This is a reproduction of a library book that was digitized by Google as part of an ongoing effort to preserve the information in books and make it universally accessible. https://books.google.com OUTLINES OF A GRAMMAR OF THE VEI LANGUAGE, TOGETHER WITH A VEI-ENGLISH VOCABULARY. AND AN ACCOUNT OF THE DISCOVERY AND NATURE OF THE VEI MODE OF SYLLABIC WRITING. BY S^W. KOELLE, CHURCH MISSIONARY. LONDON CHURCH MISSIONARY HOUSE, SALISBURY SQUARE. 1854. PL Republished in association with the African ^ f I Languages Review of Fourah Bay College 19C8 entoitjae re e£ evbs alfiaroi irav eOvos av6pdrKu>v KaroiKeiv eiri trav to vpoaairov rtjs 7>}r- St. Paul,. Acts xvii. 26. S. B. N. - GB: 576.11611.4 Republished in 1968 by Gregg International Publishers Limited 1 Westmead, Farnborough, Hants., England Printed in Germany CONTENTS. PAGE Preface i — vi CHAPTER I. §. 1. Ethnological Relationship of the Vei Language, 1 I. Affinity with Indo-European, Semitic, and Afri can Roots 1 II. Languages belonging to the Manden-ga Stock. 10 III. Illustration of peculiarities of the Vei Language. 11 CHAPTER II. %. 2. Sounds and Orthography 14 CHAPTER III. Etymology of the Parts of Speech. 3. General 19 §. 4. Etymology of Substantives 19 §. 5. Etymology of Pronouns 23 I. Personal and Possessive Pronouns 23 II. Reflective Pronoun 24 III. Demonstrative Pronouns 24 IV. Interrogative Pronouns 26 V. Reciprocal Pronoun 26 §. 6. Etymology of Adjectives 26 %. 7. Etymology of Numerals 27 CONTENTS. PAGE §. 8. Etymology of Verbs 32 §. 9. Etymology of Adverbs 35 §. 10. Etymology of Postpositions 38 §. 11. Etymology of Conjunctions 39 §. 12. Etymology of Interjections 40 CHAPTER IV. §. 13. Convertibility of Words 40 CHAPTER V. §. 14. On the Accent 43 CHAPTER VI. The Law of Euphony. §. 15. Physical Law of Euphony 45 §. 16. Psychical Law of Euphony 56 CHAPTER VII. On Composition and Decomposition. §. 17. Composition 58 §. 18. Decomposition 59 CHAPTER VIII. Figures of Speech and Figurative Language. §. 19. Figures of Speech 62 §. 20. Figurative Language 64 CHAPTER IX. 21. On Propositions 73 CONTENTS. CHAPTER X. PAGE \. 22. Peculiar Suehixes 78 I. Ni 78 n. F? si III. W» 82 IV. Ke 83 V. Wa 85 VI. 0,u, ou 85 VII. I. 86 VIII. Affinity between some of them 87 IX. Ro 88 X. Re 90 XI. A,ra,da 91 XII. Na 93 CHAPTER XI. Syntax of the Parts of Speech. §. 23. Syntax of Substantives 94 §. 24. Syntax of Pronouns 97 I. Personal and Possessive Pronouns 97 II. Reflective Pronouns 105 III. Demonstrative Pronouns 106 IV. Interrogative Pronouns 109 V. Reciprocal Pronoun 110 §. 25. Syntax of Adjectives Ill 26. Syntax of Numerals 112 27. Syntax of Verbs 116 §. 28. Syntax of Adverbs 128 §. 29. Syntax of Postpositions 131 §. 30. Syntax of Conjunctions 133 §. 31. Syntax of Interjections 140 Vei- English Vocabulary 143 CORRIGENDA. PAGE. LINE. 11 5 read Maude for Mani. 11 23 dele the IS 5 & 13 read * for *. 17 17 and 9 for and o. 21 16 donna and don for donna and don. 21 32 . ba for be. 22 4 & 5 . kori for kori. 22 23 & 24 . ko/or ko. 32 last . mbdro for mboro. 37 4 . ke/or ek. 87 22 . komu for komu. 38 24 ko for ko. 47 14 food for foot, and dbm-fen for dom-fon. 60 7 kurira for korira, and kuri for kori. 51 1 . thee;" keima for keima. 51 6 . aroitonge for arbiton ge. 51 25 . Skene for akena. 60 4 . ko for ko. 85 20 . come for gone. 103 9 . bere for bere. 105 16 . denu for dinu. 106 bottom . ke/or ke. 118 33 . the verb substantive for the verb, the substantive. 149 24—26 . bo for bo. 157 26 . don for don. 156 1 & 2 lawful for natural. 165 1 & 2 . proper for natural. 166 10 . anliegen for verliegen. 175 30 to be white for to white. 176 28 . gbere/or gbare. 179 bottom civet-cat for cive-tcat. Introduction THE TERM 'VAI' The term 'Vai' was first recorded, in the form 'Vey'. by Dutch sources of the first half of the seventeenth century. In these sources, it seems to denote a political unit near Cape Mount, i.e. within modern Vailand1. Although the lengthy account of this area drawn up presumably by Dutch traders and published by Dapper in 1668 was much plagiarised by later writers, virtually no new information about this area appeared in print for nearly one hundred and fifty years. Around 1800, reports from the British settlement at Sierra Leone contained occasional references to the 'Foy' people of Cape Mount; and from the 1820s the Americo- Liberians of Monrovia came into increasingly close contact with the 'Vei'23. It was perhaps only in the nineteenth century that all sections of the ethno- linguistic unit came to accept the name Vai, but as the earlier usage is obscure, for convenience we shall employ the term to describe the whole unit in earlier centuries. The 1668 account contained a vocabulary of the Vai language, but under the name 'Kquoja'; and the first words to appear in print under the name Vai did not appear till 1840. These first words were merely the numerals (collected in the United States from an African sailor) and no further material appeared in print before 1849. Thus when, in the latter year, the missionary Koelle began work on Vai, he was undertaking the study of an almost unknown language. THE EARLY HISTORY OF VAI The early history of the Vai people and language is known only in outline. The 1668 account had a great deal to say about the recent history of the Cape Mount area, but the involved dynastic sagas therein related require the most careful interpretation and as yet have had insufficient study by historians. The one event recorded in this account which fits into our limited knowledge of the history of neighbouring areas is the invasion of the coastal areas to the West, up to and even beyond the Sierra Leone peninsula, atadate several generations earlier than the date of collection of the information (which was probably the 1630s or 1640s), by armies under the command of members of dynasties from the Cape Mount area. This was almost certainly the 'Mani' invasion of Sierra Leone around 1550 contemporaneously recorded in Portuguese and English sources4. Since the 'Kquoja' vocabulary was collected in the Cape Mount area and is certainly Vai, we can be reasonably certain that the 'Mani' leaders were Vai, and that Vai-speakers were living in the Cape Mount area by the middle of the sixteenth century. Earlier than this, however, there is no documentation of the Vai (and very little of Cape Mount); and the Vai oral traditions which purport to relate to an earlier period are, taken by themselves, vague and unconvincing. The only strong clue to the his tory of the Vai before European documentation is provided by the Vai language. Vai is one of the Mande languages. This was realised as soon as Vai became known to scholars, and Koelle (in the present work) commented pertinently in 1851 on the geography of the Mande group: "The Mande family of languages .. seems to have nowhere descended into that narrow strip of lowland, which from Senegambia right down to Cape Palmas, forms an intermediate step between High Sudan and the Atlantic, except in Vei country, and in part of the present Mande [misprint for Mande, i.e. Mende] territory" (p. 11). Vai is indeed the only Mande language entirely on the Guinea seaboard (although Malinke stretches down the Gambia, and the advancing flank of Mende has touched the sea near Sherbro Island probably since around 1800). Vai is therefore neighboured largely by languages of other stocks (Bullom and Gola of 'Mel' : Bassaof 'Kru'). Its only Mande neighbour, Mende, is, as Welmers has recently shown, a rather distant relation5 . On the other hand, in the interior behind Mende and Gola, lies the Kono language which is very closely re lated to Vai; andKonoand Vai are together closely related to the interior nuclear language, Malinke. Welmers considers that Vai represents a recent derivation from Malinke, and suggests a time of separation of the order of five hundred years. Thus, comparative linguistics suggests that, in fairly recent historical times. agroupfrom the Malinke -speaking area (roughly on and around the Upper Niger) made its way to the South, passing over or between older Mande dispersions (e.g. Kpelle, Mende) and languages of other stocks (e.g. Gola) : the 'tail' got no further than Konoland and broke away, but the remainder reached the coast at or near Cape Mount, and became the Vai. The Vai traditions of origin - noted and commented on shrewdly by Koelle, transcribed again in later ver sions by Klingenheben6 - can be read as confirming this general picture, though it is doubtful whether the folk-etymologies of 'Vai' and 'Kono' and the details of leadership supplied therein have much historical value. The 'Mani' invasion of Sierra Leone may have marked the arrival of the Vai on the Atlantic coast, but it is perhaps as likely that it marked the end of a period of consolidation of initial settlement in the area. THE LATER HISTORY OF VAI The major events in Vai history after those recounted by Dapper in 1668 were the spread of Islam, apparently beginning only in the early eighteenth century: the contact with Christian missionaries which began in the early decades of the nineteenth: the invention of the Vai syllabary around 1830 : and the assumption of political control over Vailand by - and hence its division between - Liberia and the British colony of Sierra Leone, a process completed by 1885.