate’ from tī- ‘eat’. These are not included as separate head entries. 14 The most complete published description of Bole verbal extensions is Lukas (1971). 15 This extension is called die Wiederholungserweiterung in Lukas (1971).
xx Bole-English-Hausa Dictionary and English-Bole Wordlist of ways, e.g. em ‘this one (masculine referent)’, osh ‘this one (feminine referent)’. For humans and common domestic animals, grammatical gender in Bole has gravitated to a natural gender system much like that of English. For inanimates and most wild animals, assigning gender for agreements in the systems of demonstrative, pronoun, and verb agreement is rather fluid. 16 The default gender assignment is masculine, but certain categories, such a smallish birds, trees, automobiles (!), and some others tend to be feminine, though there are no rigid rules. For these reasons, nominal entries are given simply as “n.”, with no attempt to assign gender as a lexically determined category. Adjectives do not have special forms for gender agreement, even for humans, so adjective entries are marked only as “adj.”. NUMBER: Most nouns and adjectives do not have morphologically marked plural forms. Nouns of certain categories (most nouns with human referents, most domestic animals and birds, some common household tools, utensils, and containers) have special morphological plurals, as do a few adjectives, esp. those associated with size. Plurals are included for all nouns and adjectives for which a special morphological plural has been identified, notated “pl.”. Absence of a plural form for a headword indicates that that noun or adjective lacks a commonly used morphological plural form. For such words, number must be inferred from context. COMPOUNDS: Many entries marked with category “n.” comprise two words (sometimes more than two) separated by spaces, e.g. d i shek ‘ankle’ (lit: ‘neck-of foot’), bi gompo ‘playground’ (lit: ‘place-of playing’). These are all compounds, i.e. word collocations that function as unit nouns. We have not labeled these as a separate category “compound” since, in terms of meaning, they behave as if they were unit words. The fact that the head entries consist of two (or more) words separated by a space make it clear that they consist of multiple parts.
Pronouns
All personal pronoun forms, whether independent words, such as inà ‘I, me’ (independent pronoun) or suffixes, such as –no/-nò (suffixed possessive or object pronoun), are entered as separate headwords, with examples in context, e.g. ina k n oww ‘as for me, I sat down’, t mshi-n ‘my sheep’. Full paradigms of all pronoun forms are found in the PRONOUN APPENDIX.
Idioms
Nearly all entries with the grammatical category idiom have the form VERB+OBJECT. Because the verb will be conjugated according to context, we have chosen a conventional entry format GERUND+OBJECT, e.g. kòsa woli ‘flatter’ (lit: “gather earth”). The GERUND is the form of the
16 See Gimba (2006) for a discussion of gender in Bole.
Introduction xxi
verb used in the FUTURE (see VERB FORM APPENDIX), roughly corresponding to the English -ing gerund. Examples within entries for idioms use the appropriate conjugated form of the verb. Thus, the entry for the idiom meaning ‘flatter’ has the example mu kosann n w li ‘we flattered him’, analyzed as mu kos-an-nì-n wòli ‘we gather-PL.SUBJ.-for him- PL.SUBJ. earth’.
Other categories
Most other categories should be self-explanatory from the category name itself, from the definitions of the headwords, and/or from examples. Some that may warrant further explanation are the following: IDEOPHONES (id.): Ideophones are adverbial modifiers of verbs and adjectives. Many ideophones are special to a single adjective or a verb (or small set of verbs with similar meanings). With few exceptions, ideophones have the form CVC (dài il ‘bright red’, otuw ros ‘he plucked it off with a snap’) or CVCVC (mànshi lukup ‘very old’, l m tw‰ pelem ‘he licked it completely clean’). All ideophones in the dictionary are listed in the IDEOPHONE APPENDIX. IDEOPHONIC ADJECTIVES (id.adj.): Ideophonic adjectives describe nominal referents, usually as having specific idiosyncratic characteristics. They can be used attributively (s n s l n i ‘slick, shiny shirt, e.g. made of silk’) or predicatively (d níyil Jummai ye mb kk t k ‘Jummai’s baby is big and hefty’). Ideophonic adjectives have a restricted set of phonological patterns that are not characteristic of typical nouns and adjectives. All words of this category in the dictionary are listed in the IDEOPHONIC ADJECTIVE APPENDIX. IDEOPHONIC STATIVES (id.stat.): Ideophonic statives comprise a small number (fewer than 10 in current data) that semantically are somewhat like ideophones or ideophonic adjectives but differ from those categories in two ways: they are usually used with a possessive suffix, and they can have HL or LH tone patterns, whereas both ideophones and ideophonic adjectives are either all H or all L. An example is sànkal in jπ rw s nkaln ‘he is wandering about aimlessly and irresponsibly’. PARTICLE (part.): Particles comprise a small group of words that generally add some sort of affect to an utterance. Most have the phonological form CV and are phrase final, e.g. tikk˘ m ! ‘please eat it!’, ina de ‘it’s definitely me’. SUFFIX (suffix): Bole has a large number of suffixes, including pronoun objects of verbs, possessive pronouns, noun plural suffixes, verbal extension suffixes, and verb tense suffixes. Entries for pronoun suffixes are all entered with the category “pro.” rather than “suffix”. A number of tense markers and noun plurals consist of a final vowel, e.g. ’yòr-î, ’yòr-â ‘stop!’ (singular and plural imperatives respectively), mòndù (pl. mond-è) ‘woman, wife’. These vocalic suffixes are not listed as separate headwords. Only suffixes that consist of one or more syllables on their own are included as headwords, e.g. ñ k‰ ventive verbal noun suffix (à ’y r- k‰ ‘he will come to a stop here’) , -inshe plural (àdà, pl. àd-inshe ‘dog’).
xxii Bole-English-Hausa Dictionary and English-Bole Wordlist
Pronunciation Variants and Synonyms
Bole has a number of recurrent variants in pronunciation that result in words that show those variants being alphabetized non-contiguously. The main such cases are words that have alternate pronuncations with c ~ sh, s ~ sh, j ~ z and words that have initial o- or u- that alternate with the pronounciations wo- and wu- respectively. The dictionary lists attested variants as separate head entries but with alternate pronunciations shown by an equals sign, e.g. both s ri = sh ri and sh ri = s ri ‘Acacia sieberiana’ are listed as head entries, as are li = w li and w li = li ‘earth’. NOTE ON WORDS WITH –a- ~ –e- PRONUNCIATION VARIANTS: Most verbs of Class B have –a- in the first syllable. All these verbs have gerunds (and usually derived verbal nouns) with –e- in the first syllable, e.g. dàmā ‘sweep’ has gerund dèmè (which happens to be identical to the derived verbal noun for this verb). This vowel difference would cause the verbal headword to be alphabetized at some distance from its corresponding gerund/verbal noun. In principle, it would be convenient for a user who encountered either variant in a text to be able to look that variant up directly in the dictionary. However, to enter the gerund/derived verbal noun for every verb of this type as a headword separate from the base verb would have resulted in a ballooning in the number of head entries with a rather small payoff, considering the fact that this alternation is 100% regular. We therefore have decided to enter separate headwords for deverbal nouns only where they have an idiosyncratic meaning not directly inferable from the meaning of the verb. Words with alternate pronunciations are considered to be “the same word” rather than being “synonyms”. A fair number of words, on the other hand, do have (near) synonyms with unrelated pronunciations. These are cross-referenced at the end of an entry following the notation “Synonym”. For example, gùngu ‘leopard’ is cross-referenced to Synonym j jirm = z zirm (a word with pronunciation variants of the type discussed in the preceding paragraph), and j jirm = z zirm is cross-referenced to the Synonym gùngu.
Remarks on Phonology
The pronunciation variants discussed in the section above refer to individual or dialectal alternant forms for headwords. Bole also has a number of regular phonological alternations, particularly in tones, that affect the pronunciation of a word depending on context. Since such alternants are predictable, we have chosen to have a single “base” form for each headword, even though pronunciation in examples may differ from the form shown in the headword. The main alternations are the following:
Nasal assimilation
A final /n/ or /ŋ/ assimilates completely to a following /r/ or /l/ and to the place of articulation of any other following consonant. Headwords show only –n or –ŋ, but examples may show
Introduction xxiii the assimilated variants. For example, the masculine /an/ agent clitic shows its assimilated variants where these appear as separate head entries (an dàra ‘rich person’ but ar rannà ‘swindler’, al lei ‘parent’ (agent-of birth), am bìlim ‘deceitful person’). Gàraŋ ‘deep, depth’ includes an example g ram b z ‘depth of the well’. There is one exception to this convention for headwords ending in /n/ or/ŋ/. A number of Bole words consist solely of a syllabic nasal /n/, e.g. /n/ first person singular subject pronoun, /ń/ (high tone syllabic n) indirect object preposition. Because these words consist only of a single consonant, in addition to headwords n and n, there are separate headwords m, r, and l, as well as m, r, and l cross-referenced to n and n respectively.17 Orthographically, most speakers prefer to write all of these as in, im, ir, and il, though the “i” seems never to be pronounced. We have headwords for these orthographic variants as well, cross-referenced to n and n.
// assimilation
When the consonant // comes in contact with another consonant, it consistently assimilates completely to that consonant. Examples in this dictionary show the assimilated form rather than the more abstract base form with “”. For example, the verb tou ‘brush off, knock off, knock down’ has examples n tot-t zur ‘I brushed of the dust’ (with TOTALITY suffix -t ), ton-n g k ke ‘he knocked me down with a bicycle’ (with direct object suffix -n ).
LOW TONE RAISING (LTR)
A pervasive tone rule of Bole spreads a high tone to a following low-toned syllable under certain phonological and morphological conditions.18 This means that the tones shown for a headword may differ from those of the same word in context. This is frequently the case for agentive constructions marked by an (masculine) and àni (feminine), both of which end in high tone, e.g. shìri ‘stealing, theft’ but an shiri/àni shiri ‘thief (m/f)’ and in the second member of compounds, e.g. shèkè ‘foot’ but ìdi shekè ‘ankle’ (eye-of foot), nàsāra ‘European’ but manda nasāra ‘white granulated salt’ (salt-of European) (as distinct from the traditional form in gray-colored blocks).
VARIABLE TONE
Disyllabic words other than verbs have five common tone patterns: LL shèkè ‘foot’, LH tèmshi ‘sheep’, HH danda ‘pestle’, HL zottò ‘wrapper’, and HV(ariable) ’yoppà/’yoppa
17 We do not have headwords for or ŋ. The velar nasal is contrastive with /n/ and /m/ only word final in phrase final position. We therefore write an kacco ‘robber’, even though it is pronounced [aŋ kacco]. 18 This phenomenon was first described in Lukas (1969). It is discussed in more detail, including the specific syntactic contexts where it is found, in Schuh and Gimba (2005).
xxiv Bole-English-Hausa Dictionary and English-Bole Wordlist
‘excrement’. The first four types have stable tone patterns (though those with initial L are subject to LOW TONE RAISING—see section just above). Those with the HV pattern have HL tones at the end of a phrase but HH in the middle of a phrase. This is true regardless of grammatical context, e.g. ’yoppà ‘excrement’ but ’yoppa kōro ‘donkey manure’, ’yoppa sa ‘not excrement’. The number of words with the HV pattern is small, but most are of frequent use. Among nouns, adjectives, and adverbs, there seem to be no properties that allow one to predict which words have HV vs. HH or HL, e.g. HV kārì/kāri ‘stalks’, HH gāri ‘valley’, HL jārì ‘trading’, but certain restricted categories of words cited with [HL] tones consistently have /HV/ tone. The main categories of this type are disyllabic personal pronouns (e.g. inà ‘I, me’, ina sa ‘not me’), demonstratives and related deictics (e.g. em ‘this (m)’, emē sa ‘not this’, mamm ‘like that’, mammē sa ‘not like that’), and plural nouns and adjectives that end in –e (e.g. mondè ‘women, wives’, monde sa ‘not women’; oll ‘small (pl.)’, olle sa ‘not small’). Pronoun suffixes of both nouns and verbs, when they form a HL sequence with the preceding syllable at the end of a phrase, become HH when non-final, e.g. tèmshinò ‘my sheep’ but tèmshino sa ‘not my sheep’. All words that have HV tones are marked as having variable tone in the grammatical information following the headword, e.g. tuww adv.time (variable tone) day after tomorrow ex tuwwa sa not day after tomorrow.
PRE-SUFFIX LOWERING
When a suffix is added to a word ending in HH or HV (High Variable) tones, the host word takes a HL tone pattern. This is most commonly encountered with HH or HV nouns with suffixed possessive pronouns, e.g. HH gorzo ‘husband’ but gorzòno ‘my husband’, HV ottò ‘tuwo’ but ottònì ‘his tuwo’. In the latter case we know that the HL pattern on the noun is not the HL citation tone but rather is a result of PRE-SUFFIX LOWERING since the tones of tuwo are HH when a non-suffix follows, e.g. otto sa ‘not tuwo’.
FINAL VOWEL LENGTHENING
Nearly all words in Bole end in short vowels. Exceptions are most monoconsonantal nouns, e.g. b˘ ‘mouth, k ‘seedling’ and most deictic words, e.g. em ‘this (m), ss ‘there it is’. A substantial number of nouns, however, lengthen their final vowel when a pronominal suffix is added, e.g. àdà ‘dog’ but d n ‘his dog’, shungule ‘elbow’ but shungul no ‘my elbow’ (the latter has undergone both PRE-SUFFIX LOWERING and FINAL VOWEL LENGTHENING). There seems to be no way to predict from the form of nouns which ones undergo FINAL VOWEL LENGTHENING and which do not, though all nouns that do this are fairly common, including some (but not all) common domestic animals (àdà ‘dog’), some (but not all) common household utensils (kulà ‘calabash bowl’), some (but not all) body parts (shèkè ‘foot’), and many kin terms (mollè ‘younger siblings’). Words that undergo FINAL VOWEL LENGTHENING are marked as such in grammatical information following the headword, e.g. d n. (pl. dinshe) (lengthens vowel before pronoun) dog ex d n his dog.
Introduction xxv
English-Bole Wordlist and Appendices
The English-Bole section is meant mainly as an index to the Bole-English-Hausa section. That is, headwords in the English-Bole section comprise words that are used in definitions of the Bole-English-Hausa section. No attempt has been made to create a comprehensive list of words that would serve as headwords in the English-Bole section of a true bilingual dictionary. Following the English-Bole Wordlist are the following appendices: BIRD APPENDIX: A list of all bird names that we were able to collect, listed alphabetically by Latin scientific names with English common names in parentheses. This list is followed by names of birds that we were not able to identify by species, with brief descriptive information. Most birds are also listed by English common names in the English-Bole Wordlist. FISH APPENDIX: A list of all fish names that we were able to collect, listed alphabetically by Latin scientific names with English common names in parentheses. This list is followed by names of fish that we were not able to identify by species, with brief descriptive information. Fish with standardly used English common names are also listed by those names in the English-Bole Wordlist. We did not create appendices for fauna other than birds and fish, i.e. mammals, reptiles, amphibians, arthropods (insects, spiders, scorpions, millipedes, etc.), and other invertebrates. We have assumed that most users of the dictionary would be familiar with the English names of larger mammals and reptiles (elephant, buffalo, crocodile, python, etc.), which are listed in the English-Bole wordlist under English common names and in the Bole-English-Hausa dictionary with English common names, Latin scientific names, and Hausa names. We have not had the scientific expertise nor the resources to identify smaller vertebrates or most invertebrates other than to provide brief descriptive information, and hence we have listed these only by English common names in the English-Bole Wordlist, sometimes grouped by type, such as types of snakes, types of ants, types of locusts, etc. FLORA APPENDIX: A list of all flora names (trees, shrubs, weeds, and grasses, both cultivated and wild) that we were able to collect, listed alphabetically by Latin scientific names with English common names in parentheses. This list is followed by names of flora that we were not able to identify by species, with brief descriptive information. IDEOPHONE INDEX: A list of all the ideophones (adverbs specific to certain verbs and adjectives) that we encountered during our research. None of these are listed in the English- Bole Wordlist since they rarely, if ever have a meaning separable from the context in which they occur. For example, kip “covered tightly” gains this meaning only if used with a verb that could mean ‘cover’, e.g. pn n kip it is tightly covered. IDEOPHONIC ADJECTIVES: A list of all the ideophonic adjectives that we encountered during our research. Like ideophones, these words are very specific in meaning and usually must be collocated with other words to give them a context for meaning, but because they typically have adjectival functions as noun modifiers or predicates, they seem to be more
xxvi Bole-English-Hausa Dictionary and English-Bole Wordlist independent than ideophones. Most of the ideophonic adjectives do appear in the English- Bole Wordlist under English definitions, e.g. wide d r ns i (where dàrànsài is an ideophonic adjective), but because they are both formally and semantically an idiosyncratic group of words, we believed that it would be convenient for users of the dictionary to see a comprehensive list. EXPRESSIONS AND INTERJECTIONS: This list is a sort of catch-all for affective expressions used in particular contexts. PROPER NAMES AND PLACE NAMES: A list of all the masculine and feminine proper names as well as all the Bole versions of place names that we were able to assemble. TITLES: A list of traditional titles in the Bole political and social hierarchy, with brief descriptions. Most of these titles come from a list obtained from the Fika Emirate Council. It is hoped that the list in this appendix will serve as a stimulus for further research and elaboration. KIN TERMS: A list of kin terms and other social relationships. As a group, these terms have idiosyncratic morphology. Each term is listed in its citation form, the form that it takes with a pronoun possessor, and the form it takes with a noun possessor. PRONOUN APPENDIX: Paradigms of personal pronouns in all functions. VERB FORM APPENDIX: Paradigms showing all the relevant morphological properties of verbs.