Supyire language

Supyire is a Senufo language spoken in southeastern Mali in the Sikasso Region. Its speakers, the Supyire people, number 364 000 according to SIL/Ethnologue. Supyire belongs to the Northern Senufo group and is classified under the Suppire-Mamara languages along with Sucite and Mamara (Minyanka).

Quite a few different terms have been used to refer to Supyire. Supyire people are often called "Bamana" by outsiders. Spelling variants of Supyire include Sup’ide, Supide, and Suppire; the SIL language code is SPP.

ounds

Expand-section|date=June 2008

Tone

Tone plays a very important role in marking both lexical and grammatical contrasts in Supyire. On the surface, there are three levels of tone in Supyire: High (marked by [ ́ ] ), Mid (no marking), and Low (marked by [ ` ] ), as exemplified below:

*High — círíŋɛ́ "orphan"
*Mid — baga "house"
*Low — nà "man"

Supyire has four phonemic tones. High and Low tone are fairly ordinary. The two middle surface tones are differentiated in behaviour rather than pitch. Carlson (1994) analyses the Northern Senufo system as having two different Mid tones, a strong mid (Ms) and a weak mid (MW). The Ms tone undergoes substantially less tonal alternations than the MW tone. The difference between the two Mid tones is exemplified below. The weak mid noun "cigé" is placed in a possessor construction and undergoes tonal change, whereas the strong mid noun "bagé" keeps its mid tone.

*Weak Mid tone
** cigé "tree"
** mìì cíge "my tree"
*Strong Mid tone
** bagé "house"
** mìì bagé "my house"

Grammar

The noun

Supyire employs a noun class system of five genders: three pairings of singular/plural classes and two mass/collective classes. Noun gender is marked on nouns by means of suffixes. These suffixes in turn can be analysed as consisting of a consonant marking the gender membership and a vowel marking some other categories, such as definiteness. Morphophonological processes sometimes obscure the gender suffix, e.g. a root-final nasal may absorb the suffix consonant as can be seen in the gender 2 example ŋkéŋɛ̀ ‘branch’ below. The gender suffix is not added to every noun in a gender; this is sometimes determined by the position of stress. To complicate matters further, loan words generally do not take the gender suffix.

*Gender 1: -wV (singular) -(bi)li (plural)
** pòòwò "catfish" — pòòli "catfish (pl)"
*Gender 2: -gV (singular) -yV (plural)
**cige "tree" ciye "trees"
*Gender 3: -lV (singular) -gi(l)i (plural)
**tahala "layer" tahagii "layers"
*Gender 4: -rV
**lara "intestines"
*Gender 5: -mV/-bV
**sìnmɛ̀ "oil, fat"

References

*Carlson, Robert (1994) "A Grammar of Suppyire". Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
*Garber, Anne (1987) "A Tonal Analysis of Senufo: Sucite dialect (Gur; Burkina Faso)". PhD dissertation, Urbana: University of Illinois / Ann Arbor: UMI.

Further reading

External links

* [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=spp Supyire on Ethnologue]
* [http://www.panafril10n.org/wikidoc/pmwiki.php/PanAfrLoc/SuppireMinianka PanAfrican L10n page on Suppire/Minianka]

ee also

*Senufo languages
*