On the aspectual system of Wushi (Babessi), a Ring Grassfields Bantu language of Cameroon

One of the characteristics of Bantu languages, including Grassfields Bantu languages, is their multiple time distinctions. Within the Ring Grassfields group, multiple tenses are also well attested. For example, Aghem has three past and two future tenses (Anderson 1979), Babanki has four past tenses and three future tenses (Akumbu & Fogwe 2012), as well as Lamnso’ (Yuka 2012). Oku has three past tenses and two future tenses (Nforbi 1993) and Babungo has four past and two future tenses (Schaub 1985). These tenses represent different degrees of remoteness in time such as hordienal, immediate, distant, etc. However, in spite of the indisputable lexical unity of Ring Grassfields Bantu languages (Stallcup 1980; Piron 1997), Wushi strikingly stands apart: it does not mark tense morphologically. As a matter of fact, the aspectual system of Wushi is based on five aspects: perfective, imperfective, retrospective or anterior, potential, and the distal or dissociative marker kə̀ that is analyzed in the light of Botne & Kershner (2008). This paper sets out to analyze these verb forms.

Feeling the Beat in an African Tone Language: Rhythmic Mapping Between Language and Music

Text-setting patterns in music have served as a key data source in the development of theories of prosody and rhythm in stress-based languages, but have been explored less from a rhythmic perspective in the realm of tone languages. African tone languages have been especially under-studied in terms of rhythmic patterns in text-setting, likely in large part due to the ill-understood status of metrical structure and prosodic prominence asymmetries in many of these languages. Here, we explore how language is mapped to rhythmic structure in traditional folksongs sung in Medʉmba, a Grassfields Bantu language spoken in Cameroon. We show that, despite complex and varying rhythmic structures within and across songs, correspondences emerge between musical rhythm and linguistic structure at the level of stem position, tone, and prosodic structure. Our results reinforce the notion that metrical prominence asymmetries are present in African tone languages, and that they play an important coordinative role in music and movement.

Subject marking in Awing

This paper investigates the principles that govern subject marking in Awing (Grassfields Bantu). We observe that the subject marker (SM) that doubles the subject is sometimes obligatory, sometimes optional and sometimes prohibited. We argue that it is the referentiality of the subject that controls the distribution of the SM in Awing, rather than factors such as its morpho-syntactic features or its information structural status, which have been identified to govern argument doubling in a number of other languages with a similar phenomenon. The empirical evidence leads us to conclude that the SM is a pronominal element in Awing rather than an agreement marker. When it occurs, it functions as the argument of the verb and the associated subject NP is base-generated in the left periphery of the clause; when it is absent, the NP is the verbal argument. Awing thus qualifies as a pronominal argument language in the sense of Jelinek (1984); Bresnan and Mchombo (1987); Baker (1996).

An argument analysis of cognate objects in Dschang (Yemba)

Focusing on the Foto dialect of Dschang (Yemba), an understudied Grassfields Bantu language spoken in Cameroon, this paper offers a cross-linguistic perspective on Cognate Objects (CO). An argument analysis of Dschang COs is supported by both cross-linguistic comparison, e.g. forms of corresponding wh-questions, the compatibility with strong determiners, quantifiers and possessors, and the ability to be pronominalized and relativized, and Dschang-internal evidence including word order variations and tonal marking in object position.

The segmental and tonal structure of verb inflection in Babanki

In this study we provide a comprehensive phonological and morphological analysis of the complex tense-aspect-mood (TAM) system of Babanki, a Grassfields Bantu language of Cameroon. Our emphasis is on the competing inflectional tonal melodies that are assigned to the verb stem. These melodies are determined not only by the multiple past and future tenses, perfective vs. progressive aspect, and indicative vs. imperative, subjunctive, and conditional moods, but also affirmative vs. negative and “conjoint” (CJ) vs. “disjoint” (DJ) verbal marking, which we show to be more thorough going than the better known cases in Eastern and Southern Bantu. The paper concludes with a ranking of the six assigned tonal melodies and fourteen appendices providing all of the relevant tonal paradigms.

Kejom (Babanki)

Kejom [k̀ɘd͡ʒɔ́m], the preferred autonym for the language more commonly known as Babanki, is a Central Ring Grassfields Bantu language (ISO 693-3: [bbk]) spoken in the Northwest Region of Cameroon (Hyman 1980, Hammarström et al. 2017, Simons & Fennig 2017). The language is spoken mainly in two settlements shown in Figure 1, Kejom Ketinguh [k̀ɘd͡ʒɔ́m ↓kɘ́tÍⁿɡ̀uʔ] and Kejom Keku [k̀ɘd͡ʒɔ́m ↓kɘ́k̀u], also known as Babanki Tungoh and Big Babanki, respectively, but also to some extent in diaspora communities outside of Cameroon. Simons & Fennig (2017) state that the number of speakers is increasing; however, the figure of 39,000 speakers they provide likely overestimates the number of fluent speakers in diaspora communities. The two main settlements’ dialects exhibit slight phonetic, phonological, and lexical differences but are mutually intelligible. The variety of Kejom described here is the Kejom Ketinguh variant spoken by the second author; all data and examples which we take into account are based on his speech.

Uncovering Tonal and Temporal Correlates of Phrasal Prominence in Medʉmba

Characterizing prosodic prominence relations in African tone languages is notoriously difficult, as typical acoustic cues to prominence (changes in F0, increases in intensity, etc.) can be difficult to distinguish from those which mark tonal contrasts. The task of establishing prominence is further complicated by the fact that tone, an important cue to syllable prominence and prosodic boundaries cross-linguistically, plays many roles in African languages: tones often signal lexical contrasts, can themselves be morphemes, and can also interact in key ways with prosody. The present study builds on phonological generalizations about tonal patterns in Medʉmba, a Grassfields Bantu language, and uses the speech cycling paradigm to investigate relative timing of syllables varying in phrase-level prominence. Specifically, we investigate timing asymmetries between syllables hypothesized to occur at the edge of a phonological phrase, which carry a high phrase accent, and those in phrase-medial position, which do not. Results indicate significant differences in the temporal alignment of accented versus non-accented syllables, with accented syllables occurring significantly closer to positions established as prominence-attracting in previous speech cycling research. We show that these findings cannot be attributed to differences in tone alone. Findings demonstrate the importance of relative temporal alignment as a correlate of prosodic prominence. Findings also point to increased duration as a phonetic property which distinguishes between syllables bearing phrasal prominence from those which do not.

Evidence for Metrical Prominence Asymmetries in Medʉmba

Headedness has played a crucial role in the characterization of metrical structure since the earliest proposals for its existence, with definitions of headedness typically relying on the notion of relative syllable prominence: heads are said to bear relatively greater prominence than nonheads. But what counts as prominent for the sake of headedness varies widely across languages, particularly where evidence for stress is weak or absent. The present work seeks to look beyond acoustic evidence for headedness by conceptualizing metrical prominence in terms of its coordinative role in speech timing. Here, we examine timing of metrically-prominent syllables in Medʉmba, a Grassfields Bantu language spoken in Cameroon. Medʉmba has no phonetic evidence of stress, but displays evidence of metrical prominence asymmetries at the word level. We use the speech cycling paradigm (Cummins & Port 1998) to compare results regarding the timing of metrically prominent syllables in Medʉmba with those from previous work on stressed syllables in English and accented syllables in Japanese and Korean, showing that a unified notion of metrical prominence can be applied across languages.