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The Gbeya Language

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The Gbeya Language THE GBEYA LANGUAGE GRAMMAR, TEXTS, AND VOCABULARIES BY WILLIAM J. SAMARIN UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS BERKELEY AND LOS ANGELES 1966 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PUBLICATIONS IN LINGUISTICS Advisory Editors: W. E. Bull, W. L. Chafe, C. D. Chretien, M. B. Emeneau, M. R. Haas, Harry Hoijer, L. D. Newmark, D. L. Olmsted, R. P. Stockwell Volume 44 Approved for publication March 26, 1965 Issued August 17, 1966 Price $5.00 University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles California Cambridge University Press London, England Manufactured in the United States of America CONTENTS Introduction 1 Bibliography 8 Abbreviations and symbols H Maps 12 GRAMMAR 1. Phonology H 110. Primary phonemes 17 111. Consonant phonemes 11 111.1. Description of consonants 11 111.2. Distribution of consonants 26 112. Vowel phonemes 27 112.1. Description of vowels 27 112.2. Distribution of vowels 28 113. Tonal phonemes 29 120. Secondary phonemes 29 121. Nasalization 29 122. Juncture 30 123. Pause 30 123.1. Following hesitation 30 123.2. At syntactic boundaries 31 124. Terminal contours 31 124.1. Period contour 31 124.2. Question contour 31 124.3. Exclamation contour 31 124.4. Double-exclamation contour 32 130. Morphophonemics 32 131. Automatic alternations 32 131.1. Consonants 32 131.2. Tones 34 132. Morphological alternations 34 132.1. Consonants 34 132.2. Vowels 35 132.3. Tone and other alternations 36 133. Irregular alternations 37 133.1. Consonants 37 133.2. Vowels 37 133.3. /r/, /y/, and vowel lengthening 37 140. Extra-phonemic characteristics of the language 39 150. Assimilation of loan-words 40 [ v ] vi CONTENTS 2. Bound Morphemes 44 210. Affixes in construction with only one other morpheme 44 211. Affixes which occur with verbs only 44 211.1. Imperfective suffix 44 211.2. Perfective suffix 45 211.3. Emphatic suffix 46 211.4. Nominalizing suffix 46 212. Affixes which occur with nouns 47 212.1. "Demonstrative" suffix 47 212.2. Relational affix 47 213. Affixes which occur with several different classes of morphemes 48 213.1. Determinant suffix 48 213.2. Locative and demonstrative suffixes 49 213.3. Designative suffix 50 220. Affix in construction with a whole construction 51 221. Function of the postclitic 52 222. Allomorphs 52 223. Distribution 52 223.1. Postclitic with substantive expressions 52 223.2. Postclitic with verb expressions 53 3. Distribution Classes 57 310. Interjections 57 320. Final particles 58 330. Connectives 60 331. Connectives which join only clauses 60 332. Connectives which join clauses and other constructions — 61 333. Connective which joins a verb expression or a dependent clause to a verb expression 72 340. Prepositions 73 350. Unique morphemes 75 351. Stative 76 352. Copula 76 353. Quotative verb 77 354. ?bo 80 360. Adjectives 80 361. Preposed adjectives 80 362. Postposed adjectives 83 370. Adverbs .' 83 371. Negative marker 83 372. Descriptive adverbs 85 372.1. Classes of descriptive adverbs 85 372.2. Phonemic shape 86 372.3. Derivation 88 380. Substantives 98 381. Nominatives 98 381.1. Classes 98 381.2. Derivation 99 382. Substitutes 101 390. Verbs U0 391. Verb base allomorphs Ill 392. Suffixation to the free form Ill 393. Distribution of high and low tone forms Ill CONTENTS vii 393.1. Imperfective forms Ill 393.2. Perfective forms 113 394. Classes of verbs 113 394.1. Singular/plural verbs 114 394.2. Motion verbs 114 394.3. Auxiliary verbs 114 4. Syntax 121 410. Nonsentence-type constructions 121 411. Noun phrases 121 411.1. Noun phrases with preposed attributes 121 411.2. Noun phrases with postposed subordinate attributes 122 411.3. Postposed coordinate attributes 124 412. Substitute phrases 124 413. Prepositional phrases 124 414. Verb phrases 125 414.1. Substantive complements 125 414.2. Prepositional phrase complements 127 414.3. Verb complements 127 414.4. Adverb complements 128 420. Sentence constructions 128 421. Simple sentences 128 421.1. Principal clauses 128 421.2. Secondary clauses 130 422. Complex sentences 132 422.1. With expansions of the subject 133 422.2. With expansions of the verb phrase 134 422.3. With introductory constructions 136 423. Compound sentences 137 423.1. Principal + Principal 137 423.2. Principal + Nonprincipal 139 423.3. Nonprincipal + Principal 139 423.4. Nonprincipal + Nonprincipal 139 430. Combining processes 139 5. Sample Text and Analysis 144 SELECTED TEXTS Introduction 132 1. A Hunt Across the River 154 2. Monsieur Kills Two Antelope 154 3. A Narrow Escape from Lions 156 4. Children Should Work in the Garden 162 5. A Negligent Son-in-law 164 6. A Good Woman 166 7. Why Some Wives Run Away 168 8. Gbeya Warfare 168 9. Gbeya Adornment HO 10. The Annual Grass-burning 112 11. The Origin of Rivers and Islands 118 12. Spider Brings Some News 182 viii CONTENTS VOCABULARIES Introduction 187 Gbeya-English 190 English-Gbeya 230 Subject Index 243 INTRODUCTION i The GbÊyâ,1 whose language is described in this grammar, are a people who mainly live in the District of Bossangoa of the Region of the Ouahm, in the northwestern part of the Central African Republic (formerly the territory of Ubangi-Shari of French Equatorial Africa). They live almost entirely along the automobile roads, in villages consist- ing of from three to as many as 100 houses. Their livelihood depends on the food they grow (basically grain sorghum and manioc and such vegetables as peanuts, beans, okra, corn, etc.), gather (mushrooms, fruits, roots, leaves), raise (goats and chickens), and hunt (during the dry-season fires). Cash is obtained primarily through the annual sale of cotton and, to a lesser degree, peanuts. Only a very few have salaried occupations, and these live almost exclusively in the town of Bossangoa, the district and regional seat recently renamed sous-préfecture and préfecture respectively.2 The people call themselves as well as their language /gbêyâ/ (henceforth written Gbeya).3 This word is probably nothing more than an alternant of the form /gbâyâ/, because of the common substitution of /a/ for /e/, and vice versa, in free morpheme alternants within the Gbeya language and between various Gbaya dialects (for which see 133.2). The name Gbaya is, in fact, the one usually used for the people and their language by the farther removed population of the country. To distinguish them from the other Gbaya, the name Bossangoa is added in attribution: Gbaya-Bossangoa, which distinguishes them from Gbaya-Carnot, Gbaya- Boda, etc. Where the people are generally known by some other name, .even though speaking a related dialect or lan- guage, the word Gbaya is not generally used of them: Bofi [?bofi], Ali [arf], and Gbanu. I have been using the word Gbeya as if it identified either a well-recog- nized ethnic or linguistic community. This is not so. There is in fact only a large area where the inhabitants speak related dialects, some of which are called Gbaya, others Manza, others Gbanu, etc. Regardless of what may be the origin of these names, in my opinion they do not represent (except for the government which has always required the registration of a person's "race," as the word is used in French) either differentiated ethnic communi- ties or dialects, a matter that has been discussed elsewhere.4 Linguistically, we are dealing with a more or less homogeneous unit, on the one hand dras- tically differentiated at the extremes, where dialects are mutually unintelli- 'For notes to Introduction, see p. 6. [ 1 ] 2 SAMARIN: THE GBEYA LANGUAGE gible, but, on the other hand, only slightly, and sometimes erratically, dif- ferentiated at contiguous geographical points. If, for example, we were to start from Bossangoa, we should find that the Gbaya dialects spoken at such distant towns as Batangafo, Bouca, and Bozoum were mutually intelligible with that of Bossangoa.5 The name of the supposed tribe or language is not indicative of this relationship, for I found at Bouca a man who considered himself a Manza but whose speech resembled that of Bossangoa more than that of Damara. In the District of Bossangoa (henceforth referred to as the District), the government has differentiated between the Gbeya and the " Souma" (/suma/) "races." The people, being required to register some "race" and having only two alternatives from which to choose, have made a rough division of the district along these lines. The border between the two is naturally poorly distinguished, although some individuals name such and such a village as the beginning of the Gbeya or Suma area. In most cases, however, I found that it was always a distant village which was so identified, never a nearby one. For the sake of convenience, we might consider the villages of Bomatana (/'bo mââtânâ/) and Boguila (/'bo girâ/) as being in the heart of the Suma area, for there is no doubt about them; all the people from around Bossangoa consider these two as Suma villages. On the other hand, the people of Boguila call those of Bangayanga (/gbarjayapa/), whose idiom is very much like that of Bossangoa, gba suma 'the real Suma.' For their possible ethnolinguistic value, I here give several other names: When at Bouca, I learned that the Gbaya of Bossangoa were called gbâyâ kârâ, but some of these in turn said that the kârâ were at Bouar, others that the people of Lere (/'dèrc/), 22 miles north, were kârâ because "they talk fast." A Gbaya-speaking person at Batangafo called the Gbaya of Bossangoa gbâyâ go go supposedly because of their very extensive use of the connective go 'and.' Most of the villages north of Bazian (/gba zjya/) are called 'doo 'under' because they lie in the direction of the flow of the Ouahm (/wâam/) River.
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