NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Gbe languages

The Gbe languages (pronounced [ɡ͡be])^[1] form a cluster of about twenty related languages stretching across the area between eastern Ghana and western Nigeria. The total number of speakers of Gbe languages is between four and eight million. The most widely spoken Gbe language is Ewe (3 million speakers in Ghana and Togo), followed by Fon (1.7 million, mainly in Benin). The Gbe languages belong to the Kwa branch of the Niger-Congo languages, and break up into five major dialect clusters: Ewe, Fon, Aja, Gen, and Phla-Pherá. A language family is a group of languages related by descent from a common proto-language. ... Map showing the distribution of Niger-Congo languages The Niger-Congo languages constitute one of the worlds major language families, and Africas largest in terms of geographical area, number of speakers, and number of distinct languages. ... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ... In the classification of African languages, Volta-Congo is the major branch (in terms of number of languages) of the Niger-Congo phylum. ... The Kwa languages are spoken in the south-eastern part of Côte dIvoire, in Ghana, Togo and Benin, and the south-Western corner of Nigeria. ... Ewe (native name , the language) is a Kwa language spoken in Ghana and Togo by approximately three million people. ... Gen (also called Gẽ, Gen-Gbe, or Mina) is a Gbe language spoken in the southeast of Togo and in the Mono province of Benin. ... Fon (native name FÉ”ngbe) is part of the Gbe language cluster and belongs to the Kwa sub-family of the Niger-Congo languages. ... The Phla-PherÃ¡ languages form a subgroup of Gbe languages spoken mainly in south-eastern and south-western Benin; some communities are found in south-eastern Togo and south-western Nigeria. ... Ewe (native name , the language) is a Kwa language spoken in Ghana and Togo by approximately three million people. ... Fon (native name FÉ”ngbe) is part of the Gbe language cluster and belongs to the Kwa sub-family of the Niger-Congo languages. ... The Kwa languages are spoken in the south-eastern part of Côte dIvoire, in Ghana, Togo and Benin, and the south-Western corner of Nigeria. ... Map showing the distribution of Niger-Congo languages The Niger-Congo languages constitute one of the worlds major language families, and Africas largest in terms of geographical area, number of speakers, and number of distinct languages. ... Aja is a Nilo-Saharan language of the Central Sudanic subgroup, spoken in the southern Sudanese province of Bahr el Ghazal and along the Sudanese border in the Central African Republic. ... Gen (also called Gẽ, Gen-Gbe, or Mina) is a Gbe language spoken in the southeast of Togo and in the Mono province of Benin. ... The Phla-PherÃ¡ languages form a subgroup of Gbe languages spoken mainly in south-eastern and south-western Benin; some communities are found in south-eastern Togo and south-western Nigeria. ...

Most of the Gbe peoples have come from the east to their present dwelling-places in several migrations between the tenth and the fifteenth century. Some of the Phla-Pherá peoples however are thought to be the original inhabitants of the area who have intermingled with the Gbe immigrants, and the Gen people probably are immigrants from the north of Ga or Fante origin. In the late eighteenth century, many speakers of Gbe were enslaved and transported to the New World, causing Gbe languages to play a role in the genesis of several Caribbean creole languages. The Phla-PherÃ¡ languages form a subgroup of Gbe languages spoken mainly in south-eastern and south-western Benin; some communities are found in south-eastern Togo and south-western Nigeria. ... The MFantsefo or Fanti are an ethnic group mainly gathered in the south-western coastal region of Ghana, with some also in the CÃ´te dIvoire. ... Frontispiece of Peter Martyr dAnghieras De orbe novo (On the New World). Carte dAmÃ©rique, Guillaume Delisle, 1722. ... West Indies redirects here. ... A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable language that originates seemingly as a new language, sometimes with features that are not inherited from any apparent source, without however qualifying in any appreciable way as a mixed language. ...

Around 1840, German missionaries started linguistic research into the Gbe languages. In the first half of the twentieth century, the Africanist Diedrich Hermann Westermann was one of the most prolific contributors to the study of Gbe. The first internal classification of the Gbe languages was published in 1988 by H.B. Capo, followed by a comparative phonology in 1991. The Gbe languages are tonal, isolating languages and the basic word order is Subject Verb Object. Diedrich Hermann Westermann (June 24, 1875â€“May 31, 1956) was a German missionary, Africanist, and linguist. ... Phonology (Greek phonÄ“ = voice/sound and logos = word/speech), is a subfield of linguistics which studies the sound system of a specific language (or languages). ... A Tonal language is a language that uses tone to distinguish words. ... An isolating language is any language where the vast majority of morphemes are free morphemes and are considered to be full-fledged words, rather than particles that are agglutinated. ... In linguistic typology, subject-verb-object (SVO) is the sequence subject verb object in neutral expressions: Sam ate oranges. ...

Image File history File links Map showing the distribution of the various Gbe languages. ... Image File history File links Map showing the distribution of the various Gbe languages. ...

Languages

Geography and demography

The Gbe language area is bordered to the west and east by the Volta river in Ghana and the Weme river in Nigeria. The northern border is between 6 and 8 degrees latitude and the southern border is the Atlantic coast. The area is neighbored mainly by other Kwa languages, except for the east and north-east, where Yorùbá is spoken. To the west, Ga-Dangme, Guang and Akan are spoken. To the north, it is bordered by Adele, Aguna, Akpafu, Lolobi, and Yorùbá. The Adome bridge crosses the Volta river south of the Akosombo Dam Volta is a river in central and western Africa that drains into the Gulf of Guinea. ... This article is about the geographical term. ... The Atlantic Ocean, not including Arctic and Antarctic regions. ... The Kwa languages are spoken in the south-eastern part of Côte dIvoire, in Ghana, Togo and Benin, and the south-Western corner of Nigeria. ... YorÃ¹bÃ¡ is a language of sub-Saharan Africa. ... The Ga language is a Kwa language spoken in Ghana, in and around the capital Accra. ... See also Akan languages Akan is the name that has been adopted by Ghanaians today and was given to them by the Arabs. ... The Adele language is spoken in eastern Ghana and als well in Togo. ...

Estimates of the total number of speakers of Gbe languages vary considerably. Capo (1988) gives a modest estimate of four million, while SIL's Ethnologue (15th edition, 2005) gives eight million. The most widely spoken Gbe languages are Ewe (Ghana and Togo) and Fon (Benin, eastern Togo) at three million and 1.7 million speakers, respectively. Ewe is a language of formal education for secondary schools and universities in Ghana, and is also used in non-formal education in Togo. In Benin, Aja (740,000 speakers) and Fon were two of the six national languages selected by the government for adult education in 1992. Ethnologue: Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International (formerly known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics), a Christian linguistic service organization which studies lesser-known languages primarily to provide the speakers with Bibles in their native language. ...

Classification

Greenberg, following Westermann (1952), situated the Gbe languages in the Kwa subfamily of the Niger-Congo languages.^[2] Though the definition of the Kwa branch has changed through the years, the Gbe languages have always been considered part of it and are currently classified as follows:^[3] Joseph Greenberg Joseph Harold Greenberg (May 28, 1915â€“May 7, 2001) was a prominent and controversial linguist, known for his work in both language classification and typology. ... The Kwa languages are spoken in the south-eastern part of Côte dIvoire, in Ghana, Togo and Benin, and the south-Western corner of Nigeria. ... Map showing the distribution of Niger-Congo languages The Niger-Congo languages constitute one of the worlds major language families, and Africas largest in terms of geographical area, number of speakers, and number of distinct languages. ...

Many of the Gbe languages are closely related. Based on comparative research, Capo (1988) divides Gbe into five major clusters, where each cluster, far from being a uniform unit, consists of many dialectal varieties. In addition, borders between the clusters are not always distinct. The five major clusters are:^[4] Map showing the distribution of Niger-Congo languages The Niger-Congo languages constitute one of the worlds major language families, and Africas largest in terms of geographical area, number of speakers, and number of distinct languages. ... In the classification of African languages, Atlantic-Congo is an early branch of the Niger-Congo phylum. ... In the classification of African languages, Volta-Congo is the major branch (in terms of number of languages) of the Niger-Congo phylum. ... The Kwa languages are spoken in the south-eastern part of Côte dIvoire, in Ghana, Togo and Benin, and the south-Western corner of Nigeria. ...

Ewe (native name , the language) is a Kwa language spoken in Ghana and Togo by approximately three million people. ... Gen (also called Gẽ, Gen-Gbe, or Mina) is a Gbe language spoken in the southeast of Togo and in the Mono province of Benin. ... Fon (native name FÉ”ngbe) is part of the Gbe language cluster and belongs to the Kwa sub-family of the Niger-Congo languages. ... The Phla-PherÃ¡ languages form a subgroup of Gbe languages spoken mainly in south-eastern and south-western Benin; some communities are found in south-eastern Togo and south-western Nigeria. ...

Naming

The dialect continuum as a whole was called 'Ewe' by Westermann, the most influential writer on the cluster, who used the term 'Standard Ewe' to refer to the written form of the language. Other writers have called the Gbe languages as a whole 'Aja', after the name of the local language of the Aja-Tado area in Benin. However, use of this single language's name for the language cluster as a whole was not only not acceptable to all speakers but also rather confusing. Since the establishment of a working group at the West African Languages Congress at Cotonou in 1980, H. B. Capo's name suggestion has been generally accepted: 'Gbe' , which is the word for 'language/dialect' in each of the languages.^[5] Diedrich Hermann Westermann (June 24, 1875â€“May 31, 1956) was a German missionary, Africanist, and linguist. ... Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Cotonou is the economic capital of Benin, as well as its largest city. ...

History

Before 1600

Ketu, in present day Benin, might be an appropriate starting point for a brief history of the Gbe-speaking peoples. Ewe traditions refer to Ketu as Amedzofe ("origin of humanity") or Mawufe ("home of the Supreme Being"). It is believed that the inhabitants of Ketu originally belonged to the Oyo people of Nigeria and were pressed westward by a series of wars between the tenth and the thirteenth century. In Ketu, the ancestors of the Gbe-speaking peoples separated themselves from other refugees and began to establish their own identity. Ketu is a historical location in present day Benin. ... In Ewe oral history, Amedzofe (), literally origin/home of humanity, is one of the names for Ketu. ... Oyo (OÌ£yoÌ£ in Yoruba orthography, pronounced ) is the name for a Yoruba city in modern-day Nigeria and also the loose empire which that city controlled in the 17th and 18th centuries. ...

Yoruba attacks between the thirteenth and the fifteenth century drove a large section of the group still further westward. They settled in the ancient kingdom of Tado (also Stado or Stádó) on the Mono river (in present-day Togo). The Tado kingdom was an important state in West Africa up to the late fifteenth century. The Yoruba (YorÃ¹bÃ¡ in Yoruba orthography) are a large ethno-linguistic group or ethnic nation in Africa; the majority of them speak the Yoruba language (Ã¨dÃ¨e YorÃ¹bÃ¡; Ã¨dÃ¨ = language). ... Tado (formerly Ezame) is a village in south east Togo, near the border with Benin. ... Western Africa (UN subregion) Maghreb[1] West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of the African continent. ...

In the course of the thirteenth or fourteenth century, the Notsie (or Notsé, Notsye, Wancé) kingdom was established by emigrants from the Tado kingdom; Notsie would later (around 1500) become the home of another group of migrants from Tado, the Ewe people. Around 1550, emigrants from Tado established the Allada (or Alada) kingdom, which became the center of the Fon people. Tado is also the origin of the Aja people; in fact, the name Aja-Tado (Adja-Tado) is frequently used to refer to their language. NotsÃ© is a town in the Plateaux Region of Togo. ... The Ewe people are a people of southern Ghana, Togo and Benin. ... Allada is a town located in the Atlantique Department of Benin. ... Fon is a major West African ethnic and linguistic group in the country of Benin or Dahomey, and southwest Nigeria, made up of more than 2,000,000 people. ... The Aja are a group of people living in Benin (former Dahomey). ...

Other peoples that speak Gbe languages today are the Gen people (Mina, Ge) around Anexo, who are probably of Ga and Fante origin, and the Phla and Pherá peoples, some of whom consist of the traditional inhabitants of the area intermingled with early migrants from Tado.^[6] Aneho is a town in south eastern Togo, lying between the Atlantic Ocean and Lake Togo. ... The MFantsefo or Fanti are an ethnic group mainly gathered in the south-western coastal region of Ghana, with some also in the CÃ´te dIvoire. ... The Phla-PherÃ¡ languages form a subgroup of Gbe languages spoken mainly in south-eastern and south-western Benin; some communities are found in south-eastern Togo and south-western Nigeria. ...

European traders and the transatlantic slave trade

Little is known of the history of the Gbe languages during the time that only Portuguese, Dutch and Danish traders landed on the Gold Coast (roughly 1500 to 1650). The trade of mostly gold and agricultural goods did not exercise much influence on social and cultural structures of the time. No need was felt to investigate the indigenous languages and cultures; the languages generally used in trade at this time were Portuguese and Dutch. Some loanwords remain from this period, for example atrapoe 'stairs' from Dutch 'trap' and duku '(piece of) cloth' from Dutch 'doek' or Danish 'dug'. The few written accounts that stem from this period focus on trade. As more European countries established trade posts in the area, missionaries were sent out. As early as 1658, Spanish missionaries translated the Doctrina Christiana into the language of Allada, making it one of the earliest texts in any West African language. The Gbe language used in this document is thought to be a somewhat mangled form of Gen.^[7] Image File history File links Size of this preview: 800 Ã— 594 pixelsFull resolutionâ€Ž (1,984 Ã— 1,472 pixels, file size: 145 KB, MIME type: image/png) Doctrina Christiana: Y explicacion de sus Misterios en nuestro idiom EspaÃ±ol, y en lengua Arda Scan of the first page of the Doctrina... Image File history File links Size of this preview: 800 Ã— 594 pixelsFull resolutionâ€Ž (1,984 Ã— 1,472 pixels, file size: 145 KB, MIME type: image/png) Doctrina Christiana: Y explicacion de sus Misterios en nuestro idiom EspaÃ±ol, y en lengua Arda Scan of the first page of the Doctrina... Flag of Gold Coast Map from 1896 of the British Gold Coast Colony. ... For other uses, see Missionary (disambiguation). ... Allada is a town located in the Atlantique Department of Benin. ... Gen (also called Gẽ, Gen-Gbe, or Mina) is a Gbe language spoken in the southeast of Togo and in the Mono province of Benin. ...

The relatively peaceful situation was profoundly changed with the rise of the transatlantic slave trade, which reached its peak in the late eighteenth century when as many as 15 000 slaves per year were exported from the area around Benin as part of a triangular trade between the European mainland, the west coast of Africa and the colonies of the New World (notably the Caribbean). The main actors in this process were Dutch (and to a lesser extent English) traders; captives were supplied mostly by cooperating coastal African states. This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... An historic example of three way trade in the North Atlantic Triangular trade is a historical term indicating trade between three ports or regions. ... Frontispiece of Peter Martyr dAnghieras De orbe novo (On the New World). Carte dAmÃ©rique, Guillaume Delisle, 1722. ... For other uses, see England (disambiguation). ...

The Bight of Benin, which is precisely the area where the Gbe languages are spoken, was one of the centers of the slave trade at the turn of the eighteenth century. The export of 5 % of the population each year resulted in overall population decline. Moreover, since the majority of the exported captives were male, the slave trade led to imbalance in the female/male ratio. In some parts of the Slave Coast the ratio reached two adult women for every man. Several wars (sometimes deliberately provoked by European powers in order to divide and rule) further distorted social and economical relations in the area. The lack of earlier linguistic data makes it difficult to trace the inevitable linguistic changes that resulted from this turbulent period. The Bight of Benin is a bay on the western African coast that extends eastward for about 400 miles (640 km) from Cape St. ... The Slave Coast is the name of the coastal areas of present Togo, Benin (formerly Dahomey) and western Nigeria, a fertile region of coastal Western Africa along the Bight of Benin. ... For the collection of novellas by L. Sprague de Camp, see Divide and Rule (collection). ...

Colonisation and onwards

Around 1850, the transatlantic slave trade had virtually ceased. As the grip of European colonial powers strengthened, slave raiding became prohibited, trading focused on goods once more and the Europeans took it to be their calling to Christianize the colonized parts of Africa. In 1847 the Norddeutsche Missions-Gesellschaft (Bremen) started its work in Keta. Keta (russian кета) is a salmon (Oncorhynchus keta) of the Pacific, has a wide geographic range (Alaska, Canada, Washington, Oregon, California, Kamchatka, Kuril Islands, Sakhalin, Khabarovsk Krai, Primorsky Krai, Korea, Japan, et cetera). ...

In 1857, the first Ewe grammar, Schlüssel der Ewesprache, dargeboten in den Grammatischen Grundzügen des Anlodialekts, was published by missionary J. B. Schlegel of the Bremen mission. Five different dialects of Gbe (at that time called the Ewé Language-Field) were already distinguished by Schlegel, notes Robert Needham Cust in his Modern Languages of Africa (1883).^[8] The dialects listed by Cust do not map exactly onto the five subgroups now distinguished by Capo, which is not too surprising since Cust himself admits that he relies on a multitude of often conflicting sources. Fon is in fact listed twice (once as 'the dialect of the province of Dahomé' and once as 'Fogbe'). Robert Needham Cust (1821-1909) was a British colonial administrator and linguist. ...

Where previous literature consisted mostly of travel journals sometimes accompanied by short word lists, Schlegel's work marked the beginning of a period of prolific lexicographic and linguistic research into the various Gbe languages. Important writers of this period include Christaller (Die Volta-Sprachen-Gruppe, 1888), Henrici (Lehrbuch der Ephe-Sprache, 1891, actually the first comparative Gbe grammar), Knüsli (Ewe-German-English Vocabulary, 1892) and Delafosse (Manuel Dahoméen (Fon), 1894). Fragment of Delafosses (1904) linguistic map highlighting Nafaanra (Nafana) in the borderland of CÃ´te dIvoire and Ghana. ...

In 1902 the missionary Diedrich Hermann Westermann contributed an article titled "Beiträge zur Kenntnis der Yewe-Sprachen in Togo" to Zeitschrift für Afrikanische und Oceanische Sprachen. Westermann was to become one of the most productive and influential writers on the Gbe languages, and his output dominated the Gbe literature and analysis of the first half of the twentieth century. He wrote mainly on the Western Gbe languages, especially on Ewe (though he often used the term 'Ewe' to denote the Gbe dialect continuum as a whole). Among his most important works on Ewe are his A Study of the Ewe language (1930) and Wörterbuch der Ewe-Sprache (1954). Diedrich Hermann Westermann (June 24, 1875â€“May 31, 1956) was a German missionary, Africanist, and linguist. ... Ewe (native name , the language) is a Kwa language spoken in Ghana and Togo by approximately three million people. ...

Renaissance du Gbe

From 1930 on, publications on various Gbe languages have been appearing rapidly, the vast majority of them dealing with individual Gbe languages. A significant exception is formed by the extensive comparative linguistic research of Hounkpati B.C. Capo, which resulted in an internal classification of the Gbe languages and in a reconstruction of the proto-Gbe phonology. Much of the comparative research for Capo's classification of the Gbe languages was carried out in the 1970s, and partial results were published in the late 1970s and early 1980s in the form of articles on specific phonological developments in various branches of Gbe and, notably, in the form of a unified standard orthography of Gbe. In his Renaissance du Gbe (1988), the internal classification of Gbe was published in full for the first time. In 1991, Capo published a comparative phonology of Gbe. In this period, Capo also initiated Labo Gbe (Int.), the 'Laboratory for research on Gbe languages', based in Benin, which has since fostered research and published several collections of papers on the Gbe languages. Comparative linguistics (originally comparative philology) is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages in order to establish their historical relatedness. ... Phonology (Greek phonÄ“ = voice/sound and logos = word/speech), is a subfield of linguistics which studies the sound system of a specific language (or languages). ...

In the early 1990s, SIL International initiated a study to assess which Gbe communities could benefit from existing literacy efforts and whether additional literacy campaigns in some of the remaining communities would be needed. Synchronised linguistic research carried out in the course of this study shed more light on the relations between the various varieties of Gbe.^[9] In general, the SIL studies corroborated many of Capo's findings and led to adjustment of some of his more tentative groupings. SIL International is a worldwide non-profit evangelical Christian organization whose main purpose is to study, develop and document lesser-known languages in order to expand linguistic knowledge, promote literacy and aid minority language development. ... The traditional definition of literacy is considered to be the ability to read and write, or the ability to use language to read, write, listen, and speak. ...

Linguistic features

Sounds

Consonants

No Gbe language exhibits all of the above forty-two phonetic segments. According to Capo (1991), all of them have the following twenty-three consonants in common: b, m, t, d, ɖ, n, k, g, kp, gb, ɲ, f, v, s, z, χ, ʁ, r, r̃, l, l̃, y, w. Free variation in linguistics is the phenomenon of two (or more) sounds or forms appearing in the same environment without a change in meaning and without being considered incorrect by native speakers. ...

Vowels

It should be noted that none of the Gbe languages has all of the above sixteen vowel qualities. In general, each Gbe lect makes use of a subset of fourteen vowels, seven oral and seven nasalised. The vowels i ĩ u ũ e o ɛ̃ ɔ ɔ̃ a ã are attested in all Gbe languages. Vowels Near-close Close-mid Mid Open-mid Near-open Open Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a rounded vowel. ... A central vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. ... A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. ... A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. ... A close-mid vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. ... The open-mid vowels make a class of vowel sounds used in some spoken languages. ... An open vowel is a vowel sound of a type used in most spoken languages. ... An oral vowel is a vowel that is produced by air that escapes through the mouth only (as opposed to nasal vowels, in which air also goes out through the nose). ... A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the velum so that air escapes both through nose as well as the mouth. ...

Nasality plays an important role in the Gbe vowel inventory: every vowel in a Gbe language occurs in a non-nasalized and a nasalized form. Capo (1991) observes that the degree of nasality of nasal vowels is less when they occur after nasal consonants than after non-nasal ones.

Nasality in Gbe

Capo (1981) has argued that nasality in Gbe languages should be analysed phonemically as a feature relevant to vowels and not to consonants.^[10] This means that underlying nasal vowels are recognized, while nasal consonants are treated as merely predictable variants of their non-nasal counterparts. For example, non-syllabic nasal consonants are always followed by a nasal vowel, and syllabic nasal consonants are analysed as reduced forms of consonant-vowel syllables. This analysis is in line with reconstructions of the proto-Volta-Congo language, for which similar proposals have been made.^[11] Proto-language may either refer to a language that preceded a certain set of given languages, or to system of communication during a stage in glottogony that may not yet be properly called a language. ... In the classification of African languages, Volta-Congo is the major branch (in terms of number of languages) of the Niger-Congo phylum. ...

Tone

The Gbe languages are tonal languages. In general, they have three tone levels, High (H), Mid (M), and Low (L), of which the lower two are not phonemically contrastive. Thus, the basic tonemes of Gbe are 'High' and 'Non-High', where the High toneme may be realised as High or Rising and the Non-High toneme may be realised as Low or Mid. The tones of Gbe nouns are often affected by the consonant of the noun stem. The voicing of this consonant affects the realisation of the Non-High toneme roughly as follows: If the consonant is a voiced obstruent, the Non-High toneme is realised as Low (è-ḏà 'snake') and if the consonant is a voiceless obstruent or a sonorant, the Non-High toneme is realised as Mid (ām̲ē 'person', á-f̱ī 'mouse'). The consonants that induce tonal alternations in this way are sometimes called depressor consonants. A Tonal language is a language that uses tone to distinguish words. ... In linguistics, a noun or noun substantive is a lexical category which is defined in terms of how its members combine with other grammatical kinds of expressions. ... In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a sound in spoken language that is characterized by a closure or stricture of the vocal tract sufficient to cause audible turbulence. ... In phonetics, phonation is the use of the laryngeal system to generate an audible source of acoustic energy, i. ... In phonetics, articulation may be divided into two large classes, obstruents and sonorants. ... In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant is a speech sound that is produced without turbulent airflow in the vocal tract. ...

Morphology

The basic syllable form of Gbe languages is commonly rendered (C₁)(C₂)V(C₃), meaning that there at least has to be a nucleus V, and that there are various possible configurations of consonants (C₁₋₃). The V position may be filled by any of the vowels or by a syllabic nasal. It is also the location of the tone. While virtually any consonant can occur in the C₁ position, there exist several restrictions on the kind of consonants that can occur in the C₂ and C₃ positions. In general, only liquid consonants may occur as C₂, while only nasals occur in the C₃ position. For the computer operating system, see Syllable (operating system). ... Liquid consonants, or liquids, are speech sounds; more specifically, they are approximant consonants that are not classified as semivowels (glides) because they do not correspond phonetically to specific vowels (in the way that, for example, the initial [j] in English yes corresponds to [i]). The class of liquids can be...

Most verbs in Gbe languages have one of the basic syllable forms. Gbe nominals are generally preceded by a nominal prefix consisting of a vowel (cf. the Ewe word aɖú, 'tooth'). The quality of this vowel is restricted to the subset of non-nasal vowels. In some cases the nominal prefix is reduced to schwa or lost: the word for 'fire' is izo in Phelá, əʤo in Wací-Ewe and ʤo in Pecí-Ewe. The nominal prefix can be seen as a relic of a typical Niger-Congo noun class system. It has been suggested that Verbal agreement be merged into this article or section. ... In linguistics, a noun or noun substantive is a lexical category which is defined in terms of how its members combine with other grammatical kinds of expressions. ... The IPA symbol for the Schwa In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa can mean: An unstressed and toneless neutral vowel sound in any language, often but not necessarily a mid-central vowel. ... In linguistics, the term noun class refers to a system of categorizing nouns. ...

The Gbe languages are isolating languages, and as such express many semantic features by lexical items. Of a more agglutinative nature are the commonly used periphrastic constructions. In contrast to Bantu languages, a major branch of the Niger-Congo language family, Gbe languages have very little inflectional morphology. There is for example no subject-verb agreement whatsoever in Gbe, no gender agreement, and no inflection of nouns for number. The Gbe languages make extensive use of a rich system of tense/aspect markers. An isolating language is any language where the vast majority of morphemes are free morphemes and are considered to be full-fledged words, rather than particles that are agglutinated. ... It has been suggested that Agglutination be merged into this article or section. ... Periphrasis, like its Latin counterpart circumlocution, is a figure of speech where the meaning of a word or phrase is indirectly expressed through several or many words. ... Map showing the approximate distribution of Bantu vs. ... Look up Agreement in Wiktionary, the free dictionary An agreement may be an agreement in beliefs, rules, practices (policies), or conduct. ... Gender in common usage refers to the sexual distinction between male and female. ...

Reduplication is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word, or part of it, is repeated. The Gbe languages, like most other Kwa languages, make extensive use of reduplication in the formation of new words, especially in deriving nouns, adjectives and adverbs from verbs. Thus in Ewe, the verb lã́, 'to cut', is nominalised by reduplication, yielding lãlã́, 'the act of cutting'. Triplication is used to intensify the meaning of adjectives and adverbs, e.g. Ewe ko 'only' > kokooko 'only, only, only'. Reduplication, in linguistics, is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word, or only part of it, is repeated. ... The Kwa languages are spoken in the south-eastern part of Côte dIvoire, in Ghana, Togo and Benin, and the south-Western corner of Nigeria. ...

Syntax

The basic word order of Gbe clauses is generally Subject Verb Object, except in the imperfective tense and some related constructions. The Gbe languages, notably Ewe, Fon and Anlo, played a role in the genesis of several Caribbean creole languages — Haitian Creole for example is classifiable as having a French vocabulary with the syntax of a Gbe language.^[12] In linguistic typology, subject-verb-object (SVO) is the sequence subject verb object in neutral expressions: Sam ate oranges. ... West Indies redirects here. ... Haitian Creole (Kreyòl ayisyen) is a creole language based on the French language. ...

The Gbe languages do not lend much support to the traditional distinction between tense and aspect. The only tense that is expressed by a simple morphological marker in Gbe languages is the future tense. The future marker is ná or a, as can be seen from the examples below. Other tenses are arrived at by means of special time adverbs or by inference from the context, and this is where the tense/aspect distinction becomes blurred. For example, what is sometimes referred to as perfective aspect in Gbe blends with the notion of past tense since it expresses an event with a definite endpoint, located in the past (see example sentences below). Grammatical tense is a way languages express the time at which an event described by a sentence occurs. ...

Focus, which is used to draw attention to a particular part of the utterance, to signify contrast or to emphasize something, is expressed in Gbe languages by leftward movement of the focused element and by way of a focus marker wɛ́ (Gungbe, Fongbe), yé (Gengbe) or é (Ewegbe), suffixed to the focused element. In linguistics, the focus determines which part of the sentence contributes the most important information. ...

Questions can be constructed in various ways in Gbe languages. A simple declarative sentence can be turned into an interrogative utterance by the use of the question marker à at the end of the sentence. Another way of forming questions is by using question words. These so-called question word questions are much akin to focus constructions in Gbe. The question word is found at the beginning of the sentence, as is the focus marker. The close relationship to focus is also clear from the fact that in Gbe, a sentence cannot contain a question word and a focused element simultaneously. For other uses, see Question (disambiguation). ...

Topicalization, the signalling of the subject that is being talked about, is achieved in Gbe languages by the move of the topicalized element to the beginning of the sentence. In some Gbe languages, a topic marker is suffixed to the topicalized element. In other Gbe languages the topic has to be definite. A topicalized element precedes the focused element in a sentence containing both. In linguistics, the topic (or theme) is the part of the proposition that is being talked about (predicated). ...

Negation is expressed in various ways in the Gbe languages. In general, three methods of negation can be distinguished: Languages like Gungbe express negation by a preverbal marker má; Fongbe-type languages express negation either like Gungbe, or with a sentence-final marker ã; and languages like Ewegbe require both the preverbal marker mé and a sentence-final marker o. Negation (i. ...

Gbe languages share an areal feature found in many languages of the Volta basin, the serial verb construction. This means that two or more verbs can be juxtaposed in one clause, sharing the same subject, lacking conjunctive markings, resulting in a meaning that expresses the consecutive or simultaneous aspect of the actions of the verbs. An areal feature, in linguistics, is the appearance of a given feature of typology in several unrelated languages due to the influence of geographical closeness. ... The serial verb construction is a syntactic phenomenon common in many African and Asian languages. ...

Notes and references

Notes

^ The〈gb〉is a voiced labio-velar plosive, common in many West African languages.
^ Greenberg (1966), The Languages of Africa.
^ First proposed in Stewart (1989), this classification is the one followed by the Ethnologue.
^ Sources: for the classification, Capo (1991) & Aboh (2004); for speaker numbers, Ethnologue, 15th edition.
^ In daily use, individual Gbe languages are referred to by their speakers as X-gbe, e.g. Ewegbe for Ewe, Fongbe for Fon, etc.
^ Capo 1991:10; see also the section on linguistic diversity in Phla-Pherá languages.
^ This catechism was reprinted in Labouret & Rivet 1929, who also document the history of the Spanish mission in Allada or Arda.
^ Cust, The Modern Languages of Africa, p. 204.
^ Some of the results of this study were presented in Kluge (2000, 2005, 2006).
^ Cf. Capo (1981).
^ Cf. Stewart, John (1985) 'Nasality patterns in the Volta-Congo foot.' Paper presented at the Colloquium on African Linguistics, Leiden, Sept. 1985.
^ Lefebvre (1985). A recent research project of the Leiden-based Research School CNWS on this topic concerns the relation between Gbe and Surinamese creole languages. The project is titled A trans-Atlantic Sprachbund? The structural relationship between the Gbe-languages of West Africa and the Surinamese creole languages.

Labial-velar consonants are doubly articulated at the velum and the lips. ... The Languages of Africa is a seminal 1963 book of essays by Joseph Greenberg, in which he sets forth a genetic classification of African languages that, with some changes, continues to be the most commonly used one today. ... Ethnologue: Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International (formerly known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics), a Christian linguistic service organization which studies lesser-known languages primarily to provide the speakers with Bibles in their native language. ... The Phla-PherÃ¡ languages form a subgroup of Gbe languages spoken mainly in south-eastern and south-western Benin; some communities are found in south-eastern Togo and south-western Nigeria. ... Research School CNWS is a unit of Leiden University facilitating the research of junior and scholars at the Faculty of Arts. ... A Sprachbund (German for language bond, also known as a linguistic area, convergence area, diffusion area) is a group of languages that have become similar in some way because of geographical proximity. ...

Contents

Languages

Geography and demography

Classification

Naming

History

Before 1600

European traders and the transatlantic slave trade

Colonisation and onwards

Renaissance du Gbe

Linguistic features

Sounds

Consonants

Vowels

Nasality in Gbe

Tone

Morphology

Syntax

Notes and references

Notes

References

Contents

Languages GA_googleFillSlot("encyclopedia_square");

Geography and demography

Classification

Naming

History

Before 1600

European traders and the transatlantic slave trade

Colonisation and onwards

Renaissance du Gbe

Linguistic features

Sounds

Consonants

Vowels

Nasality in Gbe

Tone

Morphology

Syntax

Notes and references

Notes

References

Languages