Nafaanra language

language
familycolor=Niger-Congo
name=Nafaanra
states=Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire
region=North-west corner of the Brong-Ahafo region in Ghana, east of Bondouko in Côte d'Ivoire
speakers=61,000
fam1=Niger-Congo
fam2=Atlantic-Congo
fam3=Volta-Congo
fam4=North Volta-Congo
fam5=Gur
fam6=Senufo
iso2=nic
iso3=nfr

Nafaanra (sometimes written Nafaara, pronounced|nafãːra) is a Senufo language spoken in northwest Ghana, along the border with Côte d'Ivoire, east of Bondouko. It is spoken by approximately 61,000 people. [Ghana Institute for Linguistics, Literacy, and Bible Translation (GILLBT) 2003, as cited in Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (ed.), 2005. [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=nfr Nafaanra: a language of Ghana.] Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Fifteenth edition. Dallas, Tex.: SIL International. Retrieved on 2007-04-10] Its speakers call themselves Nafana; others call them Banda or Mfantera. Like other Senufo languages, Nafaanra is a tonal language. It is somewhat of an outlier in the Senufo language group, with the geographically closest relatives, the Southern Senufo Tagwana-Djimini languages, approximately 200 kilometres to the west, on the other side of "Comoé National Park".

Geography and demography

Nafaanra is bordered by Kulango languages to the west, while Deg (a Gur language) and Gonja (Kwa) are found to the north and east. The closest eastern neighbour, however, is the Mande language Ligbi (whose speakers are also called "Banda"), interestingly enough also an outlier to its own family. Southeast and south of Nafaanra and Ligbi, the Akan language Abron (or Bron, Brong) is spoken.

The Nafana people live in the north-west corner of the Brong-Ahafo region of Ghana, concentrated mainly in Sampa (capital of the Jaman North district) and Banda. There are two dialectal variants of Nafaanra: Pantera of Banda, and Fantera of Sampa.Jordan 1980:1] Bendor-Samuel gives a 79% cognate relationship on the Swadesh list between the two of them.Bendor-Samuel 1971] The Banda dialect is considered central. The terms 'Fantera' and 'Pantera' come from other peoples and are considered pejorative by the Nafana.

The Nafana people relate that they come from Côte d'Ivoire, from a village called Kakala. Their oral history says that some of their people are still there, and if they go back they will not be allowed to leave again. [Jordan 1978:84n1] They arrived in the Banda area after the Ligbi people, who came from Begho (Bigu, Bighu) to the area in the early 17^th century. [Stahl 2004]

Many Nafana are bilingual to some extent in Twi, the regional lingua franca. According to SIL, 50% of the people are able to ‘satisfy routine social demands and limited requirements in other domains’, while 20% are able to speak Twi ‘with sufficient structural accuracy and vocabulary to participate effectively in most formal and informal conversations on practical, social, and occupational topics’. The remaining 30% are either able to maintain only very simple face-to-face conversations on familiar topics (15%) or unable to speak Twi at all (15%). 15–25% of the Nafana people are literate in Twi, whereas only 1–5% are literate in Nafaanra. [Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (ed.), 2005. [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=nfr Nafaanra: A language of Ghana.] Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Fifteenth edition. Dallas, Tex.: SIL International. Retrieved on 2007-04-10 ] [Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (ed.), 2005. [http://www.ethnologue.com/ethno_docs/introduction.asp#language_entries Introduction to the printed volume.] Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Fifteenth edition. Dallas, Tex.: SIL International. Retrieved on 2007-04-10]

Nafaanra is the second language of the approximately 70 Dompo people living in the close vicinity of Banda. Dompo, thought to be extinct until a field work trip of Blench in 1998 proved the contrary, is their first language. [Blench 1999]

Classification

Delafosse was the first linguist to mention Nafaanra, calling it 'a much dispersed Senufo tribe' in 1904. [Delafosse 1904:195] Westermann in his classification of West-African languages, also grouped Nafaanra with Senufo, apparently based on the word list found in Rapp. [Westermann 1970 [1952] :56] This classification is confirmed by Bendor-Samuel, who bases his internal Senufo classification on the comparative word lists in Swadesh et al. [Swadesh et al. 1966]

It is less clear which particular Senufo branch Nafaanra is related to most closely. Bendor-Samuel gives a 60% cognate relationship on the Swadesh list with 'Tenere' (a western Senari dialect), 59% with 'Central Senari' (the Senari dialect spoken around Korhogo), and 43% with the non-Senufo languages Mo (or Deg), Kabre (or Kabiye), and Dogon. The relatively low scores of about 60% point to a rather distant relationship. Likewise, Mensah and Tchagbale establish an intercomprensibility factor of 38% with 'Tyebaara' (Senari), concluding that Nafaanra is only distantly related to this dialect. [Mensah and Tchagbale 1983:19] Nafaanra has been tentatively linked to Palaka (Kpalaga) by Manessy, whereas Mills suggests a relation with the southern Tagwana-Djimini branch. [Manessy 1981] [Mills 1984] Conclusive comparative linguistic research is yet to take place.

ounds

Vowels

Nafaanra has seven oral and five nasalized vowels. A difference in vowel length can make a difference in meaning, as in "IPA|sɛ" 'to go' vs. "IPA|sɛɛ" 'fetish' or "o" 'we' vs. "oo" 'we will'). Similarly, the phonemic contrastiveness of nasalization can be seen in "sii" 'to be giving birth' vs. "IPA|sĩĩ" 'to build'. [Minimal pairs from Jordan 1980b:13–15] The vowel system closely resembles that of other Senufo languages. It is like the two Northern Senufo languages Supyire and Mamara in having only five nasal against seven oral vowels.Carlson 1994] In the orthography, nasalization of vowels is marked by adding the letter "n" after the vowel.

Tense and aspect

Tense and aspect in Nafaanra are generally encoded in two places: in preverbal particles and on the verb form. Nafaanra has past, recent past, and future tenses and continuative aspect. In a simple sentence, the order of the various constituents can be rendered as follows: SUBJECT • (NEGATION) • (TENSE) • (ASPECT) • VERB . When the negative suffix "-n" is present, no fusing of preverbal particles takes place. Nafaanra additionally expresses some tense/aspect matters by use of certain time adverbs and auxiliary verbs.Jordan 1978]

Past tense is marked by the preverbal particle "ná" (high tone, as opposed to the low tone continuative particle). Future tense is marked by the particle "wè". Simple sentences without a preverbal tense particle are interpreted as recent past (sometimes called "immediate"). If aspect marking is absent, simple sentences are generally interpreted as "completive". [Example sentences adapted from Jordan 1978:85–87.]
* audio|kofinase.ogg| (Kofi PAST go-completive) "Kofi went" — PAST
* (Kofi FUTURE go-completive) "Kofi will go" — FUTURE
* (Kofi go-completive) "Kofi just went" — RECENT PAST (no marking)

Continuative aspect (sometimes called "progressive") denotes an action that is ongoing or repetitive. Continuative aspect is usually marked both by a preverbal particle "nà" (low tone) and by a change of the verb form. The verb "unicode|sɛ́" ‘go’ used in the sentences below has the continuative form "síé". In sentences where both past tense particle "ná" and continuative particle "nà" are present, they combine to give the fused particle "náà". In sentences in the recent past tense, the preverbal continuative particle is omitted and continuative aspect is shown only on the verb.
* kòfí náà síé (Kofi PAST+CONT go-CONT) "Kofi was going" — CONT + PAST
* kòfí wè nà síé (Kofi FUT CONT go-CONT) "Kofi will be going" — CONT + FUTURE
* kòfí síé (Kofi go-CONT) "Kofi is going" — CONT + RECENT PAST

Two classes of verbs can be differentiated on the basis of their behaviour in aspectually marked sentences. [Jordan 1978:85ff.] One class of verbs has two aspectually distinct forms, as seen in the above example sentences. Another class of verbs does not distinguish aspect — one and the same form shows up in both completive and continuative aspect. In sentences in the recent past tense, this gives rise to ambiguity since the preverbal continuative particle is omitted there. Thus, the sentence "kòfí blú" can be interpreted in the following two ways:
* (Kofi swim-CONT) "Kofi is swimming" — CONT + RECENT PAST
* kòfí blú (Kofi swim-completive) "Kofi just swam" — RECENT PAST (no marking)

Considerable fusion takes place between pronominal subjects and the preverbal particles. For example, "ná" ‘PAST’ fuses with "pé" ‘they’ to produce "unicode|prá sɛ́" (they-PAST go-completive) ‘they went’ and "wè" ‘FUTURE’ fuses with "pé" in "unicode|píè sɛ́" (they-FUTURE go-completive) ‘they will go’.

Questions

Questions can be formed in several ways in Nafaanra. Basic yes/no questions are constructed by adding a sentence-final question marker "rá". Constituent questions (sometimes called "Wh-questions" or "question word questions") are doubly marked. They contain a sentence-initial question word and are marked with a sentence-final question marker "hin". [Examples adapted from Jordan 1980:NAF4]
* u pan rá (he come Q) "Has he come? " — basic yes/no-question
* (what he+PAST see Q) "What did he see?" — constituent question

Numbers

The cardinal numbers without tonal marking are presented below; [ Jordan 1980a:2] where possible, the tone pattern is added based on the list in Rapp. [Rapp 1933:66–67] Some Supyire correlates are given for comparison. [As given in Carlson 1994:169] Numbers six to nine are derived by adding the numbers one to four to "unicode|kɔɔ" ‘five’ by means of the conjunction "na".

The numbers 11–19 are formed by adding 1–9 to 10 by means of the conjunction "unicode|mbɔ", e.g. "unicode|kɛmbɔnunu" ‘eleven’, "unicode|kɛmbɔkunɔ" ‘fifteen’. In the tens and higher, the Nafaanra and Supyire systems diverge. Multiplication of "fulo" ‘twenty’ and addition of "unicode|kɛ" ‘ten’ (by means of the conjunction "ná") is used to form the 30–90 tens. Perhaps surprisingly, there are considerable differences between Rapp (1933) and Jordan (1980) here. In Rapp’s 60, 70 and 80, "féle" seems to be used to mark ten, which conjoined with 6, 7 and 8 forms 60, 70 and 80.

Rapp (1933) compares the Nafaanra numerals for three ("unicode|táárɛ") and hundred ("lafaa") with "eta" and "ke-lafa" from Mpre, a hitherto unclassified language from Ghana. It should be noted however that Mpre "eta" is Kwa-like (cf. Brong "esã", Ga "unicode|etɛ"), whereas the Nafaanra form "unicode|táárɛ" is transparently related to the forms found in the other (non-Kwa) Senufo languages (e.g. Supyire "tàànrè"). Nafaanra "lafaa" ‘hundred’ is a typical Kwa numeral and is most probably borrowed from one of the surrounding Kwa languages (cf. Dangme "làfá", Gonja "kì-làfá", Ewe "alafá"). Rapp's implication of affinity between Mpre and Nafaanra seems therefore unwarranted at this level.

Morphophonological alternations occur here and there, most notably the reduction of "unicode|kúnɔ" ‘five’ to "unicode|kɔ́ɔ̀" (preserving the tone pattern) and the change from "lafaa" to "unicode|lafɛɛ" in the hundreds.

Colour words

The three basic colour words of Nafaanra are: "unicode|wɔɔ" ‘black’, "finge" ‘white’, and "unicode|ɲiɛ" ‘red’. As with adjectives in Senufo languages, the form of the colour words reflects the noun class of the noun that is modified.
* "unicode|wɔɔ" — unicode|ki "wɔ" 'it is black'
* "finge" — ki "fninge" 'it is white'
* "unicode|ɲiɛ" — unicode|ki "ɲina" 'it is red'The cognate forms in closely related Supyire are "unicode|-ɲyɛ-" ‘red, warm colored’ and "-fyìn-" ‘white, light colored’ in Supyire. These adjectives are related to the respective verbs "unicode|fíníŋɛ́" ‘be white, whiten’ and "unicode|ɲááŋá" ‘redden, be red’, which in turn are causative forms of the now defunct verbs "fini" ‘be white’ and "unicode|ɲana" ‘be red’. [Carlson 1994:154,710n9,10]

ample sentences

Sample Nafaanra sentences from the SIL: [Jordan 1978:88–90]
*audio|muura.ogg| :story some I want and-FUTURE beat and-FUTURE your ear put and-FUTURE it hear:"I want to tell a story for you to hear."
*audio|Yengena.ogg| :true that hyena hide-completive:"It’s true that the hyena hid himself."
*:it day some frog not-there:"On a certain day the frog wasn’t here."
*:he not-CONT them kill-CONT:"He wasn’t killing them."
*:if fish you-PAST-CONT chew-CONT you-not past say-completive that :"If you had been eating fish you would not have said that."

References

There is relatively little published on or in the Nafaanra language. The first linguistic publication to mention Nafaanra is Delafosse (1904), containing some notes on the Nafana people and a fairly extensive comparative Senufo word list, regrettably without proper tonal marking. Rapp (1933) is an appendix to an article on Kulango containing a German-Nafaanra ('Nafana-Sprache') word list of around 100 items, gathered during a stay of four hours at Sampa. Rapp notes in passing that special attention was paid to the marking of the tones. [‘...besondere Aufmerksamkeit wurde auf die Aufzeichnung der Tonhöhen verwandt’, Rapp 1933:66]

After a period of silence on Nafaanra, Painter (1966) appeared, consisting of basic word lists of the Pantera and Fantera dialects. The SIL linguist Dean Jordan published an article on Nafaanra discourse in 1978, and together with his wife Carol Jordan has produced a translation of the New Testament, which appeared in 1984. Kropp-Dakubu's 1980 "West African language data sheets" vol II contains a few pages on Nafaanra put together in the late seventies by Dean and Carol Jordan, including a phonology, a list of nouns, a list of pronouns, a list of numbers, and some example sentences; tones are not marked. A more detailed phonology of Nafaanra by Jordan, also containing a Swadesh list, appeared in 1980. Several books of Nafana folk tales have been published by the Summer Institute of Linguistics. Mensah and Tchagbale in their 1983 linguistic atlas of Côte d'Ivoire include a comparative Senufo word list of about 120 items; Nafaanra is present under the name 'Nafara of Bondoukou'. An orthography of Nafaanra, lacking tonal marking, is included in Hartell (1993). The area where Nafaanra is spoken has been the subject of recent archaeological-anthropological studies (Stahl 2004). A translation of the Old Testament is under exegetical revision as of 2005.

See also

*Senufo languages
*

Notes

Sources

Primary sources

*Delafosse, Maurice (1904) "Vocabulaires comparatifs de plus de 60 langues ou dialects parlés à la Côte d' Ivoire ou dans les régions limitrophes (avec des notes linguistiques et ethnologiques, une bibliographie et une carte)". Paris: Leroux. [http://visualiseur.bnf.fr/Visualiseur?Destination=Gallica&O=NUMM-82436 The whole book] (PDF). Retrieved on 2007-04-10
*Jordan, Dean (1978). "Nafaara tense-aspect in the folk tale", in Joseph Grimes (ed.), "Papers on discourse." Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics, 84–90.
*Jordan, Carol & Jordan, Dean (1980a). "Nafaara", in Kropp-Dakubu, M.E. (ed.), "West African language data sheets", Vol. II. Leiden: West African Linguistic Society / African Studies Centre, 138–143.
*Jordan, Dean (1980b). "Collected Field Reports on the Phonology of Nafaara", "Collected Language Notes 17". Legon: Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana.
*Painter, Colin (1966) "Word lists of two Senufo dialects: Fantera et Pantera". Legon: University of Ghana. (30p)
*Rapp, Eugen Ludwig (1933). "Die Náfana-sprache auf der Elfenbeinküste und auf der Goldküste." [The Náfana language in Ivory Coast and Gold Coast] , Mitteilungen des Seminars für Orientalische Sprachen (M.S.O.S.) 36, 3, 66–69.

econdary sources

*Bendor-Samuel, John (1971) 'Niger-Congo: Gur' in: Thomas Sebeok & Jack Berry (eds.), "Linguistics in sub-saharan Africa" (Current trends in linguistics 7), The Hauge/Paris: Mouton, 141–178.
*Blench, Roger (1999). "Recent Field Work in Ghana: Report on Dompo and a note on Mpre." [http://homepage.ntlworld.com/roger_blench/Language%20data/Dompo%20and%20Mpre.pdf PDF,] retrieved on 2007-04-10
*Carlson, Robert (1994). "A Grammar of Supyire". Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
*Hartell, Rhonda L. (ed.) (1993). "The Alphabets of Africa". Dakar: UNESCO and SIL.
*Manessy, Gabriel (1981) 'Les langues voltaïques', in: "Les langues dans le monde ancien et moderne" vol. I, Paris, CNRS, 103–110.
*Mensah, E.N.A.; Tchagbale, Z. (1983) "Atlas des langues gur de Côte d' Ivoire." Abidjan, Paris: ILA.
*Mills, Elizabeth (1984) "Senoufo phonology, discourse to syllabe (a prosodic approach)" SIL publications in linguistics (ISSN 1040-0850), 72.
*Stahl, Ann (2004). "Making history in Banda: Reflections on the construction of Africa's past", in "Historical Archaeology", 38, 1, 50–56.
*Swadesh et al. (1966) 'A preliminary glottochronology of Gur languages', "Journal of West African Languages", 3, 2, 27–65.
*Westermann, Diedrich & Bryan, M.A. (1970 [1952] ). "The Languages of West Africa". Oxford: International African Institute / Oxford University Press.

Further reading

*"unicode|Brɔfu ni yuu (a bridge material to English) Nafaanra". Ghana Institute of Linguistics, Literacy and Bible Translation (1994)
* [http://www.sil.org/computing/shoebox/Nafaanra.pdf Nafaanra dictionary (PDF)] , by Dean Jordan of SIL.

External links

* [http://www.rosettaproject.org/archive/nfr/ The Rosetta Project: Nafaara]
* [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=nfr Ethnologue report on Nafaanra]