Ikwere language
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Ikwere | ||
|---|---|---|
| Pronunciation: | IPA: [ìkʷéré] | |
| Spoken in: | Nigeria | |
| Total speakers: | >980,000 | |
| Language family: | Niger-Congo Atlantic-Congo Volta-Congo Benue-Congo Igboid Ikwere |
|
| Writing system: | Latin alphabet | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | none | |
| ISO 639-2: | nic | |
| ISO/FDIS 639-3: | ikw | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key. | ||
Ikwere (or Ikwerre, Ikwerri) is an Igboid language spoken by over 980,000 people (according to the 1991 census) in Nigeria.
Contents |
[edit] Phonology
[edit] Vowels
Ikwere distinguishes vowels by quality (frontedness and height), the presence or absence of nasalization, and the presence or absence of advanced tongue root.
| Front | Back | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| High | +ATR | i ĩ | u ũ |
| −ATR | ɪ ɪ̃ | ʊ ʊ̃ | |
| Mid | +ATR | e ẽ | o õ |
| −ATR | ɛ ɛ̃ | ɔ ɔ̃ | |
| Low | −ATR | a ã | |
There is also a vowel /ə̃/, which may be realized as [ɨ̃] or a syllabic nasal whose articulation is determined by adjacent consonants.
[edit] Vowel harmony
Ikwere exhibits two kinds of vowel harmony:
- Every vowel in an Ikwere word, with a few exceptions, agrees with the other vowels in the word as to the presence or absence of advanced tongue root.
- Vowels of the same height in adjacent syllables must all be either front or back, i.e. the pairs /i/ & /u/, /ɪ/ & /ʊ/, /e/ & /o/, and /ɛ/ & /ɔ/ cannot occur in adjacent syllables. Vowels of different heights, however, need not match for frontness/backness either. This doesn't apply to the first vowel in nouns beginning with a vowel or with /ɾ/, and doesn't apply to onomatopoeic words.
[edit] Consonants
| Bilabial | Labiodental | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unrounded | Rounded | Unrounded | Rounded | ||||||
| Explosive stop | Voiceless | p | t | k | kʷ | ||||
| Voiced | b | d | ɡ | ɡʷ | |||||
| Affricate | Voiceless | tʃ | |||||||
| Voiced | dʒ | ||||||||
| Fricative | Voiceless | f | s | h | hʷ | ||||
| Voiced | v | z | |||||||
| Nonexplosive stop | Voiced | ḅ | |||||||
| Glottalized | ʼḅ | ||||||||
| Lateral | l | ||||||||
| Tap | ɾ | ||||||||
| Approximant | j | ɰ | w | ||||||
The tap /ɾ/ may sometimes be realized as an approximant [ɹ].
/ḅ ʼḅ l ɾ j ɰ w h hʷ/ are realized as [m ʼm n ɾ̃ j̃ ɰ̃ w̃ h̃ h̃ʷ], respectively, preceding a nasal vowel.
[edit] Tone
Ikwere is a tonal language.
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[edit] References
- Clements, George N., Osu, Sylvester (2005). "Nasal harmony in Ikwere, a language with no phonemic nasal consonants". Journal of African Languages and Linguistics 26: 165–200.
- Williamson, Kay (1970). Reading and writing Ikwerre. Ibadan: Institute of African Studies.
