A DICTIONARY OF THE IZERE LANGUAGE OF FOBUR 2019 edition Roger Blench Bitrus Kaze McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research University of Cambridge Correspondence to: 8, Guest Road Cambridge CB1 2AL United Kingdom Voice/ Ans (00-44)-(0)1223-560687 Mobile worldwide (00-44)-(0)7847-495590 E-mail [email protected] http://www.rogerblench.info/RBOP.htm Jos, 27 December 2018 Izere - English -Izere Dictionary Table of Contents TABLE OF CONTENTS ABBREVIATIONS............................................................................................................................... I PREFACE.............................................................................................................................................II 1. THE IZERE PEOPLE AND THEIR LANGUAGE ......................................................................1 1.1 Location of the Izere people.........................................................................................................................1 1.2 Classification of the Izere language .............................................................................................................2 2. IZERE SOCIETY AND CUSTOMS...............................................................................................2 2.1 History..........................................................................................................................................................2 2.2 Notes on Izere culture ..................................................................................................................................2 2.3 Religion........................................................................................................................................................4 2.3.1 Traditional religion ...............................................................................................................................4 2.3.2 Christianity............................................................................................................................................5 2.3.3 Islam .....................................................................................................................................................5 3. IZERE DIALECTS AND THE CHOICE OF A STANDARD.....................................................5 3.1 Dialect survey...............................................................................................................................................5 3.2 Differences between dialects........................................................................................................................6 3.3 Standardisation and language attitudes ........................................................................................................7 3.4 Existing literacy materials............................................................................................................................8 4. THE SOUND-SYSTEM OF IBOR IZERE AND THE OFFICIAL ORTHOGRAPHY..........10 4.1 Izere phonology..........................................................................................................................................10 4.2 Letters of the Izere alphabet .......................................................................................................................11 5. INTRODUCTION TO IZERE GRAMMAR ...............................................................................11 5.1 Nouns .........................................................................................................................................................11 5.2 Pronouns.....................................................................................................................................................12 5.3 Verbs ..........................................................................................................................................................15 5.3.1 Verb morphology................................................................................................................................15 5.3.2 Verbal plurality...................................................................................................................................16 5.3.3 Transitivity..........................................................................................................................................17 5.3.4 Tense/aspect........................................................................................................................................18 5.3.5 Imperatives..........................................................................................................................................20 5.4 Adjectives..................................................................................................................................................21 5.4.1 Overview.............................................................................................................................................21 5.4.2 Concordial...........................................................................................................................................21 5.4.2 Non-concordial ...................................................................................................................................22 5.5 Adverbs .....................................................................................................................................................23 5.6 Conjunction and co-ordination...................................................................................................................24 5.7 Interrogatives..............................................................................................................................................25 5.7.1 Content questions................................................................................................................................25 5.7.2 Polar questions....................................................................................................................................26 5.8 Ideophones .................................................................................................................................................26 5.9 Interjections................................................................................................................................................26 6. GUIDE TO USING THE DICTIONARY ....................................................................................27 6.1 Structure of individual entries ....................................................................................................................27 6.2 Scientific Names ........................................................................................................................................27 6.3 Nigerian English Usage..............................................................................................................................27 6.4 Etymology and loan-words ........................................................................................................................27 6.5 Parts of Speech...........................................................................................................................................28 REFERENCES....................................................................................................................................29 i Izere - English -Izere Dictionary Introduction TABLES Table 1. Percentage differences between other Izere lects and Fobor ....................................................7 Table 2. Izere noun-class prefixes.........................................................................................................11 Table 3. Frequencies of singular noun-prefixes in Izere.......................................................................12 Table 4. Stem changes in nominalised verbs reflecting plural verb stems ...........................................12 Table 5. Suppletive plurals in Izere ......................................................................................................12 Table 6. Izere pronoun sets ...................................................................................................................13 Table 7. Izere transitive dative pronoun paradigm................................................................................13 Table 8. Izere comitative pronoun paradigm ........................................................................................13 Table 9. Izere transitive object pronoun paradigm................................................................................14 Table 10. Izere possessive pronoun paradigm ......................................................................................14 Table 11. Reduction of CVCVC structures ..........................................................................................16 Table 12. Plural verbs in Izere showin semantic shift ..........................................................................16 Table 13. Suppletive plurals in Izere ....................................................................................................16 Table 14. Unique singular/plural verb pairs in Izere.............................................................................17 FIGURES Figure 1. Tentative tree representing classification of Izere dialects......................................................7