Gbe languages
Encyclopedia
The Gbe languages form a cluster of about twenty related language
s 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 were traditionally placed in the Kwa
branch of the Niger–Congo languages
, but more recently have been classified as Volta–Niger
. They include five major dialect clusters: Ewe
, Fon
, Aja, Gen
(Mina), and Phla–Pherá.
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
: it is believed that Gbe languages played some role in the genesis of several Caribbean
creole language
s.
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.
in Ghana and the Weme River in Benin. 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.
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 four million and 3 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.
, following Westermann (1952), placed the Gbe languages in the Kwa
family of the Niger–Congo languages
. The extent of the Kwa branch has fluctuated through the years, and Roger Blench
places the Gbe languages in a Volta–Niger branch with former East Kwa languages to their east.
Gbe is a dialect continuum
. Based on comparative research, Capo (1988) divides it into five clusters, with each cluster consisting of several mutually intelligible dialects. The borders between the clusters are not always distinct. The five clusters are:
Ethnologue lists the following additional Gbe languages:
, 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.
, a Yoruba
settlement in present day Benin Republic (formerly known as Dahomey), 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 Yoruba 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.
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.
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.
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.
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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
.
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.
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.
.
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). 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').
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).
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).
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.
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. In general, the SIL studies corroborated many of Capo's findings and led to adjustment of some of his more tentative groupings.
Phonetic inventory of consonants in Gbe languages
Capo 1991:39
bilabial
labio-
dental
lamino-
dental
lamino-
alveolar
apical post-
alveolar
alveo-
palatal
palatal
labio-
palatal
velar
labio-
velar
uvular
labialised
uvular
stops and
affricates
p b
t d
ts dz
ɖ
tʃ dʒ
k ɡ
k͡p ɡ͡b
nasals
m
n
ɲ
ŋ
ŋʷ
fricatives
ɸ β
f v
s z
ʃ ʒ
χ ʁ
χʷ ʁʷ
trills
r r̃
approximants
l l̃
j ȷ̃
ɥ ɥ̃
ɰ
w w̃
Notes
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.
In general, each Gbe variety makes use of a subset of twelve vowels, seven oral and five nasalised
. The vowels /i ĩ u ũ e o ɛ̃ ɔ ɔ̃ a ã/ are attested in all Gbe languages.
Nasality plays an important role in the vowel inventory: every vowel in the Gbe languages 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.
s 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.
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.
Most verb
s 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, ədʒo in Wací-Ewe and dʒo in Pecí-Ewe. The nominal prefix can be seen as a relic of a typical Niger–Congo noun class
system.
The Gbe languages are isolating language
s, 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.
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'.
creole languages—Haitian Creole for example is classifiable as having a French
vocabulary with the syntax of a Gbe language.
The Gbe languages do not have a marked 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). (man DET FUT buy umbrella) the man will buy an umbrella (Ewegbe, future marker) (man DET buy:PERF umbrella) the man bought an umbrella (Ewegbe, perfective)
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 (Gungbe, Fongbe), yé (Gengbe) or é (Ewegbe), suffixed to the focused element.
Question
s 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. (Afua reach:PERF Gɛ QUESTION) Did Afua go to Accra? (Ewegbe, question) (what Sena read:PERF) What did Sena read? (Gungbe, question word question)
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. (that snake DET Kofi FOC kill:PERF-it) ...that the snake, KOFI killed it (Fongbe, topic)
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.
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. (Kofi turn:PERF leave:PERF quietly) Kofi turned and left quietly (Ewegbe, serial verb construction)
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
s stretching across the area between eastern Ghana
Ghana
Ghana , officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country located in West Africa. It is bordered by Côte d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the south...
and western Nigeria
Nigeria
Nigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in...
. The total number of speakers of Gbe languages is between four and eight million. The most widely spoken Gbe language is Ewe
Ewe language
Ewe is a Niger–Congo language spoken in Ghana, Togo and Benin by approximately six million people. Ewe is part of a cluster of related languages commonly called Gbe, spoken in southeastern Ghana, Togo, and parts of Benin. Other Gbe languages include Fon, Gen, Phla Phera, and Aja...
(3 million speakers in Ghana and Togo
Togo
Togo, officially the Togolese Republic , is a country in West Africa bordered by Ghana to the west, Benin to the east and Burkina Faso to the north. It extends south to the Gulf of Guinea, on which the capital Lomé is located. Togo covers an area of approximately with a population of approximately...
), followed by Fon
Fon language
Fon is part of the Gbe language cluster and belongs to the Volta–Niger branch of the Niger–Congo languages. Fon is spoken mainly in Benin by approximately 1.7 million speakers, by the Fon people...
(1.7 million, mainly in Benin
Benin
Benin , officially the Republic of Benin, is a country in West Africa. It borders Togo to the west, Nigeria to the east and Burkina Faso and Niger to the north. Its small southern coastline on the Bight of Benin is where a majority of the population is located...
). The Gbe languages were traditionally placed in the Kwa
Kwa languages
The Kwa languages, often specified as New Kwa, are a proposed but as-yet-undemonstrated family of languages spoken in the south-eastern part of Côte d'Ivoire, across southern Ghana, and in central Togo...
branch of the Niger–Congo languages
Niger–Congo languages
The Niger–Congo languages constitute one of the world's major language families, and Africa's largest in terms of geographical area, number of speakers, and number of distinct languages. They may constitute the world's largest language family in terms of distinct languages, although this question...
, but more recently have been classified as Volta–Niger
Volta–Niger languages
The Volta–Niger family of languages, also known as West Benue–Congo or East Kwa, is one of the branches of the Niger–Congo language family, with perhaps 50 million speakers...
. They include five major dialect clusters: Ewe
Ewe language
Ewe is a Niger–Congo language spoken in Ghana, Togo and Benin by approximately six million people. Ewe is part of a cluster of related languages commonly called Gbe, spoken in southeastern Ghana, Togo, and parts of Benin. Other Gbe languages include Fon, Gen, Phla Phera, and Aja...
, Fon
Fon language
Fon is part of the Gbe language cluster and belongs to the Volta–Niger branch of the Niger–Congo languages. Fon is spoken mainly in Benin by approximately 1.7 million speakers, by the Fon people...
, Aja, Gen
Gen language
Gen is a Gbe language spoken in the southeast of Togo in the Maritime Region. It is also spoken in the Mono Department of Benin. It is part of the Volta–Niger branch of the major African Niger–Congo language family...
(Mina), and Phla–Pherá.
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
New World
The New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically America and sometimes Oceania . The term originated in the late 15th century, when America had been recently discovered by European explorers, expanding the geographical horizon of the people of the European middle...
: it is believed that Gbe languages played some role in the genesis of several Caribbean
Caribbean
The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...
creole language
Creole language
A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable natural language developed from the mixing of parent languages; creoles differ from pidgins in that they have been nativized by children as their primary language, making them have features of natural languages that are normally missing from...
s.
Around 1840, German missionaries started linguistic research into the Gbe languages. In the first half of the twentieth century, the Africanist Diedrich Hermann Westermann
Diedrich Hermann Westermann
Diedrich Hermann Westermann was a German missionary, Africanist, and linguist. He substantially extended and revised the work of Carl Meinhof, his teacher, although he rejected some of Meinhof's theories only implicitly...
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
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
in 1991. The Gbe languages are tonal, isolating
Isolating language
An isolating language is a type of language with a low morpheme-per-word ratio — in the extreme case of an isolating language words are composed of a single morpheme...
languages and the basic word order is subject–verb–object.
Geography and demography
The Gbe language area is bordered to the west and east by the Volta RiverVolta River
The Volta is a river in western Africa that drains into the Gulf of Guinea. It has three main tributaries—the Black Volta, White Volta and Red Volta...
in Ghana and the Weme River in Benin. The northern border is between 6 and 8 degrees latitude
Latitude
In geography, the latitude of a location on the Earth is the angular distance of that location south or north of the Equator. The latitude is an angle, and is usually measured in degrees . The equator has a latitude of 0°, the North pole has a latitude of 90° north , and the South pole has a...
and the southern border is the Atlantic
Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...
coast. The area is neighbored mainly by other Kwa languages
Kwa languages
The Kwa languages, often specified as New Kwa, are a proposed but as-yet-undemonstrated family of languages spoken in the south-eastern part of Côte d'Ivoire, across southern Ghana, and in central Togo...
, except for the east and north-east, where Yorùbá
Yoruba language
Yorùbá is a Niger–Congo language spoken in West Africa by approximately 20 million speakers. The native tongue of the Yoruba people, it is spoken, among other languages, in Nigeria, Benin, and Togo and in communities in other parts of Africa, Europe and the Americas...
is spoken. To the west, Ga–Dangme, Guang and Akan
Akan language
Akan, also known as Twi and Fante, is an Akan language that is the principal native language of Ghana, spoken over much of the southern half of that country, by about 52% of the population, and to a lesser extent across the border in eastern Côte d'Ivoire...
are spoken. To the north, it is bordered by Adele
Adele language
The Adele language is spoken in central eastern Ghana and central western Togo. It belongs to the geographic group of Ghana Togo Mountain languages of the Kwa branch of Niger–Congo...
, Aguna, Akpafu, Lolobi, and Yorùbá.
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
Ethnologue
Ethnologue: Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International , a Christian linguistic service organization, which studies lesser-known languages, to provide the speakers with Bibles in their native language and support their efforts in language development.The Ethnologue...
(15th edition, 2005) gives eight million. The most widely spoken Gbe languages are Ewe (Ghana
Ghana
Ghana , officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country located in West Africa. It is bordered by Côte d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the south...
and Togo
Togo
Togo, officially the Togolese Republic , is a country in West Africa bordered by Ghana to the west, Benin to the east and Burkina Faso to the north. It extends south to the Gulf of Guinea, on which the capital Lomé is located. Togo covers an area of approximately with a population of approximately...
) and Fon (Benin
Benin
Benin , officially the Republic of Benin, is a country in West Africa. It borders Togo to the west, Nigeria to the east and Burkina Faso and Niger to the north. Its small southern coastline on the Bight of Benin is where a majority of the population is located...
, eastern Togo) at four million and 3 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
Togo
Togo, officially the Togolese Republic , is a country in West Africa bordered by Ghana to the west, Benin to the east and Burkina Faso to the north. It extends south to the Gulf of Guinea, on which the capital Lomé is located. Togo covers an area of approximately with a population of approximately...
. In Benin, Aja (740,000 speakers) and Fon were two of the six national languages selected by the government for adult education in 1992.
Classification
GreenbergJoseph Greenberg
Joseph Harold Greenberg was a prominent and controversial American linguist, principally known for his work in two areas, linguistic typology and the genetic classification of languages.- Early life and career :...
, following Westermann (1952), placed the Gbe languages in the Kwa
Kwa languages
The Kwa languages, often specified as New Kwa, are a proposed but as-yet-undemonstrated family of languages spoken in the south-eastern part of Côte d'Ivoire, across southern Ghana, and in central Togo...
family of the Niger–Congo languages
Niger–Congo languages
The Niger–Congo languages constitute one of the world's major language families, and Africa's largest in terms of geographical area, number of speakers, and number of distinct languages. They may constitute the world's largest language family in terms of distinct languages, although this question...
. The extent of the Kwa branch has fluctuated through the years, and Roger Blench
Roger Blench
Roger Blench is a British linguist, ethnomusicologist and development anthropologist. He has an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge and remains based in Cambridge, England...
places the Gbe languages in a Volta–Niger branch with former East Kwa languages to their east.
Gbe is a dialect continuum
Dialect continuum
A dialect continuum, or dialect area, was defined by Leonard Bloomfield as a range of dialects spoken across some geographical area that differ only slightly between neighboring areas, but as one travels in any direction, these differences accumulate such that speakers from opposite ends of the...
. Based on comparative research, Capo (1988) divides it into five clusters, with each cluster consisting of several mutually intelligible dialects. The borders between the clusters are not always distinct. The five clusters are:
| Name | Alternate names | Speakers | Some dialects | Region |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ewe Ewe language Ewe is a Niger–Congo language spoken in Ghana, Togo and Benin by approximately six million people. Ewe is part of a cluster of related languages commonly called Gbe, spoken in southeastern Ghana, Togo, and parts of Benin. Other Gbe languages include Fon, Gen, Phla Phera, and Aja... |
Vhe, | ca. 3,000,000 | Anlo, Kpando, Ho, Fodome | lower half of Ghana east of the Volta River Volta River The Volta is a river in western Africa that drains into the Gulf of Guinea. It has three main tributaries—the Black Volta, White Volta and Red Volta... ; southwest Togo |
| Gen Gen language Gen is a Gbe language spoken in the southeast of Togo in the Maritime Region. It is also spoken in the Mono Department of Benin. It is part of the Volta–Niger branch of the major African Niger–Congo language family... |
Gẽ, Mina, | ca. 400,000 | Gliji, Anexo, Agoi | Lake Togo Lake Togo Lake Togo is the largest part of a lagoon in Togo, separated from the head by a narrow coastal strip. It is shallow and a popular location for water sports. Towns on the lake's shore include Agbodrafo and Togoville. The name is derived from to, which means "water", and go, which means "edge" or... , around Anexo |
| Aja | Aja gbe, Adja | ca. 1,300,000 | Dogbo, Sikpi | Togo, Aja AJA Aja or AJA may refer to:In anthropology:*Aja people, a people living in Benin**Aja language , the language of the Aja people, part of the Gbe dialect continuum*Aja , an ethnic group living in Sudan... area, inland along the Mono River Mono River The Mono River is the major river of eastern Togo.Approximately long, and draining a basin of about , it rises between the town of Sokodé and the border with Benin, and flows south. Along the southern portion of the river towards its mouth, it forms the international boundary between Togo and Benin... |
| Fon Fon language Fon is part of the Gbe language cluster and belongs to the Volta–Niger branch of the Niger–Congo languages. Fon is spoken mainly in Benin by approximately 1.7 million speakers, by the Fon people... |
ca. 1,700,000 | Gun, Kapse, Agbome, Maxi | southeast Togo, Benin west of the Weme River and along the coast | |
| Phla–Pherá | Fla, Offra, Xwla gbe | ca. 400,000 | Alada, Toli, Ayizo | Togo and Benin along the coast and around Lake Ahémé |
Ethnologue lists the following additional Gbe languages:
- Defi [gbh], Weme [wem], Aguna [aug], Ci [cib], and in Togo: Waci [wci], Kpessi [kef], Wudu [wud].
Naming
The dialect continuum as a whole was called 'Ewe' by WestermannDiedrich Hermann Westermann
Diedrich Hermann Westermann was a German missionary, Africanist, and linguist. He substantially extended and revised the work of Carl Meinhof, his teacher, although he rejected some of Meinhof's theories only implicitly...
, 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
Working group
A working group is an interdisciplinary collaboration of researchers working on new research activities that would be difficult to develop under traditional funding mechanisms . The lifespan of the WG can last anywhere between a few months and several years...
at the West African Languages Congress at Cotonou
Cotonou
-Demographics:*1979: 320,348 *1992: 536,827 *2002: 665,100 *2005: 690,584 The main languages spoken in Cotonou include the Fon language, Aja language, Yoruba language and French.-Transport:...
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.
Before 1600
KetuKetu (Benin)
Ketu is a historical location in present day Republic of Benin. It is one of the oldest capitals of the Yoruba speaking people, tracing its establishment to a settlement founded by a daughter of Oduduwa, also known as Odudua, Oòdua and Eleduwa...
, a Yoruba
Yoruba people
The Yoruba people are one of the largest ethnic groups in West Africa. The majority of the Yoruba speak the Yoruba language...
settlement in present day Benin Republic (formerly known as Dahomey), might be an appropriate starting point for a brief history of the Gbe-speaking peoples. Ewe traditions refer to Ketu as Amedzofe
Amedzofe (history)
In Ewe oral history, Amedzofe , literally 'origin/home of humanity', is one of the names for Ketu. Ketu, in present-day Benin, was a central place in the history of the Gbe peoples. The Gbe peoples originally were part of the Yoruba Oyo people of Nigeria, but they were pressed westward by a series...
("origin of humanity") or Mawufe ("home of the Supreme Being"). It is believed that the inhabitants of Ketu originally belonged to the Yoruba Oyo
Oyo State
Ọyọ State is an inland state in south-western Nigeria, with its capital at Ibadan. It is bounded in the north by Kwara State, in the east by Osun State, in the south by Ogun State and in the west partly by Ogun State and partly by the Republic of Benin....
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.
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
Togo
Togo, officially the Togolese Republic , is a country in West Africa bordered by Ghana to the west, Benin to the east and Burkina Faso to the north. It extends south to the Gulf of Guinea, on which the capital Lomé is located. Togo covers an area of approximately with a population of approximately...
). The Tado kingdom was an important state in West Africa
West Africa
West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of the African continent. Geopolitically, the UN definition of Western Africa includes the following 16 countries and an area of approximately 5 million square km:-Flags of West Africa:...
up to the late fifteenth century.
In the course of the thirteenth or fourteenth century, the Notsie
Notsé
Notsé is a town in the Plateaux Region of Togo. It is the capital of Haho Prefecture and is situated 95 km north of the capital Lomé. The town was formed around 1600 by the Ewe people, after they were displaced westward by the expansion of the Yoruba....
(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
Ewe people
The Ewe are a people located in the southeast corner of Ghana, east of the Volta River, in an area now described as the Volta Region, in southern Togo and western Benin...
. Around 1550, emigrants from Tado established the Allada
Allada
Allada is a town, arrondissement, and commune located in the Atlantique Department of Benin.Allada was the capital of the most powerful king in Ajaland before it fell to the armies of Dahomey....
(or Alada) kingdom, which became the center of the Fon people
Fon people
The Fon people, or Fon nu, are a major West African ethnic and linguistic group in the country of Benin, and southwest Nigeria, made up of more than 3,500,000 people. The Fon language is the main language spoken in Southern Benin, and is a member of the Gbe language group...
. Tado is also the origin of the Aja people
Aja people
The Aja are a group of people native to south-western Benin and south-eastern Togo.According to tradition, the Aja migrated to southern Benin in the 12th or 13th centuries from Tado on the Mono River and in the early 17th century, three brothers, Kokpon, Do-Aklin, and Te-Agdanlin, fought for the...
; in fact, the name Aja-Tado (Adja-Tado) is frequently used to refer to their language.
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.
European traders and the transatlantic slave trade
Gold Coast (British colony)
The Gold Coast was a British colony on the Gulf of Guinea in west Africa that became the independent nation of Ghana in 1957.-Overview:The first Europeans to arrive at the coast were the Portuguese in 1471. They encountered a variety of African kingdoms, some of which controlled substantial...
(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
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
and Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
. 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
Missionary
A missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to do evangelism or ministries of service, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care and economic development. The word "mission" originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin...
were sent out. As early as 1658, Spanish missionaries translated the Doctrina Christiana into the language of Allada
Allada
Allada is a town, arrondissement, and commune located in the Atlantique Department of Benin.Allada was the capital of the most powerful king in Ajaland before it fell to the armies of Dahomey....
, 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
Gen language
Gen is a Gbe language spoken in the southeast of Togo in the Maritime Region. It is also spoken in the Mono Department of Benin. It is part of the Volta–Niger branch of the major African Niger–Congo language family...
.
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
Triangular trade
Triangular trade, or triangle trade, is a historical term indicating among three ports or regions. Triangular trade usually evolves when a region has export commodities that are not required in the region from which its major imports come...
between the European mainland, the west coast of Africa and the colonies of the New World
New World
The New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically America and sometimes Oceania . The term originated in the late 15th century, when America had been recently discovered by European explorers, expanding the geographical horizon of the people of the European middle...
(notably the Caribbean). The main actors in this process were Dutch
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
(and to a lesser extent English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
) traders; captives were supplied mostly by cooperating coastal African states.
The Bight of Benin
Bight of Benin
The Bight of Benin is a bight on the western African coast that extends eastward for about 400 miles from Cape St. Paul to the Nun outlet of the Niger River. To the east it is continued by the Bight of Bonny . The bight is part of the Gulf of Guinea...
, 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
Slave Coast
The Slave Coast is the name of the coastal areas of present Togo, Benin and western Nigeria, a fertile region of coastal Western Africa along the Bight of Benin. In pre-colonial time it was one of the most densely populated parts of the African continent...
the ratio reached two adult women for every man. Several wars (sometimes deliberately provoked by European powers in order to divide and rule
Divide and rule
In politics and sociology, divide and rule is a combination of political, military and economic strategy of gaining and maintaining power by breaking up larger concentrations of power into chunks that individually have less power than the one implementing the strategy...
) 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.
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 KetaKeta
Keta is a city in Volta Region, Ghana. It was an important trading post between the 14th and late 20th century via a port and fort built by the Dutch in 1784. Parts of the city were devastated by sea erosion between the 1960s and 1980s....
.
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
Robert Needham Cust
Robert Needham Cust was a British colonial administrator and linguist.He was educated at Eton College, Trinity College, Cambridge, Haileybury and the College of Fort William, Calcutta, graduating from the last-named institution in 1844. He then worked for the East India Company, in Hoshiarpur and...
in his Modern Languages of Africa (1883). 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').
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
Ernst Henrici
Carl Ernst Julius Henrici was a German grammar school teacher, writer, colonial adventurer and anti-Semitic politician.-Life:...
(Lehrbuch der Ephe-Sprache, 1891, actually the first comparative Gbe grammar), Knüsli (Ewe-German-English Vocabulary, 1892) and Delafosse
Maurice Delafosse
Maurice Delafosse was a French ethnographer and colonial official who also worked in the field of the languages of Africa...
(Manuel Dahoméen (Fon), 1894).
In 1902 the missionary Diedrich Hermann Westermann
Diedrich Hermann Westermann
Diedrich Hermann Westermann was a German missionary, Africanist, and linguist. He substantially extended and revised the work of Carl Meinhof, his teacher, although he rejected some of Meinhof's theories only implicitly...
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
Ewe language
Ewe is a Niger–Congo language spoken in Ghana, Togo and Benin by approximately six million people. Ewe is part of a cluster of related languages commonly called Gbe, spoken in southeastern Ghana, Togo, and parts of Benin. Other Gbe languages include Fon, Gen, Phla Phera, and Aja...
(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).
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 linguisticComparative linguistics
Comparative linguistics is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their historical relatedness....
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
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
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.
In the early 1990s, SIL International
SIL International
SIL International is a U.S.-based, worldwide, Christian non-profit organization, whose main purpose is to study, develop and document languages, especially those that are lesser-known, in order to expand linguistic knowledge, promote literacy, translate the Christian Bible into local languages,...
initiated a study to assess which Gbe communities could benefit from existing literacy
Literacy
Literacy has traditionally been described as the ability to read for knowledge, write coherently and think critically about printed material.Literacy represents the lifelong, intellectual process of gaining meaning from print...
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. In general, the SIL studies corroborated many of Capo's findings and led to adjustment of some of his more tentative groupings.
Consonants
The following phonetic segments are attested in Gbe languages:Phonetic inventory of consonants in Gbe languages
dental
dental
alveolar
alveolar
palatal
palatal
velar
uvular
affricates
Notes
- When symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a voiced consonant except for the trills & approximants rows, where the symbol to the right represents a nasalised consonant.
- The apico-postalveolar consonantPostalveolar consonantPostalveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the back of the alveolar ridge, further back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but not as far back as the hard palate...
s are generally written and transcribed with the symbols for the corresponding alveolar consonants, except for the voiced stop, which uses the symbol for the voiced retroflex stop [ɖ]. This is only to distinguish from the lamino-dental voiced stop, and is not to be interpreted as the consonant being subapicalSub-apical consonantA subapical consonant is a consonant made by contact with the underside of the tip of the tongue. The only common subapical articulations are in the postalveolar to palatal region, which are called "retroflex"....
. - The above table lists the attested phonetic segments. Some of the sounds listed here are in free variationFree variationFree variation in linguistics is the phenomenon of two sounds or forms appearing in the same environment without a change in meaning and without being considered incorrect by native speakers...
with other sounds (e.g., r and r̃ with l and l̃). The reader is referred to the individual languages for an overview of their phoneme inventory.
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.
Vowels
The following vowels are found in Gbe languages:| Capo 1991:24 | Front Front vowel A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also... | Central Central vowel A central vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a central vowel is that the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel... | Back Back vowel A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark... |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close Close vowel A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.This term is prescribed by the... |
i • ĩ | u • ũ | |
| Close-mid Close-mid vowel A close-mid vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned two-thirds of the way from a close vowel to a mid vowel... |
e • ẽ | o • õ | |
| ə • ə̃ | |||
| Open-mid Open-mid vowel An open-mid vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of an open-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned two-thirds of the way from an open vowel to a mid vowel... |
ɛ • ɛ̃ | ɔ • ɔ̃ | |
| Open Open vowel An open vowel is defined as a vowel sound in which the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth. Open vowels are sometimes also called low vowels in reference to the low position of the tongue... |
a • ã |
In general, each Gbe variety makes use of a subset of twelve vowels, seven oral and five nasalised
Nasal vowel
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. By contrast, oral vowels are ordinary vowels without this nasalisation...
. The vowels /i ĩ u ũ e o ɛ̃ ɔ ɔ̃ a ã/ are attested in all Gbe languages.
Nasality plays an important role in the vowel inventory: every vowel in the Gbe languages 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. 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.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 nounNoun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
s are often affected by the consonant
Consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are , pronounced with the lips; , pronounced with the front of the tongue; , pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; and ,...
of the noun stem. The voicing
Phonation
Phonation has slightly different meanings depending on the subfield of phonetics. Among some phoneticians, phonation is the process by which the vocal folds produce certain sounds through quasi-periodic vibration. This is the definition used among those who study laryngeal anatomy and physiology...
of this consonant affects the realisation of the Non-High toneme roughly as follows: If the consonant is a voiced obstruent
Obstruent
An obstruent is a consonant sound formed by obstructing airflow, causing increased air pressure in the vocal tract, such as [k], [d͡ʒ] and [f]. In phonetics, articulation may be divided into two large classes: obstruents and sonorants....
, the Non-High toneme is realised as Low (è-ḏà 'snake') and if the consonant is a voiceless obstruent or a sonorant
Sonorant
In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant is a speech sound that is produced without turbulent airflow in the vocal tract; fricatives and plosives are not sonorants. Vowels are sonorants, as are consonants like and . Other consonants, like or , restrict the airflow enough to cause turbulence, and...
, 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.
Morphology
The basic syllableSyllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter. A syllable is typically made up of a syllable nucleus with optional initial and final margins .Syllables are often considered the phonological "building...
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.
Most verb
Verb
A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...
s in Gbe languages have one of the basic syllable forms. Gbe nominals
Noun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
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
Schwa
In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa can mean the following:*An unstressed and toneless neutral vowel sound in some languages, often but not necessarily a mid-central vowel...
or lost: the word for 'fire' is izo in Phelá, ədʒo in Wací-Ewe and dʒo in Pecí-Ewe. The nominal prefix can be seen as a relic of a typical Niger–Congo noun class
Noun class
In linguistics, the term noun class refers to a system of categorizing nouns. A noun may belong to a given class because of characteristic features of its referent, such as sex, animacy, shape, but counting a given noun among nouns of such or another class is often clearly conventional...
system.
The Gbe languages are isolating language
Isolating language
An isolating language is a type of language with a low morpheme-per-word ratio — in the extreme case of an isolating language words are composed of a single morpheme...
s, and as such express many semantic features by lexical items. Of a more agglutinative
Agglutinative language
An agglutinative language is a language that uses agglutination extensively: most words are formed by joining morphemes together. This term was introduced by Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1836 to classify languages from a morphological point of view...
nature are the commonly used periphrastic
Periphrasis
In linguistics, periphrasis is a device by which a grammatical category or grammatical relationship is expressed by a free morpheme , instead of being shown by inflection or derivation...
constructions. In contrast to Bantu languages
Bantu languages
The Bantu languages constitute a traditional sub-branch of the Niger–Congo languages. There are about 250 Bantu languages by the criterion of mutual intelligibility, though the distinction between language and dialect is often unclear, and Ethnologue counts 535 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
Agreement (linguistics)
In languages, agreement or concord is a form of cross-reference between different parts of a sentence or phrase. Agreement happens when a word changes form depending on the other words to which it relates....
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.
Reduplication
Reduplication
Reduplication in linguistics is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word is repeated exactly or with a slight change....
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
Kwa languages
The Kwa languages, often specified as New Kwa, are a proposed but as-yet-undemonstrated family of languages spoken in the south-eastern part of Côte d'Ivoire, across southern Ghana, and in central Togo...
, 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'.
Grammar
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 CaribbeanCaribbean
The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...
creole languages—Haitian Creole for example is classifiable as having a French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
vocabulary with the syntax of a Gbe language.
The Gbe languages do not have a marked distinction between tense and aspect. The only tense
Grammatical tense
A tense is a grammatical category that locates a situation in time, to indicate when the situation takes place.Bernard Comrie, Aspect, 1976:6:...
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). (man DET FUT buy umbrella) the man will buy an umbrella (Ewegbe, future marker) (man DET buy:PERF umbrella) the man bought an umbrella (Ewegbe, perfective)
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 (Gungbe, Fongbe), yé (Gengbe) or é (Ewegbe), suffixed to the focused element.
- àxwé yé Kòfí tù (house FOC Kofi build:PERF) Kofi built A HOUSE (Gengbe, focus)
Question
Question
A question may be either a linguistic expression used to make a request for information, or else the request itself made by such an expression. This information may be provided with an answer....
s 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. (Afua reach:PERF Gɛ QUESTION) Did Afua go to Accra? (Ewegbe, question) (what Sena read:PERF) What did Sena read? (Gungbe, question word question)
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. (that snake DET Kofi FOC kill:PERF-it) ...that the snake, KOFI killed it (Fongbe, topic)
Negation
Negation
In logic and mathematics, negation, also called logical complement, is an operation on propositions, truth values, or semantic values more generally. Intuitively, the negation of a proposition is true when that proposition is false, and vice versa. In classical logic negation is normally identified...
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.
Gbe languages share an areal feature found in many languages of the Volta basin, the serial verb construction
Serial verb construction
The serial verb construction, also known as serialization, is a syntactic phenomenon common to many African, Asian and New Guinean languages...
. 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. (Kofi turn:PERF leave:PERF quietly) Kofi turned and left quietly (Ewegbe, serial verb construction)