The Pévé language, sometimes referred to as Lamé (the main dialect), is a member of the Masa branch of the Chadic family that is spoken in parts of Cameroon and the Republic of Chad.
Varieties
The term "Zime" is not used in Cameroon, but it is used by ALCAM (2012) to serve as a cover term for the Lame, Peve, and three varieties spoken in Cameroon. There are 5,720 speakers (SIL 2000). Zime is spoken in Cameroon in Bénoué department (Northern Region), along the Chadian border. It is also spoken in Chad. The dialects spoken in Cameroon are:
*Peve, in the north, straddling
Bibemi
Bibemi is a town and commune in Cameroon.
Notable people
* Goggo Addi (1911–1999), storyteller who worked to preserve Fulani cultural heritage
See also
*Communes of Cameroon
The Divisions of Cameroon are the third-level units of admini ...
Arrondissement (
Bénoué
Bénoué is a Departments of Cameroon, department of North Province (Cameroon), North Province in Cameroon. The department covers an area of 13,614 km and as of 2005 had a total population of 1,781,955. The capital of the department lies at ...
Department) and Rey-Bouba Arrondissement (
Mayo-Rey Department)
*Taari, in the central area, in
Rey Bouba Arrondissement (
Mayo-Rey Department) to the west of
Bouba Njida National Park
*Lame, in
Rey Bouba Arrondissement, but to the east of
Bouba Njida National Park, in the Djibao (Dzipao) area. It is different from
Lame of Nigeria.
Sociolinguistic situation
An Ethnologue survey in 1999 identified about 30,000 speakers of Pévé in the Republic of Chad and 6,000 speakers in the North and Far North regions of Cameroon (''Ethnologue''). Like most speakers of Chadic languages, Pévé speakers tend to be fluent in their language of heritage as well as the vehicular languages of their respective areas. These include the
Mundang and Fula languages, both of which are members of the Niger-Congo language family, as well as French, English, and other languages. Unlike many neighboring languages, the number of speakers of Pévé appears to have increased over the past two decades. This is in part due to the Comité pour le Promotion de la Langue et de la Culture Lamé (CPLCL), an organization based in Cameroon and Chad whose goal is to share and preserve cultural customs and traditions, including language use.
The name Lamé is also used for a dialect of the related
Ngeté-Herdé language
Ngeté-Herdé, also known as Lamé, is an Afro-Asiatic dialect cluster
A dialect is a variety of language spoken by a particular group of people. This may include dominant and standardized varieties as well as vernacular, unwritten, or no ...
.
Grammar
Like other Chadic languages, Pévé has a rich set of grammatical forms and functions that differ from those of closely related languages, even though the related languages may be spoken just a few kilometers away. For example, Pévé differs from many Chadic languages in having a copula corresponding to ‘to be’. Unlike most languages with an inherent copula, the copula in Pévé can be used in reference to past or future time but not in reference to present time. Another interesting feature of Pévé is the use of pronouns to mark tense, mood, and aspect, along with the grammatical functions of subject and object. These and other unusual form-function relationships make Pévé a likely source for future linguistic studies.
Phonology
Consonants
Contrary to previous assertions, Pévé does not "contrast"
voiceless
In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, it is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word phonation implies v ...
and
voiced glottal fricative
The voiced glottal fricative, sometimes called breathy-voiced glottal transition, is a type of sound used in some spoken languages which patterns like a fricative or approximant consonant '' phonologically'', but often lacks the usual ''phonet ...
s ( vs. ).
In fact, the "voiced glottal fricative" does not exist (either phonologically or phonemically) in the Pévé language.
Vowels
Peve has 5 vowels: /i/, /e/, /a/, /o/, /u/, plus their nasalized forms (/ĩ/, /ẽ/, /ã/, /õ/, /ũ/). The vowels /ɪ, ɛ, ɔ, ʊ/ occur as lax variations of their tense counterparts in closed syllables and occasionally in open syllables.
Publications
The grammatical and semantic forms and functions of Pévé, along with many cultural features, are described in detail in A Grammar of Pévé (see below), published in January 2020 by
Brill Publishers
Brill Academic Publishers () is a Dutch international academic publisher of books, academic journals, and Bibliographic database, databases founded in 1683, making it one of the oldest publishing houses in the Netherlands. Founded in the South ...
. The volume, based on data gathered from 2012 to present, is written by Erin Shay, professor of linguistics at the University of Colorado, Boulder, in collaboration with Lazare Wambadang, a native speaker of Pévé, professional educator and president of Comité pour le Promotion de la Langue et de la Culture Lamé.
References
*
External links
*''A Grammar of Pévé''
Videoshowing how publication of a written grammar of a lesser-known language may have a positive effect on native speakers of that language.
{{Masa languages
Chadic languages
Languages of Chad