Wapan (Jukun Wapan) or Kororofa,
also known as Wukari after the local town of
Wukari
Wukari is a Local Government Area in Taraba State, Nigeria. Its headquarters is in the town of Wukari on the A4 highway. The Donga River flows through the area and the Benue River forms a boundary with Nasarawa State to the northwest. It has an ...
, is a major
Jukunoid language
The Jukunoid languages are a branch of the Benue-Congo languages spoken by the Jukun and related peoples of Nigeria and Cameroon. They are distributed mostly throughout Taraba State, Nigeria and surrounding regions.
Their asymmetrical nasal ...
of
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 ...
.
Varieties
Blench (2019) lists the following varieties as part of the Kororofa (Jukun Wapan) cluster:
*
Abinsi
*Wapan proper
*
Hõne
*Dampar (spoken at Dampar, Wukari LGA)
Phonology
Wapan and other Jukunoid languages are interesting in the development of asymmetrical patterns of nasal and oral consonants in
West Africa
West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, M ...
.
One could posit that voiced oral stops become nasal before nasal vowels, sometimes at the expense of having more nasal than oral vowels, which is typologically odd, or that nasal stops denasalise before oral vowels, which is typologically odd as well.
Oral vowels are allowed only in syllables like ''ba, mba'', nasal vowels in ''bã, mã''.
Historically, however, the consonants nasalized: *mb became **mm before nasal vowels and then reduced to *m, leaving the current asymmetric distribution.
[Larry Hyman, 1975. "Nasal states and nasal processes." In ''Nasalfest: Papers from a Symposium on Nasals and Nasalization,'' pp. 249–264]
References
{{Platoid languages
Jukunoid languages
Languages of Nigeria