International African Institute

Esquisse grammaticale du lobiri by M. Vaillant; Esquisse du système grammatical lobi byCharles LamotheReview by: W. A. A. WilsonAfrica: Journal of the International African Institute, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Jan., 1970), pp. 96-97Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the International African InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1157586 .

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book: Location and history of the tribes, with sketch maps; Phonology; Noun classes; Historical comparative study; Classification; Glottochronology; Typology; The 'Proto Togo-remnant' tribes; Relationships with surrounding languages.

One's only regret is that the full Swadesh diagnostic lists used are not cited for any sample, and that the manuscript was completed before Painter' and Swadesh2 produced their respective studies of Guang and Gur glottochronology, complete with the ' First-Ioo ' lists. No doubt Dr. Heine will now be able to bring us up to date on the last of his topics.

The fourteen languages of the group fall into two groups, between which there is a clear cleavage, lexically, phonologically, and in the class systems. The groups, labelled NA and KA, according to their respective stems for the word 'meat', are subclassified as follows: NA group: (Basila 4,700; Adele 8,ooo) [Logba 2,000 (Lelemi I5,ooo; Akpafu-Lolobi 5,300) (Santrokofi 3,200; Likpe 7,000)]; KA group: [(Avatime 7,000; Nyangbo-Tafi 3,300) (Bowili 3,300; Ahlo 3,ooo; Kposo 80,ooo)] (Kebu 17,200; Animere 250). Our bracketing indicates the subgroupings, and the figures show the totals of speakers.

The KA group shows a loss of certain class affixes, and a marked breakdown of concord, which has vanished in Ahlo, Animere, and Kposo. Application of Greenberg's synchronic typology yields disappointing results, but does indicate that Ahlo and Animere have the highest' isolating ' index, while Kposo, which has altogether lost its nominal affixes, shares, with Avatime, the highest 'inflexion' index, so that the breakdown of class cannot be attributed to one sole cause within the group.

The glottochronological count confirms the NA/KA split, also showing the KA members to be but loosely interrelated. In the whole table, though, only seven percentages are 57 or above, the rest being below 45. In the NA group, Lelemi/Akpafu/Santrokofi/Likpe cluster at about 6o per cent.; in the KA group only the two pairs as listed above yield any significant figures.

This first volume of a new series sets a high standard. If any syntactical studies that may be forthcoming maintain this level we shall be well served indeed.

W. A. A. WILSON

Esquissegrammaticale du lobiri. Par M. VAILLANT. (Documents Linguistiques N? io.) Univer- site de Dakar, 1967. Pp. 55.

Esquisse du systeme grammatical lobi. Par CHARLES LAMOTHE. (Recherches Voltaiques N? 4.) Paris: CNRS; Ouagadougou: CVRS, 1966. Pp. I62. IO NF; 500 CFA.

LA langue des Lobis est restee jusqu'ici presque inconnue. On ne pouvait donc que mal savoir ce qui rattachait cette langue au groupe voltaique, ou Westermann et Bryan la classent en lui donnant une parente (purement imaginaire!) avec le dogon.3 Voici donc deux cahiers qui, chacun a sa maniere, nous donnent enfin des precisions sur ce parler d'un coin peu frequente de la Haute Volta.

Mademoiselle Vaillant avait deja fourni pour l'etude de Swadesh2 une liste qui revelait que le vocabulaire lobi est isole dans le rameau voltaique, et n'a aucun rapport avec celui du dogon. Le present cahier nous fait voir que le lobi est grammaticalement bien voltaique.

L'introduction phonologique classe les dix timbres de voyelles en deux series, ouverte et fermee, qui permettent d'etudier le role de l'harmonie vocalique; celle-ci est quelque peu

I C. Painter: 'The distribution of Guang in chronologyofGurLanguages',JWAL 3, 966,27-56. Ghana and a statistical pre-testing on twenty-five 3 D'apres une recente communication personnelle idiolects ', JWAL 4, 1967, 25-78. du RP Prost, le dogon ne ressemblerait a rien de ce

2 M. Swadesh, et al.: ' A preliminary glotto- qui est connu des langues voltaiques.

book: Location and history of the tribes, with sketch maps; Phonology; Noun classes; Historical comparative study; Classification; Glottochronology; Typology; The 'Proto Togo-remnant' tribes; Relationships with surrounding languages.

One's only regret is that the full Swadesh diagnostic lists used are not cited for any sample, and that the manuscript was completed before Painter' and Swadesh2 produced their respective studies of Guang and Gur glottochronology, complete with the ' First-Ioo ' lists. No doubt Dr. Heine will now be able to bring us up to date on the last of his topics.

The fourteen languages of the group fall into two groups, between which there is a clear cleavage, lexically, phonologically, and in the class systems. The groups, labelled NA and KA, according to their respective stems for the word 'meat', are subclassified as follows: NA group: (Basila 4,700; Adele 8,ooo) [Logba 2,000 (Lelemi I5,ooo; Akpafu-Lolobi 5,300) (Santrokofi 3,200; Likpe 7,000)]; KA group: [(Avatime 7,000; Nyangbo-Tafi 3,300) (Bowili 3,300; Ahlo 3,ooo; Kposo 80,ooo)] (Kebu 17,200; Animere 250). Our bracketing indicates the subgroupings, and the figures show the totals of speakers.

The KA group shows a loss of certain class affixes, and a marked breakdown of concord, which has vanished in Ahlo, Animere, and Kposo. Application of Greenberg's synchronic typology yields disappointing results, but does indicate that Ahlo and Animere have the highest' isolating ' index, while Kposo, which has altogether lost its nominal affixes, shares, with Avatime, the highest 'inflexion' index, so that the breakdown of class cannot be attributed to one sole cause within the group.

The glottochronological count confirms the NA/KA split, also showing the KA members to be but loosely interrelated. In the whole table, though, only seven percentages are 57 or above, the rest being below 45. In the NA group, Lelemi/Akpafu/Santrokofi/Likpe cluster at about 6o per cent.; in the KA group only the two pairs as listed above yield any significant figures.

This first volume of a new series sets a high standard. If any syntactical studies that may be forthcoming maintain this level we shall be well served indeed.

W. A. A. WILSON

Esquissegrammaticale du lobiri. Par M. VAILLANT. (Documents Linguistiques N? io.) Univer- site de Dakar, 1967. Pp. 55.

Esquisse du systeme grammatical lobi. Par CHARLES LAMOTHE. (Recherches Voltaiques N? 4.) Paris: CNRS; Ouagadougou: CVRS, 1966. Pp. I62. IO NF; 500 CFA.

LA langue des Lobis est restee jusqu'ici presque inconnue. On ne pouvait donc que mal savoir ce qui rattachait cette langue au groupe voltaique, ou Westermann et Bryan la classent en lui donnant une parente (purement imaginaire!) avec le dogon.3 Voici donc deux cahiers qui, chacun a sa maniere, nous donnent enfin des precisions sur ce parler d'un coin peu frequente de la Haute Volta.

Mademoiselle Vaillant avait deja fourni pour l'etude de Swadesh2 une liste qui revelait que le vocabulaire lobi est isole dans le rameau voltaique, et n'a aucun rapport avec celui du dogon. Le present cahier nous fait voir que le lobi est grammaticalement bien voltaique.

L'introduction phonologique classe les dix timbres de voyelles en deux series, ouverte et fermee, qui permettent d'etudier le role de l'harmonie vocalique; celle-ci est quelque peu

I C. Painter: 'The distribution of Guang in chronologyofGurLanguages',JWAL 3, 966,27-56. Ghana and a statistical pre-testing on twenty-five 3 D'apres une recente communication personnelle idiolects ', JWAL 4, 1967, 25-78. du RP Prost, le dogon ne ressemblerait a rien de ce

2 M. Swadesh, et al.: ' A preliminary glotto- qui est connu des langues voltaiques.

96 96 REVIEWS OF BOOKS REVIEWS OF BOOKS

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.113 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 17:43:12 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

REVIEWS OF BOOKS 97 alteree par le croisement de certains timbres vocaliques, ce qui a entraine un leger brouille- ment des voyelles harmonisantes.

Les suffixes de classes sont souvent rendus meconnaissables par l'usure phonetique, mais, degages par l'analyse, ils s'averent voltaiques, bien que sans role dans l'accord grammatical. En un point le lobi fait un usage assez particulier du theme nominal, lequel apparait non seulement dans les composes, mais egalement comme deuxieme element d'une construction genitive, qu'il soit precede d'un substantif ou d'un pronom: cuor ' maison ' (p. cona); co kontin ' grande maison '; fi co' ta maison '. Le theme verbal est susceptible d'apparattre sou quatre formes differentes; or, quoique la distinction acheve/inacheve soit aussi importante ici qu'en d'autres langues voltaiques, ce n'est pas par une de ces formes qu'elle s'exprime en lobi, mais par une nasale prefixee au theme.

Le RP Lamothe, traitant une forme legerement differente du meme dialecte nord, laisse de cote la phonologie et les classes nominales. Par contre il nous presente une foule d'exemples de phrases formant un recueil que le lecteur est libre d'etudier selon son gre.

W. A. A. WILSON

Grammaire gourmantch. Par ALPHONSE CHANTOUX, ALEXANDRE GONTIER et ANDRE PROST. Dakar: IFAN, I968. (Initiations et etudes africaines, 23.) Pp. I6o.

CEUX qui connaissent les travaux du RP Prost reconnaitront a coup sur son cachet sur cet ouvrage. Nous le remercions d'avoir ainsi avec ses deux confreres reddige cette etude detaille qui comble une lacune importante dans nos connaissances des langues voltaiques. I1 est interessant de constater que les desinences verbales, souvent par le ton seul, donnent au systeme verbal une complexite analogue a celle des verbes anglais, mais dont la clef historique nous manque. Voici un defi lance a quelqu'un qui cherche un sujet de these!

W. A. A. WILSON

Basic Course in Mende. By RICHARD A. SPEARS. Evanston: Northwestern University, 1967.

Pp. vi+57I. THIS course is aimed at two different kinds of reader, and this is reflected in the division of the book into two parts. The first (pp. 1-192) comprises the Short Course in Mende and is intended for use by readers without linguistic training. It consists of 322 useful phrases, followed by eighteen conversations, and with a couple of chapters on phonetics. For the linguistically trained reader there follow 300 pages of grammatical description, interspersed with copious drills.

A major difficulty for the foreign learner of Mende is that the citation form of a word is likely to undergo considerable change in different grammatical contexts. Most nouns, for example, undergo change of initial consonant and of tone; many also have change of stem- final vowel before suffix -i, and some are additionally liable to loss of medial consonant in quick speech. Dr. Spears rightly considers tone and morphophonemics to be of such major importance in the language that he has built his whole course around these two areas.

The tone marking used in the transcription is particularly interesting; the transcription is neither phonetic nor phonemic, but ' provides as much of the basic tonal information as needed, in the form most suitable for " interpretation " by the student. .... The notation... is to be considered as the source of a phonetic transcription of Mende. The source transcrip- tion and the rules that convert it to a phonetic transcription represent a model of the way Mende speech forms are produced.' The interpretation of the transcription is not easy,

H

REVIEWS OF BOOKS 97 alteree par le croisement de certains timbres vocaliques, ce qui a entraine un leger brouille- ment des voyelles harmonisantes.

Les suffixes de classes sont souvent rendus meconnaissables par l'usure phonetique, mais, degages par l'analyse, ils s'averent voltaiques, bien que sans role dans l'accord grammatical. En un point le lobi fait un usage assez particulier du theme nominal, lequel apparait non seulement dans les composes, mais egalement comme deuxieme element d'une construction genitive, qu'il soit precede d'un substantif ou d'un pronom: cuor ' maison ' (p. cona); co kontin ' grande maison '; fi co' ta maison '. Le theme verbal est susceptible d'apparattre sou quatre formes differentes; or, quoique la distinction acheve/inacheve soit aussi importante ici qu'en d'autres langues voltaiques, ce n'est pas par une de ces formes qu'elle s'exprime en lobi, mais par une nasale prefixee au theme.

Le RP Lamothe, traitant une forme legerement differente du meme dialecte nord, laisse de cote la phonologie et les classes nominales. Par contre il nous presente une foule d'exemples de phrases formant un recueil que le lecteur est libre d'etudier selon son gre.

W. A. A. WILSON

Grammaire gourmantch. Par ALPHONSE CHANTOUX, ALEXANDRE GONTIER et ANDRE PROST. Dakar: IFAN, I968. (Initiations et etudes africaines, 23.) Pp. I6o.

CEUX qui connaissent les travaux du RP Prost reconnaitront a coup sur son cachet sur cet ouvrage. Nous le remercions d'avoir ainsi avec ses deux confreres reddige cette etude detaille qui comble une lacune importante dans nos connaissances des langues voltaiques. I1 est interessant de constater que les desinences verbales, souvent par le ton seul, donnent au systeme verbal une complexite analogue a celle des verbes anglais, mais dont la clef historique nous manque. Voici un defi lance a quelqu'un qui cherche un sujet de these!

W. A. A. WILSON

Basic Course in Mende. By RICHARD A. SPEARS. Evanston: Northwestern University, 1967.

Pp. vi+57I. THIS course is aimed at two different kinds of reader, and this is reflected in the division of the book into two parts. The first (pp. 1-192) comprises the Short Course in Mende and is intended for use by readers without linguistic training. It consists of 322 useful phrases, followed by eighteen conversations, and with a couple of chapters on phonetics. For the linguistically trained reader there follow 300 pages of grammatical description, interspersed with copious drills.

A major difficulty for the foreign learner of Mende is that the citation form of a word is likely to undergo considerable change in different grammatical contexts. Most nouns, for example, undergo change of initial consonant and of tone; many also have change of stem- final vowel before suffix -i, and some are additionally liable to loss of medial consonant in quick speech. Dr. Spears rightly considers tone and morphophonemics to be of such major importance in the language that he has built his whole course around these two areas.

The tone marking used in the transcription is particularly interesting; the transcription is neither phonetic nor phonemic, but ' provides as much of the basic tonal information as needed, in the form most suitable for " interpretation " by the student. .... The notation... is to be considered as the source of a phonetic transcription of Mende. The source transcrip- tion and the rules that convert it to a phonetic transcription represent a model of the way Mende speech forms are produced.' The interpretation of the transcription is not easy,

H

REVIEWS OF BOOKS 97 alteree par le croisement de certains timbres vocaliques, ce qui a entraine un leger brouille- ment des voyelles harmonisantes.

Les suffixes de classes sont souvent rendus meconnaissables par l'usure phonetique, mais, degages par l'analyse, ils s'averent voltaiques, bien que sans role dans l'accord grammatical. En un point le lobi fait un usage assez particulier du theme nominal, lequel apparait non seulement dans les composes, mais egalement comme deuxieme element d'une construction genitive, qu'il soit precede d'un substantif ou d'un pronom: cuor ' maison ' (p. cona); co kontin ' grande maison '; fi co' ta maison '. Le theme verbal est susceptible d'apparattre sou quatre formes differentes; or, quoique la distinction acheve/inacheve soit aussi importante ici qu'en d'autres langues voltaiques, ce n'est pas par une de ces formes qu'elle s'exprime en lobi, mais par une nasale prefixee au theme.

Le RP Lamothe, traitant une forme legerement differente du meme dialecte nord, laisse de cote la phonologie et les classes nominales. Par contre il nous presente une foule d'exemples de phrases formant un recueil que le lecteur est libre d'etudier selon son gre.

W. A. A. WILSON

Grammaire gourmantch. Par ALPHONSE CHANTOUX, ALEXANDRE GONTIER et ANDRE PROST. Dakar: IFAN, I968. (Initiations et etudes africaines, 23.) Pp. I6o.

CEUX qui connaissent les travaux du RP Prost reconnaitront a coup sur son cachet sur cet ouvrage. Nous le remercions d'avoir ainsi avec ses deux confreres reddige cette etude detaille qui comble une lacune importante dans nos connaissances des langues voltaiques. I1 est interessant de constater que les desinences verbales, souvent par le ton seul, donnent au systeme verbal une complexite analogue a celle des verbes anglais, mais dont la clef historique nous manque. Voici un defi lance a quelqu'un qui cherche un sujet de these!

W. A. A. WILSON

Basic Course in Mende. By RICHARD A. SPEARS. Evanston: Northwestern University, 1967.

Pp. vi+57I. THIS course is aimed at two different kinds of reader, and this is reflected in the division of the book into two parts. The first (pp. 1-192) comprises the Short Course in Mende and is intended for use by readers without linguistic training. It consists of 322 useful phrases, followed by eighteen conversations, and with a couple of chapters on phonetics. For the linguistically trained reader there follow 300 pages of grammatical description, interspersed with copious drills.

A major difficulty for the foreign learner of Mende is that the citation form of a word is likely to undergo considerable change in different grammatical contexts. Most nouns, for example, undergo change of initial consonant and of tone; many also have change of stem- final vowel before suffix -i, and some are additionally liable to loss of medial consonant in quick speech. Dr. Spears rightly considers tone and morphophonemics to be of such major importance in the language that he has built his whole course around these two areas.

The tone marking used in the transcription is particularly interesting; the transcription is neither phonetic nor phonemic, but ' provides as much of the basic tonal information as needed, in the form most suitable for " interpretation " by the student. .... The notation... is to be considered as the source of a phonetic transcription of Mende. The source transcrip- tion and the rules that convert it to a phonetic transcription represent a model of the way Mende speech forms are produced.' The interpretation of the transcription is not easy,

H

This content downloaded from 185.44.78.113 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 17:43:12 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions