Supyire language
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Supyire | |
---|---|
sùpyìré | |
Native to | Mali, Ivory Coast |
Region | Sikasso Region |
Native speakers | (460,000 cited 1996–2007)[1] |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | Either:spp – Supyireseb – Shempire (Syenpire, duplicate code of Supyire or of Cebaara) |
Glottolog | supy1237 |
Map showing where Supyire is spoken. | |
Supyire, or Suppire, is a
Background
The early existence of Supyire is unclear. During the time period in which the language developed, it has been hypothesized that there was little conflict in the region which resulted in a significant amount of separation between the ancestors of the Supyire and other cultures of the area. If individuals speaking a single language migrated to the region of present-day Mali and then broke off into small groups that had little connection, it would be expected that the languages would develop different characteristics over time. Recently, close contact with other tribes has resulted in a dictionary full of loan words that have been assimilated into everyday language. Education has affected cultural language in this area. Although few are literate, many children attend primary school where a mixture of languages can be presented. There is ongoing controversy over the use of "mother tongues" in schools. Current law states that primary schools educate in the mother tongue whereas secondary schools emphasize the use of a common language.
The language group of
As a group of people, the Supyire survive by cultivating the landscape. Individuals make a living off of the land, primarily by cultivating
As a culture, the Supyire, and most Senufo groups, are most known for their artwork.
Phonology
Consonants
Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Nasal | m | n
|
ɲ | ŋ | ||
Affricate
|
voiceless | p | t
|
tʃ <c> | k | ʔ |
voiced | b | d
|
dʒ <j> | g | ||
Fricative
|
voiceless | f | s | ʃ <sh> | ||
voiced | v | z | ʒ <zh> | |||
Approximant
|
l
|
j <y> | w |
Supyire has a voicing distinction and contains a glottal stop, a common characteristic in African languages. However, it does not have labial–velar consonants.
Voiceless stops have particular limitations and are only used in three environments: word initial, such as tàcwɔ̀ ("fiancée"); medially in a stressed syllable, as in nupéé; or following a nasal, such as in kàntugo ("behind"). Moreover, almost every word-initial /ɡ/ is found in loanwords from either French or Bambara.
Although both voiceless and voiced
There is no labial approximant.
In speech, /w/ does not come after a short stressed syllable.[2]: p. 17
Although Supyire contains nasal consonants, there is considerable debate over their phonemic status. According to a well-formulated hypothesis, the predecessor of Supyire had no nasal consonants but nasalized vowels did exist. Some
Supyire is reported to have the rare
Vowels
Front | Central | Back | |
---|---|---|---|
Close | i ĩ | u ũ | |
Close-mid | e | o | |
Open-mid | ɛ ɛ̃ | ɔ ɔ̃ | |
Open | a ã |
Supyire has 12 vowels in total, with seven
Vowel harmony is also important in the Supyire language. This is done by harmonizing unstressed vowels with the initial stressed vowel if they both belong to the same root or have the same suffix.
Syllables
Supyire has a noticeable syllable structure that includes no
Tone
Supyire is
The language has four basic tones: high, low, strong mid, and weak mid. While the high and low tones are unremarkable, the two mid tones are only differentiated by differences in their behavior when referencing tone rules, and not by their pitch. These unusual mid tones are found in all northern Senufo languages but not in central Senufo languages, which only have three tones.
- high tone is indicated by an acute accent: á é ɛ́ í ó ɔ́ ú;
- mid tone is indicated by no diacritic : a e ɛ i o ɔ u;
- low tone is indicated by a grave accent : à è ɛ̀ ì ò ɔ̀ ù;
- the other mid (high-low) is indicated by a circumflex : â ê ɛ̂ î ô ɔ̂ û.
Most vowels in the Supyire language contain a single tone although vowels may have two, or in extremely rare cases three, tones. Further, nasals that come before stops can only have one tone. Basic noun gender suffixes, imperfective verb suffixes, the causative verb suffix –g followed by a vowel, and the intransitive verb prefix N- are considered toneless.
It was noted that boys who spent their days herding cows communicated with each other strictly through whistled language, which only elaborated vowel length and pitch. These small pieces of information were enough to have conversations of considerable detail.
Morphology
Class system
The noun class system of Supyire is similar to that of other languages in the
The gender system of Supyire does differ slightly from the gender systems of other similar languages. Bantu, also a subgroup of Niger–Congo languages, places different forms of the same word into varying gender classes. For example, the Swahili word for friend is rafiki and it is a class 9 noun. However, the plural form marafiki belongs to noun class 6. This confusion over noun class distinction does not occur in any Senufo language, Supyire included.
In Supyire, gender 1 is categorized as the "human" gender. Instead of classifying loan words by their definition, those who speak Supyire tend to classify loan words by their suffixes and thus most loan words, regardless of meaning, are placed into gender 1. More than half of the dictionary of gender one nouns is loan words. Nouns found in this category range from general human terms such as ceewe ("woman") and pyà ("child") to terms that describe relationships such as nafentu ("wife's father"). Also found in this category are terms that describe people such as ŋaŋa ("twin") or cevoo ("friend"). Gender 1 also contains class terms and occupational terms such as ciiwe ("leather-worker"), tunntun ("blacksmith") and sòròlashí ("soldier"). Supernatural entities are also categorized into the human gender. The word for god, kile, is categorized as a gender 1 noun. This gender also contains some "higher" animals and mass nouns such as dust and sand.
Gender 2 is typically described as the category that contains nouns that are "big things" while gender 3 contains nouns of "small things". Thus, gender 2 includes, for example, trees and tree parts such as cige ("tree"), logo ("shea tree"), and weŋe ("leaf"). Also included in gender 2 are large, immovable objects such as baga ("house, building"), caanga ("market") and kacige ("bridge") and most large animals. Gender 2 contains nouns that describe desires such as katege ("hunger") and byaga ("thirst"). Gender 3 contains small animals such as lùpààn ("mosquito"). Gender 4 is known as the "collectives" category and contains mass nouns and abstract nouns. Some examples of mass nouns are pworo ("adobe") and kyara ("meat"). Abstracts are used to convey emotional states and include words such as sícyere ("insanity") and wyere ("cold"). The final category of noun gender 5 contains nouns for liquids. For example, this is the gender of sìnmε ("beer") and jirimε ("milk").
In Supyire, gender is marked by
Verb morphology
Although
a. Voiceless stop—prefix appears
Pi màha m-pa náhá. They HAB IP-come here. "They come here."
b. Fricative—no prefix Pi màha shya aní
c. Mìì ná m̀pà ta. I PAST sheep get "I got a sheep."
d. Mpà mìì ná ń-tá. sheep I PAST IP-get. "It was a sheep that I got."
Alternatively, the future prefix is used with verbs that apply a future time reference. In conjunction with certain verb prefixes, the auxiliaries sí and cáá are also used. It also differs from the first prefix in that it uses a distinct tone and it appears on all verbs, not just those beginning with voiceless stops. Just as with the intransitive prefix, the future prefix uses a nasal attached to a verb that is not preceded by a direct object. As an example:
a.Mìì sí m̀-pà. I FUT FP-come. "I will come."
Adjectives
Supyire does not include many adjectives, since most adjectives can be represented by the use of stative verbs instead. However, a small group of adjectives do exist. Adjectives are created in two ways in Supyire: either by compounding or by using derived adjectives. The following are examples of adjectival roots and root compounding:
a. Root: -fu- ("hot")
b. kafee-fu-go ("hot wind")
Syntax
Sentence structure
Although almost all Niger–Congo languages have a sentence structure that follows the subject–verb–object pattern, Supyire and other Senufo languages do not follow in this way. Instead, these languages are verb-final and most often are subject–object–verb. The following examples provide evidence for this sentence structure:
a. Kà u ú ŋ́́-káré sà a ci-ré pààn-nì. “He went to chop the trees”
DS G1S NARR IP-go go PROG tree-DEF.G4 chop-IMPV
b. Lùpà-àn sì ǹ-tὲὲn ù nà. “A mosquito sat on him”
A mosquito-G3S NARR IP-sit G1S on
Number system
The number system of the Supyire people has short words (monomorphemic forms) for the numbers 1 through 5, 10, 20, 80, and 400.[3][2]: p. 167 The numbers 6 through 9 are formed by combining the prefix baa–, meaning "five," with the words for 1 through 4, or shortened versions of them.[2]: p. 167 For example, the word for "six" is baa-nì, "five and one." The word for 80, ŋ`kùù, is formally and etymologically identical to the word for "chicken"; this identity is inexplicable to native speakers of the language but may relate to a historical price for a chicken.[2]: p. 167
All Supyire numbers use gender 1, except for "four hundred," which uses gender 3.[2]: pp. 167–169
As their traditional numbers are complex, the Supyire increasingly use the decimal system of the neighboring Bambara people.[3] As is true in other languages in the region, numerals that refer to money (in this instance, the CFA franc) are counted in groups of five.[2]: p. 169
See also
Sources
- Carlson, Robert. (1991). Of postpositions and word order in Senufo languages. Approaches to Grammaticalization, 2, 201-223.
- Carlson, Robert. (1994). A grammar of Supyire. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co.
- Comrie, Bernard, Matthews, Stephen, & Polinsky, Maria. (2003). Chapter 4: Africa and the Middle East. In The Atlas of Languages (pp. 72–89). London: Piers Spence.
- Garber-Kompaore, Anne. (1987). A Tonal Analysis of Senufo: Sucite dialect . Dissertation Abstracts, 1. Retrieved December 1, 2008, from University of Illinois Web site:[4]
- Nurse, Derek, & Heine, Bernd. (2000). African Languages. London: Cambridge University Press.
- Pike, Kenneth. (1964). Tone Languages: A Technique . Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
- Trudell, Barbara. (2007, September). Local community perspectives and language education in sub-Saharan African communities. International Journal of Educational Development, 27(5), 552-563.
References
- ^ Supyire at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
Shempire (Syenpire, duplicate code of Supyire or of Cebaara) at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required) - ^ ISBN 9783110140576.
- ^ a b Carlson, Robert (1995), Supyire Sénoufo, Sikasso, Mali, Max Planck Institute, retrieved February 21, 2014
- ^ Tonal Analysis of Senufo: Sucite Dialect
External links
- "Genitive focus in Supyire" (PDF). (324 KB)
- "Interroɡative pronouns in Supyire" (PDF).
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value (help) (121 KB) - Resources in Supyiré from SIL Mali