Dida language

Dida is a dialect cluster of the Kru family spoken in Ivory Coast.

ISO divides Dida into three groups, Yocoboué (Yokubwe) Dida (101,600 speakers in 1993), Lakota Dida (93,800 speakers in 1993), and Gaɓogbo (Guébié/Gebye) which are only marginally mutually intelligible and best considered separate languages. Yocoboué consists of the Lozoua (Lozwa) and Divo dialects (7,100 and 94,500 speakers), and Lakota the Lakota (Lákota), Abou (Abu), and Vata dialects. The prestige dialect is the Lozoua speech of the town of Guitry.

Phonology

The Dida lects have consonant and vowel inventories typical of the Eastern Kru languages. However, tone varies significantly between dialects, or at least between their descriptions. The following phonology is that of Abu Dida, from Miller (2005), and of Yocoboué Dida, from Masson (1992).

Vowels

Abu

Abu Dida has a ten-vowel system: nine vowels distinguished by "tenseness", likely either pharyngealization or supra-glottal phonation (contraction of the larynx) of the type described as retracted tongue root, plus an uncommon mid-central vowel Template:IPA.

The non-contracted vowels are Template:IPA, and the contracted vowels Template:IPA. (These could be analyzed as Template:IPA, but here are transcribed with lower vowels to reflect their phonetic realization. There is no tense contrast with the low vowel.) The formants of the tense vowels show them to be lower than their non-tense counterparts: the formants of the highest tense vowels overlap the formants of the non-tense mid vowels, but there is visible tension in the lips and throat when these are enunciated carefully.

Abu Dida has a number of diphthongs, which have the same number of tonal distinctions as simple vowels. All start with the higher vowels, Template:IPA, and except for Template:IPA, both elements are either contracted or non-contracted, so the pharyngealization is here transcribed after the second element of the vowel. Examples are Template:IPA "bottle" (from English), Template:IPA "get stuck", and Template:IPA "little bone".

Dida also has nasal vowels, but they are not common and it is not clear how many. Examples are Template:IPA "nothing", Template:IPA "chin", Template:IPA "25 cents" (from English "pound"). In diphthongs, nasalization shows up primarily on the second element of the vowel.

Vowel length is not distinctive, apart from phonesthesia (as in Template:IPA "nothing"), morphemic contractions, and shortened grammatical words, such as the modal Template:IPA "will" (compare its likely lexical source Template:IPA "get").

Yocoboué

Yocoboué Dida has a nine vowel system: four vowels being standard, and five vowels being a retracted series, plus a realization.

The four regular vowels are /i e o u/, and the retracted vowels are /ɪ ɛ a ɔ ʊ/. /a/ may also be realized as [ʌ].

All vowels do have nasal realizations, but the nasalization of vowels is not phonemic.

Consonants

The consonants in Abu Dida are typical for Eastern Kru:

	Labial	Alveolar	Post- alveolar	Velar	Labialized velar	Labial velar
Nasal	m	n	ɲ	ŋ
Plosive/affricate	p   b	t   d	t͡ʃ   d͡ʒ	k   ɡ	kʷ   ɡʷ	k͡p   ɡ͡b
Implosive	ɓ
Fricative	f   v	s   z		ɣ
Tap/approximant		ɺ	j		w

Syllables may be vowel only, consonant-vowel, or consonant-Template:IPA-vowel. Template:IPA is a lateral approximant Template:IPAblink initially, a lateral flap Template:IPAblink between vowels and after most consonants (Template:IPA "country"), but a central tap after alveolars (Template:IPA "blood"). After a nasal (Template:IPA), it is itself nasalized, and sounds like a short n. There is a short epenthetic vowel between the initial consonant and the flap, which takes the quality of the syllabic vowel that follows (Template:IPA "country"). Flap clusters occur with all consonants, even the approximants (Template:IPA "top"), apart from the alveolar sonorants Template:IPA and the marginal consonant Template:IPA, which is only attested in the syllable Template:IPA.

Template:IPA is implosive in the sense that the airstream is powered by the glottis moving downward, but there is no rush of air into the mouth. Template:IPA occurs in few words, but one of these, Template:IPA "appear", occurs in numerous common idioms, so overall it's not an uncommon sound. It is a true fricative and may devoice to Template:IPAblink word initially. Template:IPA and Template:IPA plus a vowel are distinct from Template:IPA or Template:IPA plus Template:IPA and another vowel. They may also be followed by a flap, as in Template:IPA "face".

When emphasized, zero-onset words may take an initial Template:IPAblink, and initial approximants Template:IPA may become fricated Template:IPAblink, Template:IPAblink. Template:IPA becomes palatalized Template:IPAblink before high front vowels, or Template:IPAblink when emphasized.

The following consonants are for Yocoboué Dida:

	Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Labialized velar	Labial velar
Nasal	m	n	ɲ	ŋ
Plosive/Affricate	p   b	t   d	c   ɟ	k   ɡ	kʷ   ɡʷ	k͡p   ɡ͡b
Implosive	ɓ
Fricative	f   v	s   z		ɣ
Approximant		l	j		w

/l/ can be realized as Template:IPAblink when after alveolar stops, and as Template:IPAblink when after nasals.

Tones

Dida uses tone as a grammatical device. Morpho-tonology plays a greater role in verb and pronominal paradigms than it does in nouns, and perhaps because of this, Dida verbs utilize a simpler tone system than nouns do: Noun roots have four lexically contrastive tones, subject pronouns have three, and verb roots have just two word tones.

There are three level tones in Abou Dida: Template:Smallcaps Template:IPA, Template:Smallcaps Template:IPA, and Template:Smallcaps Template:IPA, with Template:Smallcaps about twice as common as the other two. Speaker intuition hears six contour tones: rising Template:IPA and falling Template:IPA. (The falling tones only reach Template:Smallcaps register at the end of a prosodic unit; otherwise the low falling tone Template:IPA is realized as a simple low tone.) However, some of these only occur in morphologically complex words, such as perfective verbs.

Monosyllabic nouns contrast four tones: Template:Smallcaps and Template:Smallcaps: Template:IPA "egg", Template:IPA "leopard", Template:IPA "buffalo", Template:IPA "arrow", with Template:Smallcaps and Template:Smallcaps being the most frequent.

Further reading

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