Wandala, also known as Mandara or Mura', is a language in the
Chadic
The Chadic languages form a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken in parts of the Sahel. They include 150 languages spoken across northern Nigeria, southern Niger, southern Chad, the Central African Republic, and northern Cam ...
branch of the
Afro-Asiatic language
The Afroasiatic languages (or Afro-Asiatic), also known as Hamito-Semitic, or Semito-Hamitic, and sometimes also as Afrasian, Erythraean or Lisramic, are a language family of about 300 languages that are spoken predominantly in the geographic su ...
family, spoken in
Cameroon
Cameroon (; french: Cameroun, ff, Kamerun), officially the Republic of Cameroon (french: République du Cameroun, links=no), is a country in west-central Africa. It is bordered by Nigeria to the west and north; Chad to the northeast; the C ...
and
Nigeria
Nigeria ( ), , ig, NaìjÃrÃyà , yo, Nà ìjÃrÃà , 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 ...
.
Geographic distribution
Wandara has 23,500 speakers in Northern Cameroon and 20,000 speakers in Nigeria.
In Cameroon, Wandala is spoken in
Mora
Mora may refer to:
People
* Mora (surname)
Places Sweden
* Mora, Säter, Sweden
* Mora, Sweden, the seat of Mora Municipality
* Mora Municipality, Sweden
United States
* Mora, Louisiana, an unincorporated community
* Mora, Minnesota, a city
* M ...
and surroundings (in the Mora massif and surrounding plains) by about 23,500 speakers. It is also the lingua franca of the entire department of
Mayo-Sava
Mayo-Sava is a department of Extreme-Nord Province in Cameroon. The department covers an area of 2,736 km and at the 2005 Census had a total population of 348,890. The capital of the department is at Mora.
Subdivisions
The department is di ...
, by ethnic groups of the northern
Mandara Mountains
The Mandara Mountains are a volcanic range extending about 190 km (about 120 mi) along the northern part of the Cameroon–Nigeria border, from the Benue River in the south () to the north-west of Maroua in the north (). The highest el ...
.
Dialects
The Mura dialect represents an archaic form of the Wandala language. It is the language of the non-Islamic "Kirdi-Mora" people who live in the Mora massif.
The Malgwa dialect is distinct.
It is spoken in the plain north of Mora (in
Kolofata
Kolofata is a town and commune in Cameroon.
Boko Haram Attacks
On January 12, 2015 a military base in Kolofata was assaulted by Boko Haram. The Islamist group had attacked towns in Northern Cameroon in December 2014 The attack was repelled with ...
district) by a mixture of Kanuri, Fula, and Arab populations.
Phonology
Wandala is reported to have no phonemic vowels, a rarity among the world's languages.
An alternative analysis is that it has three underlying vowels ''a i'' and ''u'' and six phonetic vowels
™ and
It has a rich consonant inventory, with more than forty consonantal segments.
There are two tones, with their functions differing among different morpheme classes.
Syllable structure
Some possible syllable structures are V, N (nasal consonant), CV, Glide V, VC, CVC. Consonant clusters are not permitted in the coda. To avoid breaking this constraint, a central vowel may be inserted in word-final position. The consonant ''r'' may act as a syllabic peak, meaning the structure Cr is a possible syllable structure.
Grammar
Lexical categories
Wandala has the
lexical categories
In grammar, a part of speech or part-of-speech (abbreviated as POS or PoS, also known as word class or grammatical category) is a category of words (or, more generally, of lexical items) that have similar grammatical properties. Words that are ass ...
of noun, verb, adjective, adverb, and predicator.
Morphology
Reduplication
In linguistics, reduplication is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word (or part of it) or even the whole word is repeated exactly or with a slight change.
The classic observation on the semantics of reduplication is Edwa ...
is a major morphological process in Wandala, with different forms and functions that may be limited to one lexical category or shared across lexical categories.
Partial reduplication gives the plural form of verbs and adjectives, while complete reduplication gives
aspectual and
modal forms of verbs, or derives adverbs from other lexical categories. Phrases can also be reduplicated.
All lexical categories can have
suffix
In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carry ...
es. On verbs, suffixes have many functions, such as marking semantic and
grammatical relation
In linguistics, grammatical relations (also called grammatical functions, grammatical roles, or syntactic functions) are functional relationships between Constituent (linguistics), constituents in a clause. The standard examples of grammatical fun ...
s, directionality and point of view. Suffixes on nouns mark plural number, genitive relation and pronominal possession. Nouns can be derived by adding suffixes to numerals and adjectives.
Wandala also has limited
prefix
A prefix is an affix which is placed before the Word stem, stem of a word. Adding it to the beginning of one word changes it into another word. For example, when the prefix ''un-'' is added to the word ''happy'', it creates the word ''unhappy'' ...
es for nouns and one
infix
An infix is an affix inserted inside a word stem (an existing word or the core of a family of words). It contrasts with ''adfix,'' a rare term for an affix attached to the outside of a stem, such as a prefix or suffix.
When marking text for int ...
. The vowel ''a'' acts as an infix in the verbal system to encode verb plurality.
Syntax
In the noun phrase, the head precedes modifiers, determiners and quantifiers.
The grammatical relations
subject and
object
Object may refer to:
General meanings
* Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept
** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place
** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter
* Goal, an ai ...
are distinguished, with distinct pronouns. However, lexical properties of verbs determine how the grammatical roles of nominal arguments are coded, with some verbs taking the controller as the unmarked argument, and others the affected entity.
A nominal object or nominal subject can occur after the verb, but cannot both occupy this position, so if they co-occur, one must be fronted. This encodes
information structure
In linguistics, information structure, also called information packaging, describes the way in which information is formally packaged within a sentence.Lambrecht, Knud. 1994. ''Information structure and sentence form.'' Cambridge: Cambridge Univer ...
such as
topicalization
Topicalization is a mechanism of syntax that establishes an expression as the sentence or clause topic by having it appear at the front of the sentence or clause (as opposed to in a canonical position further to the right). This involves a phrasal ...
,
focus
Focus, or its plural form foci may refer to:
Arts
* Focus or Focus Festival, former name of the Adelaide Fringe arts festival in South Australia Film
*''Focus'', a 1962 TV film starring James Whitmore
* ''Focus'' (2001 film), a 2001 film based ...
or
switch-reference
In linguistics, switch-reference (SR) describes any clause-level morpheme that signals whether certain prominent arguments in 'adjacent' clauses are coreferential. In most cases, it marks whether the subject of the verb in one clause is corefe ...
.
References
{{Authority control
Biu-Mandara languages
Languages of Nigeria