| Gbe | |
|---|---|
| Geographic distribution | West Africa (parts ofGhana,Togo,Benin,Nigeria) |
| Linguistic classification | Niger–Congo? |
| Proto-language | Proto-Gbe |
| Subdivisions | |
| Language codes | |
| Glottolog | gbee1241 |
 Map showing the distribution of the major Gbe dialect areas (after Capo 1988, 1991). | |
TheGbe languages (pronounced[ɡ͡bè])[1] form a cluster of about twenty relatedlanguages stretching across the area between easternGhana and westernNigeria. The total number of speakers of Gbe languages is between four and eight million. The most widely spoken Gbe language isEwe (10.3 million speakers in Ghana andTogo), followed byFon (5 million, mainly inBenin). The Gbe languages were traditionally placed in theKwa branch of theNiger–Congo languages, but more recently have been classified asVolta–Niger languages. They include five major dialect clusters:Ewe,Fon,Aja,Gen (Mina), andPhla–Pherá.
Most of the Gbe peoples came from the east to their present dwelling-places in several migrations between the tenth and the fifteenth century. Some of thePhla–Pherá peoples however are thought to be the original inhabitants of the area who have intermingled with the Gbe immigrants, and the Gen people probably originate from theGa-Adangbe people inGhana. In the late eighteenth century, many speakers of Gbe were enslaved and transported to theNew World: it is believed that Gbe languages played some role in the genesis of severalCaribbeancreole languages, especiallyHaitian Creole andSranantongo (Surinamese Creole).
Around 1840, German missionaries started linguistic research into the Gbe languages. In the first half of the twentieth century, the AfricanistDiedrich Hermann Westermann was one of the most prolific contributors to the study of Gbe. The first internal classification of the Gbe languages was published in 1988 byH.B. Capo, followed by a comparativephonology in 1991. The Gbe languages aretonal,isolating languages and the basic word order issubject–verb–object.
The Gbe language area is bordered to the west and east by theVolta River in Ghana and theWeme River in Benin. The northern border is between 6 and 8 degreeslatitude and the southern border is theAtlantic coast. The area is neighbored mainly byKwa languages, except for the east and north-east, whereYorùbá is spoken. To the west,Ga–Dangme,Guang andAkan are spoken. To the north, it is bordered byAdele,Aguna, Akpafu, Lolobi, and Yorùbá.
Estimates of the total number of speakers of Gbe languages vary considerably. Capo (1988) gives a modest estimate of four million, while SIL'sEthnologue (15th edition, 2005) gives eight million. The most widely spoken Gbe languages are Ewe (Ghana andTogo) and Fon (Benin, eastern Togo) at four million and 3 million speakers, respectively. Ewe is a language of formal education for secondary schools and universities in Ghana, and is also used in non-formal education inTogo. In Benin, Aja (740,000 speakers) and Fon were two of the six national languages selected by the government for adult education in 1992.
Greenberg, following Westermann (1952), placed the Gbe languages in theKwa family of theNiger–Congo languages.[2] The extent of the Kwa branch has fluctuated through the years, andRoger Blench places the Gbe languages in a Volta–Niger branch with former East Kwa languages to their east.
Gbe is adialect continuum. Based on comparative research, Capo (1988) divides it into five clusters, with each cluster consisting of several mutually intelligible dialects. The borders between the clusters are not always distinct. The five clusters are:[3]
| Name | Alternate names | Speakers | Some dialects | Region |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ewe | Vhe, Ɛ̀ʋɛ̀ gbè | ca. 3,600,000 | Anlo-(Keta area)Along the coast, Ewedome, (Ho area) Hill country, Tongu (Sogakope area) along the Volta River | lower half of Ghana east of theVolta River; southwest Togo |
| Gen | Gẽ, Mina, Gɛn gbe | ca. 400,000 | Gliji, Anexo, Agoi | Lake Togo, aroundAnexo |
| Aja | Aja gbe, Adja | ca. 500,000 | Dogbo, Sikpi | Togo,Benin area, inland along theMono River |
| Fon | Fɔn gbè | ca. 1,700,000 | Gun, Kpase, Agbome, Maxi | southeast Togo, Benin west of theWeme River and along the coast |
| Phla–Pherá | Fla, Offra, Xwla gbe | ca. 400,000 | Alada, Toli, Ayizo | Togo and Benin along the coast and aroundLake Ahémé |
Kluge (2011)[4] proposes that the Gbe languages consist of adialect continuum that can be split into three large clusters.
The dialect continuum as a whole was called 'Ewe' byWestermann, the most influential researcher on the cluster, who used the term 'Standard Ewe' to refer to the written form of the language. Other linguists have called the Gbe languages as a whole 'Aja', after the name of the local language of the Aja-Tado area in Benin. However, use of this single language's name for the language cluster as a whole was not only not acceptable to all speakers but also rather confusing. Since the establishment of aworking group at the West African Languages Congress atCotonou in 1980, H. B. Capo's name suggestion has been generally accepted:'Gbe', which is the word for 'language/dialect' in each of the languages.[5]
Ketu, settlement in present-day Benin Republic (formerly known as Dahomey), might be an appropriate starting point for a brief history of the Gbe-speaking peoples. Ewe traditions refer to Ketu asAmedzofe ("origin of humanity") orMawufe ("home of the Supreme Being"). It is believed that the inhabitants of Ketu were pressed westward by a series of wars between the tenth and the thirteenth century. In Ketu, the ancestors of the Gbe-speaking peoples separated themselves from other refugees and began to establish their own identity.[citation needed]
Attacks between the thirteenth and the fifteenth century drove a large section of the group still further westward. They settled in the ancient kingdom ofTado (also Stado or Stádó) on the Mono river (in present-dayTogo). The Tado kingdom was an important state inWest Africa up to the late fifteenth century.[citation needed]
In the course of the thirteenth or fourteenth century, theNotsie (or Notsé, Notsye, Wancé) kingdom was established by emigrants from the Tado kingdom; Notsie would later (around 1500) become the home of another group of migrants from Tado, theEwe people. Around 1550, emigrants from Tado established theAllada (or Alada) kingdom, which became the center of theFon people. Tado is also the origin of theAja people; in fact, the name Aja-Tado (Adja-Tado) is frequently used to refer to their language.Aja is considered the mother tribe by the rest of Gbe speaking people as many of the tribes trace their migration routes through Aja Tado(formerly known as Azame).[citation needed]
Other peoples that speak Gbe languages today are theGen people (Mina, Ge) aroundAnexo, who are probably of Ga andFante origin, and thePhla and Pherá peoples, some of whom consist of the traditional inhabitants of the area intermingled with early migrants from Tado.[6]
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Little is known of the history of the Gbe languages during the time that only Portuguese, Dutch and Danish traders landed on theGold Coast (roughly 1500 to 1650). The trade of mostly gold and agricultural goods did not exercise much influence on social and cultural structures of the time. No need was felt to investigate the indigenous languages and cultures; the languages generally used in trade at this time werePortuguese andDutch. Someloanwords remain from this period, for exampleatrapoe 'stairs'[7] from Dutchtrap andduku '(piece of) cloth' from Dutchdoek or Danishdug. The few written accounts that stem from this period focus on trade. As more European countries established trade posts in the area,missionaries were sent out. As early as 1658, Spanish missionaries translated theDoctrina Christiana into the language ofAllada, making it one of the earliest texts in any West African language. The Gbe language used in this document is thought to be a somewhat mangled form ofGen.[8]
The relatively peaceful situation was profoundly changed with the rise of thetransatlantic slave trade, which reached its peak in the late eighteenth century when as many as 15,000 slaves per year were exported from the area around Benin as part of atriangular trade between the European mainland, the west coast of Africa and the colonies of theNew World (notably the Caribbean). The main actors in this process wereDutch (and to a lesser extentEnglish) traders; captives were supplied mostly by cooperating coastal African states.
TheBight of Benin, precisely the area where the Gbe languages are spoken, was one of the centers of the slave trade at the turn of the eighteenth century. The export of 5% of the population each year resulted in overall population decline. Moreover, since the majority of the exported captives were male, the slave trade led to an imbalance in the female/male ratio. In some parts of theSlave Coast the ratio reached two adult women for every man. Several wars (sometimes deliberately provoked by European powers in order todivide and rule) further distorted social and economical relations in the area. The lack of earlier linguistic data makes it difficult to trace the inevitable linguistic changes that resulted from this turbulent period.
Around 1850, the transatlantic slave trade had virtually ceased. As the grip of European colonial powers strengthened, slave raiding became prohibited, trading focused on goods once more and the Europeans took it to be their calling to Christianize the colonized parts of Africa. In 1847 the Norddeutsche Missions-Gesellschaft (Bremen) started its work inKeta.
In 1857, the first Ewe grammar,Schlüssel der Ewesprache, dargeboten in den Grammatischen Grundzügen des Anlodialekts, was published by missionaryJ. B. Schlegel of the Bremen mission. Five different dialects of Gbe (at that time called theEwé Language-Field) were already distinguished by Schlegel, notesRobert Needham Cust in hisModern Languages of Africa (1883).[9] The dialects listed by Cust do not map exactly onto the five subgroups now distinguished by Capo, which is not too surprising since Cust himself admits that he relies on a multitude of often conflicting sources. Fon is in fact listed twice (once as 'the dialect of the province of Dahomé' and once as 'Fogbe').
Where previous literature consisted mostly of travel journals sometimes accompanied by short word lists, Schlegel's work marked the beginning of a period of prolific lexicographic and linguistic research into the various Gbe languages. Important writers of this period includeJohann Gottlieb Christaller (Die Volta-Sprachen-Gruppe, 1888),Ernst Henrici (Lehrbuch der Ephe-Sprache, 1891, actually the first comparative Gbe grammar), J. Knüsli (Ewe-German-English Vocabulary, 1892) andMaurice Delafosse (Manuel Dahoméen (Fon), 1894).
In 1902 the missionaryDiedrich Hermann Westermann contributed an article titled "Beiträge zur Kenntnis der Yewe-Sprachen in Togo" toZeitschrift für Afrikanische und Oceanische Sprachen. Westermann became one of the most productive and influential writers on the Gbe languages, and his output dominated the Gbe literature and analysis of the first half of the twentieth century. He wrote mainly on the Western Gbe languages, especially onEwe (though he often used the term 'Ewe' to denote the Gbe dialect continuum as a whole). Among his most important works on Ewe are hisA Study of the Ewe language (1930) andWörterbuch der Ewe-Sprache (1954).
From 1930 on, publications on various Gbe languages appeared rapidly, the vast majority of them dealing with individual Gbe languages. A significant exception is formed by the extensivecomparative linguistic research ofHounkpati B Christophe Capo, which resulted in an internal classification of the Gbe languages and a reconstruction of the proto-Gbephonology. Much of the comparative research for Capo's classification of the Gbe languages was carried out in the 1970s, and partial results were published in the late 1970s and early 1980s in the form of articles on specificphonological developments in various branches of Gbe and, notably, in the form of a unified standard orthography of Gbe. In hisRenaissance du Gbe (1988), the internal classification of Gbe was published in full for the first time. In 1991, Capo published a comparative phonology of Gbe. In this period, Capo also initiatedLabo Gbe (Int.), the 'Laboratory for research on Gbe languages', based in Benin, which has since fostered research and published several collections of papers on the Gbe languages.
In the early 1990s,SIL International initiated a study to assess which Gbe communities could benefit from existingliteracy efforts and whether additional literacy campaigns in some of the remaining communities would be needed. Synchronised linguistic research carried out in the course of this study shed more light on the relations between the various varieties of Gbe.[10] In general, the SIL studies corroborated many of Capo's findings and led to adjustment of some of his more tentative groupings.
The following phonetic segments are attested in Gbe languages:
| Labial | Labio- dental | Lamino -interdental | Lamino- alveolar | Apico- post-alveolar | Alveolo -palatal | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | lab. | plain | lab. | plain | lab. | ||||||||
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | ŋʷ | ||||||||
| Plosive / Affricate | voiceless | p | t | ts | tʃ | k | k͡p | ||||||
| voiced | b | d | dz | ɖ | dʒ | ɡ | ɡ͡b | ||||||
| Fricative | voiceless | ɸ | f | s | ʃ | χ | χʷ | ||||||
| voiced | β | v | z | ʒ | ʁ | ʁʷ | |||||||
| Trill | plain | r | |||||||||||
| nasalized | r̃ | ||||||||||||
| Approximant | plain | l | j | ɥ | ɰ | w | |||||||
| nasalized | l̃ | j̃ | ɥ̃ | w̃ | |||||||||
Notes
No Gbe language exhibits all of the above forty-two phonetic segments. According to Capo (1991), all of them have the following twenty-three consonants in common:b, m, t, d, ɖ, n, k, g, kp, gb, ɲ, f, v, s, z, χ, ʁ, r, r̃, l, l̃, y, w.
The following vowels are found in Gbe languages:
| Capo 1991:24 | Front | Central | Back |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i•ĩ | u•ũ | |
| Close-mid | e•ẽ | o•õ | |
| ə•ə̃ | |||
| Open-mid | ɛ•ɛ̃ | ɔ•ɔ̃ | |
| Open | a•ã |
In general, each Gbe variety makes use of a subset of twelve vowels, sevenoral and fivenasalised. The vowels/iĩuũeoɛ̃ɔɔ̃aã/ are attested in all Gbe languages.
Nasalization plays an important role in the vowel inventory: every vowel in the Gbe languages occurs in a non-nasalized and a nasalized form. Capo (1991) observes that the degree of nasality of nasal vowels is less when they occur after nasal consonants than after non-nasal ones.
Capo (1981) has argued that nasalization in Gbe languages should be analyzed phonemically as a feature relevant to vowels and not to consonants.[11] This means that nasal vowels are distinct from oral vowels, while nasal and voiced oral stops are treated as predictable variants. For example, non-syllabic nasal consonants are always followed by a nasal vowel, and syllabic nasal consonants are analyzed as reduced forms of consonant–vowel syllables. This analysis is in line with reconstructions of theproto-Volta–Congo language, for which similar proposals have been made.[12]
The Gbe languages aretonal languages. In general, they have three tone levels, High (H), Mid (M), and Low (L), of which the lower two are not phonemically contrastive. Thus, the basic tonemes of Gbe are 'High' and 'Non-High', where the High toneme may be realised as High or Rising and the Non-High toneme may be realised as Low or Mid. The tones of Gbenouns are often affected by theconsonant of the noun stem. Thevoicing of this consonant affects the realisation of the Non-High toneme roughly as follows: If the consonant is a voicedobstruent, the Non-High toneme is realised as Low (è-ḏà 'snake') and if the consonant is a voiceless obstruent or asonorant, the Non-High toneme is realised as Mid (ām̲ē 'person', à-f̱ī 'mouse'). The consonants that induce tonal alternations in this way are sometimes calleddepressor consonants.
The basicsyllable form of Gbe languages is commonly rendered (C1)(C2)V(C3), meaning that there at least has to be a nucleus V, and that there are various possible configurations of consonants (C1-3). The V position may be filled by any of the vowels or by a syllabic nasal. It is also the location of the tone. While virtually any consonant can occur in the C1 position, there exist several restrictions on the kind of consonants that can occur in the C2 and C3 positions. In general, onlyliquid consonants may occur as C2 , while only nasals occur in the C3 position.
Mostverbs in Gbe languages have one of the basic syllable forms. Gbenominals are generally preceded by a nominal prefix consisting of a vowel (cf. the Ewe wordaɖú, 'tooth'). The quality of this vowel is restricted to the subset of non-nasal vowels. In some cases the nominal prefix is reduced toschwa or lost: the word for 'fire' isizo in Phelá,ədʒo in Wací-Ewe anddʒo in Pecí-Ewe. The nominal prefix can be seen as a relic of a typical Niger–Congonoun class system.
The Gbe languages areisolating languages, and as such express many semantic features by lexical items. Of a moreagglutinative nature are the commonly usedperiphrastic constructions. In contrast toBantu languages, a major branch of the Niger–Congo language family, Gbe languages have very little inflectional morphology. There is for example no subject–verbagreement whatsoever in Gbe, nogender agreement, and no inflection of nouns for number. The Gbe languages make extensive use of a rich system of tense/aspect markers.
Reduplication is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word, or part of it, is repeated. The Gbe languages, like mostKwa languages, make extensive use of reduplication in the formation of new words, especially in deriving nouns, adjectives and adverbs from verbs. Thus in Ewe, the verblã́, 'to cut', is nominalised by reduplication, yieldinglãlã́, 'the act of cutting'. Triplication is used to intensify the meaning of adjectives and adverbs, e.g. Eweko 'only' →kokooko 'only, only, only'.
The basic word order of Gbe clauses is generallysubject–verb–object, except in theimperfective tense and some related constructions. The Gbe languages, notably Ewe, Fon and Anlo, played a role in the genesis of severalCaribbean creole languages—Haitian Creole for example is classifiable as having aFrench vocabulary with the syntax of a Gbe language.[13]
The Gbe languages do not have a marked distinction between tense and aspect. The onlytense that is expressed by a simple morphological marker in Gbe languages is thefuture tense. The future marker isná ora, as can be seen from the examples below.
Other tenses are arrived at by means of special time adverbs or by inference from the context, and this is where the tense/aspect distinction becomes blurred. For example, what is sometimes referred to asperfective aspect in Gbe blends with the notion of past tense since it expresses an event with a definite endpoint,located in the past (see example sentences below).
ŋútsu
man
á
a
ɸlè
buy
xéxí
umbrella
ŋútsu áa ɸlè xéxí
man DET FUT buy umbrella
'the man will buy an umbrella' (Ewegbe, future marker)
ŋútsu
man
á
ɸlè
buy:PFV
xéxí
umbrella
ŋútsu á ɸlè xéxí
man DET buy:PFV umbrella
'the man bought an umbrella' (Ewegbe, perfective)
Focus, which is used to draw attention to a particular part of the utterance, to signify contrast or to emphasize something, is expressed in Gbe languages by leftward movement of the focused element and by way of a focus markerwɛ́ (Gungbe, Fongbe),yé (Gengbe) oré (Ewegbe), suffixed to the focused element.
àxwé
house
yé
Kòfí
Kofi
tù
build:PFV
àxwéyé Kòfí tù
house FOC Kofi build:PFV
'Kofi built A HOUSE' (Gengbe, focus)
Questions can be constructed in various ways in Gbe languages. A simple declarative sentence can be turned into an interrogative utterance by the use of the question markerà at the end of the sentence. Another way of forming questions is by using question words. These so-calledquestion word questions are much akin to focus constructions in Gbe. The question word is found at the beginning of the sentence, as is the focus marker. The close relationship to focus is also clear from the fact that in Gbe, a sentence cannot contain a question word and a focused element simultaneously.
étɛ́
what
Sɛ́ná
Sena
xìá?
read:PFV
étɛ́ Sɛ́ná xìá?
what Sena read:PFV
'What did Sena read?' (Gungbe, question word question)
Topicalization, the signalling of the subject that is being talked about, is achieved in Gbe languages by the move of the topicalized element to the beginning of the sentence. In some Gbe languages, a topic marker is suffixed to the topicalized element. In other Gbe languages the topic has to bedefinite. A topicalized element precedes the focused element in a sentence containing both.
...ɖɔ̀
that
dàn
snake
ɔ́,
Kòfí
Kofi
wɛ̀
hùì
kill:PFV
~
it
...ɖɔ̀dànɔ́, Kòfí wɛ̀ hùì ~
that snake DET Kofi FOC kill:PFV it
'...that the snake, KOFI killed it' (Fongbe, topic)
Negation is expressed in various ways in the Gbe languages. In general, three methods of negation can be distinguished: Languages like Gungbe express negation by a preverbal markermá; Fongbe-type languages express negation either like Gungbe, or with a sentence-final markerã; and languages like Ewegbe require both the preverbal markermé and a sentence-final markero.
| Kɔ̀jómáxɔ̀kátikátilɔ́ | KojoNEG buy kiteDET | Kojo did not buy the kite | (Gungbe) |
| Kɔ̀kúmánáxɔ̀àsɔ́nɔ́ | KokuNEG FUT buy crabDET | Koku will not buy the crab | (Fongbe) |
| Kɔ̀kúnáxɔ̀àsɔ́nɔ́ã | KokuFUT buy crabDET NEG | Koku will not buy the crab | (Fongbe) |
| Kòfiméɖùnúò | KofiNEG eat thingNEG | Kofi did not eat | (Ewegbe) |
Gbe languages share anareal feature found in many languages of the Volta basin, theserial verb construction. This means that two or more verbs can be juxtaposed in one clause, sharing the same subject, lacking conjunctive markings, resulting in a meaning that expresses the consecutive or simultaneous aspect of the actions of the verbs.
Kofí
Kofi
trɔ
turn:PFV
dzo
leave:PFV
kpoo
quietly
Kofítrɔdzo kpoo
Kofi turn:PFV leave:PFV quietly
'Kofi turned and left quietly' (Ewegbe, serial verb construction)
