Goemai (alsoAnkwe) is anAfro-Asiatic (Chadic, West Chadic A) language spoken in the Great Muri Plains region ofPlateau State in centralNigeria, between theJos Plateau andBenue River. Goemai is also the name of the ethnic group of speakers of the Goemai language. The name 'Ankwe' has been used to refer to the people, especially in older literature and to outsiders.^[2]: 1 As of 2020, it is estimated that there are around 380,000 Goemai speakers.^[1]

Goemai is a predominantlyisolating language with thesubject–verb–object constituent order.

The language is considered threatened,^[1] which means that its adoption is declining, especially among children.^[2]: 6 Many are learningHausa as a first language instead, which is used extensively in official and educational settings.^[2]: 6

The spellingGoemai originates from the 1930s. Orthographicoe stands for themid-central vowelə, a practice that had been adopted by missionaries working among the Goemai inShendam during the 1930s, such as Father E. Sirlinger.^[3][4][5]

Genetically, Goemai has been consistently classified as a member of theAfro-Asiaticlanguage family in theWest Chadic A language sub-family.^{[2]: 1 [3][6]} There have been attempts to apply more specific genetic classifications to Goemai beyond its membership in the West Chadic A language family, but these attempts have not reached a consensus. Hellwig posits that Goemai is further included in the Angas-Gerka, Angas-Goemai, and Southern Angas-Goemai subfamilies,^[2] whereas Blench instead classifies Goemai as a member of the Bole-Angas and Angas subfamilies.^[3] Glottolog categorizes Goemai as a member of the West Chadic A.3, Goemaic, and Goemai-Chakato subfamilies.^[6]

Goemai has four main dialects: Duut, East Ankwe, Dorok, and K'wo, all of which are in common use and aremutually intelligible^{[2]: 3 [3]}

Goemai has elevenvowel phonemes which can be grouped bylength; four short vowels and seven long vowels. Orthographically, long vowels are represented by doubling the vowel symbol.^[2]: 18 Goemai also contains several vowel sounds which are non-phonemic, but occur allophonically, shown enclosed in square brackets in the table. In the table, sounds are represented on the left inIPA, and the right using Goemai orthography. Vowels are never syllable-initial in Goemai. While syllable-final vowels are generally short, there is no contrast between vowel lengths in this position.

Vowel length is contrastive, but only in the middle of syllables, as in pairs such askúr "tortoise" versuskúːr "burn", andʃʰɔ̀m "hyrax" versusʃʰɔ́ːm "guineafowl".^[2]: 35

There are also severaldiphthongs in Goemai, which are not believed to be phonemic. Instead, they likely arise as a result of phonological processes, includinglabialization and heightassimilation. Thediphthongs attested in Goemai include [ʉ͡a], [ʉ͡ə], [a͡u], [o͡u], [a͡i], [e͡i], and [o͡ːi].^[2]: 39

Goemai has theconsonants shown in the chart below, with symbols on the left indicating the IPA transcription, and symbols on the right denoting the orthography used by Hellwig.^[2]: 17 Symbols enclosed in square brackets are non-phonemic. All of the consonants in the table may appear at in syllable-initial positions, but some are restricted from appearing in syllable-final position.^{[2]: 54–55} Those phonemes that are attested in syllable-final position are annotated in the table below, while unannotated phonemes appear only at the beginning of a syllable. Goemai has a four-way contrast in its plosive inventory and a three-way contrast in its fricative inventory. Of note is Goemai's contrast between aspirated and unaspirated fricative sounds, which is rare among languages in general.^[2]: 19

Goemai is atonal language, making use of several distinctive tones. The exact number and pitch of these tones is disputed. It has been suggested that Goemai has three level tones high (é), mid (ē), and low (è) along with two contour tones: falling (ê) and rising (ě).^[2]: 42 Tone can be the only contrastive feature between words in Goemai, as shown in the followingminimal pairs:ɓák "here" (adv.) versusɓàk "disregard" (v.), andʃé "foot/leg" (n.) versusʃè "learn/teach" (v.).^[2]: 43

The level mid tone is not a basic tone of Goemai, and only appears as a result of assimilation or other phonological processes, includingdowndrift anddownstep.^[2]: 42 Although there are words that are posited to have an underlying rising tone, this tone cannot appear on a single syllable. Instead, it is always spread out across multiple syllables. The following example sentence demonstrates the underlying rising tone of the verb/nǎ/ "see" being spread to the following noun,/mà:r/ "farm". The underlying low tone of the noun then passes to the definite determiner clitic=hɔk, which lacks an underlying tone.

The rising tone is alternatively realized as a level high tone if it is not possible for it to spread.^{[2]: 42–43}

There are four syllabic forms in Goemai, as illustrated in the words below, with the relevant syllable(s) bolded.

In syllables of the form CVVC, the VV represents a single long vowel sound. Syllables of the form N can occur whenprenasalization of a sound manifests as a syllabic nasal. This is most common with the prenasalizing prefix /ⁿ-/, which acts as an adverbializer when affixed to verbs^[2]: 279 and as a locative when affixed to nouns.^[2]: 287

Goemai is classified as a mostlyisolating language.^[2]: 310 The large majority ofmorphemes consist of a single syllable and the large majority of words consist of a single morpheme.^[2]: 56 Though infrequent, polymorphemic words are attested in Goemai and can be formed via a number of regular processes.Affixation is sometimes used to form words, although many affixes are found only in non-productive plural forms, andcliticization is more common. Goemai also usesreduplication andcompounding to form words. Polysyllabic words are also less frequent than monosyllabic words, but are attested. Most commonly, polysyllabic words are of the formCV.CVC, where the first consonant may be subjected to secondary articulation, including prenasalization, labialization, orpalatalization.^[2]: 56

There are three open word classes in Goemai: nouns, verbs, and adverbs.^[2]: 9

Nouns in Goemai generally lack morphological marking for case, number, gender, and noun class.^[2]: 67 There are several exceptions to this general trend. For example, several words relating to people and body parts are marked for number, as are most loanwords from the Hausa language.^[2]: 71 Nouns can be differentiated from other parts of speech based on their syntactic role in a sentence, and the types of modifiers they accept.^[2]: 67

In Goemai, verbs are a basic form that can never be derived from other parts of speech. There are therefore no verbalizing morphemes. Moreover, it is quite rare for verbs to join with any other morphemes, be they derivational or inflectional.^[2]: 168 While individual verbs are generally single morphemes, entire verb phrases can be marked for tense, aspect, or modality.

In Goemai, some adverbs are underived base forms, whereas others are derived from verbs via affixation or cliticization with an adverbializer,^[2]: 279 as in the following example sentence:

Underived adverbs can be further modified by nominal modifiers, but this is not possible for derived adverbs.^[2]: 279

Affixes are uncommon in Goemai, and those that exist are predominantly prefixes, which must take the form CV, unless they consist of just a lone nasal.^[2]: 57 Two of the most common affixes are the affixesgòe-, which is used as a nominalizer, andN- (a single nasal matching the place of the following consonant), which is used as an adverbializer.^[2]: 314

While a handful of suffixes andinfixes do exist in the language, they are almost always used nonproductively as plural markers. Around 10% of the verbs of Goemai mark number in this way,^[2]: 173 while most other verbs in the language are completely unmarked.^[2]: 172

Goemai has a large inventory of clitics, which are used for word formation in broader distribution than affixes.^[2]: 310 Like prefixes, the majority of clitics take the form CV.^[2]: 57 Goemai has both proclitics and enclitics, although in Goemai, any clitic can also stand alone as a word on its own.^[2]: 310

Most of the clitics in Goemai are phrasal, including the very common clitics=hòe "exactly", andkò= "every/each; any".^[2]: 310

Modifiers such aslà=, the diminutive singular, and=hok, the definite determiner, can attach to noun phrases as clitics. Question particles typically manifest as enclitics at the end of a clause.^[2]: 310

In Goemai,reduplication is typically partial, though full reduplication exists in certain situations. Reduplication confers different meanings depending on the word being modified. Sometimes, quantifiers or adverbs are reduplicated to indicate increased intensity,^[2]: 263 as in the case ofzòk ("generous") being fully reduplicated aszòkzòk ("very very generous").^[2]: 281 Numerals can be reduplicated to indicate that the number is divided over a period of time, or distributed across several entities or groups, as ink'ún ("three") being reduplicated ask'ún k'ún ("three each").^[2]: 268 Partial reduplication is also a common technique for adverbializing verbs, as inpyá "become white" (v.) versuspòe-pyá "white" (adv.).^[2]: 280

In certain situations, such as when modifying words relating to location or distance, reduplicated forms do not differ in meaning from the base form, as inséng ("far") being partially reduplicated tosoè-séng ("far").^[2]: 263 In such cases, there is a distinction between partial reduplication, which results in the same meaning as the base form, and full reduplication, which intensifies the meaning. Instead of full reduplication of a word, entire phrases can be reduplicated for a similar intensifying effect.^[2]: 273

Polysyllabic words are sometimes formed by combining two existing words via compounding, as in the two-syllable wordhàːm.ʃíŋ ("gruel"), which is formed from the two single syllable wordshàːm ("water"), andʃíŋ ("mix").^[2]: 59

Certain verbs of Goemai can be modified by a special class of approximately 80ideophones.^[2]: 281 Each modifies only a single other verb in the language, and can modify no other verb. The effect of this modification is to emphasize the result of the verb, as in the following example (ideophone in bold):

The basic word order of Goemai is strictlysubject-verb-object in transitive clauses,^[2]: 375 as shown in the following example sentences.

In intransitive sentences, there is a strict SV basic word order,^[2]: 374 as shown below:

In cases where arguments are redundant, or can be inferred from the surrounding context, they are usually omitted. In particular, the subject may be omitted entirely if it is third person singular, so long as it is clear which entity is being referenced. In addition, direct objects may be omitted, but only if they refer to inanimate objects or lower animals.^[2]: 375

In the following example, the subject "rabbit" is omitted after being introduced once:

• Hellwig, Birgit (2011)A Grammar of Goemai. 596 p., Mouton De Gruyter.ISBN 3-11-023828-4,ISBN 978-3-11-023828-0.
• Hellwig, Birgit (2003)Fieldwork among the Goemai in Nigeria: discovering the grammar of property expressions.STUF
• Hellwig, Birgit (2003)The grammatical coding of postural semantics in Goemai (a West Chadic language of Nigeria). MPI Series in Psycholinguistics [dissertation Nijmegen].[1][the introduction contains info about the geography, demography, and sociolinguistics of Goemai; chapter 2 is a grammatical sketch of Goemai]
• Hoffman, Carl (1970) 'Towards a comoparative phonology of the languages of the Angas–Goemai group.' Unpublished manuscript.
• Kraft, Charles H. (1981)Chadic wordlists. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer (Marburger Studien zur Afrika- und Asienkunde, Serie A: Afrika, 23, 24, 25).[contains a phonological sketch of Goemai and also a Goemai word list]
• Wolff, Hans (1959) 'Subsystem typologies and area linguistics.'Anthropological Linguistics, 1, 7, 1–88.[phonological inventory of Goemai (Duut dialect)]

• ELARarchive of Goemai texts, including open access materials
• Goemai DoReCo corpus compiled by Birgit Hellwig. Audio recordings of narrative texts with transcriptions time-aligned at the phone level, translations, and time-aligned morphological annotations.

• Languages of Nigeria
• West Chadic languages
• Subject–verb–object languages
• Isolating languages

• Language articles citing Ethnologue 26
• Webarchive template wayback links
• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata
• Pages with plain IPA