The Kyoli or Cori (Chori) language is a
Plateau language
The forty or so Plateau languages are a tentative group of Benue–Congo languages spoken by 15 million people on the Jos Plateau, Southern Kaduna, Nasarawa State and in adjacent areas in central Nigeria.
Berom and Eggon have the most speakers. ...
spoken in
Southern Kaduna
Southern Kaduna (formerly Southern Zaria) is an area inhabited by various non-Hausa peoples living south of Zaria Emirate of Kaduna State. It is located in the Middle Belt region of Nigeria. Southern Kaduna consist of 12 local Government out of ...
State,
Nigeria
Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf o ...
.
Overview
It is spoken in the northeast of
Nok
Nok is a village in Jaba Local Government Area of Kaduna State, Nigeria. The village is an archeological site.
Archaeology
The discovery of terracotta figurines at this location caused its name to be used for the Nok culture, of which these ...
in
Jaba Local Government Area (LGA),
Kaduna State
Kaduna State ( ha, Jihar Kaduna جىِهَر كَدُنا; ff, Leydi Kaduna, script=Latn, ; kcg, Sitet Kaduna) is a state in northern Nigeria. The state capital is its namesake, the city of Kaduna which happened to be the 8th largest city in ...
. The speakers prefer to spell the name of their language as Kyoli, which is pronounced
joli
Joli is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:
* Antonio Joli (1700–1777), Italian painter
* France Joli (born 1963), Canadian singer
* Guillaume Joli (born 1985), French handball player
See also
* Joli OS, an operating system dev ...
or
joli The ethnic group is referred to as Kwoli.
There are about 7,000-8,000 Kyoli speakers living in the two village clusters of Hal-Kyoli and Bobang. Bobang is the cultural center of the Kyoli-speaking area. Bobang village cluster consists of the five hamlets of Bobang, Fadek, Akoli, Hagong, and Nyamten. Hal-Kyoli village is situated by itself. All of the Kwoli villages surround the foot of Egu-Kyoli Hill, which rises more than 240 meters above the villages.
[Decker, Ken, John Muniru, Julius Dabet, Benard Abraham and Jonah Innocent. 2020. ]
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Tone
Cori is known for having six distinct levels of tone (linguistics)">tone, too many to transcribe using the International Phonetic Alphabet, which allows five. However, there are only three underlying tones: 1 (), 4 (), and 6 (), which are all that need to be written for literacy. Most cases of Tone 2 () are a result of tone sandhi, with 4 becoming 2 before 1. Tones 3 () and 5 () can be analysed as contour tone
A tone contour, or contour tone, is a tone in a tonal language which shifts from one pitch to another over the course of the syllable or word. Tone contours are especially common in East, Southeast Asia, West Africa, Nilo-Saharan languages, Khois ...
s, with underlying realised as and realised as .
In order to transcribe the surface tones without numerals (which are ambiguous), an extra diacritic is needed, as is common for four-level languages in Central America:
:1 ()
:2 ()
:3 ()
:4 ()
:5 ()
:6 ()
Numerals
Kyoli numerals in different dialects:
References
Further reading
*
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*Dihoff, Ivan (1976). ''Aspects of the tonal structure of Chori.'' Doctoral dissertation, University of Wisconsin.
{{Platoid languages
Languages of Nigeria
Central Plateau languages
Tonal languages