Wobé language
Wobé (Ouobe) is a Kru language spoken in Ivory Coast. It is one of several languages in a dialect continuum called Wèè (Wɛɛ).
| Wobé | |
|---|---|
| Northern Wèè | |
| Native to | Ivory Coast |
Native speakers | (160,000 cited 1993)[1] |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | wob |
| Glottolog | weno1238 |
Tone
Wobé is known for claims that it has the largest number of tones (fourteen) of any language in the world.[2] However, other researchers has not confirmed this, many of whom believe that some of these will turn out to be sequences of tones or prosodic effects,[3][4][5] though the Wèè languages in general do have extraordinarily large tone systems.
The fourteen posited tones are:[2]
| IPA | ˥ | ˦ | ˧ | ˨ | ˧˥ | ˧˦ | ˨˥ | ˨˦ | ˨˧ | ˥˩ | ˦˩ | ˧˩ | ˨˩ | ˨˧˩ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| B&L tone numbers | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 31 | 32 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 15 | 25 | 35 | 45 | 435 |
| Newman adjustment | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 20 | 21 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 04 | 14 | 24 | 34 | 324 |
Numerals
Wobe has a quinary, decimal system, and it is one of the only two Kru languages which have adopted the decimal system.[6]
References
- Wobé at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
- Bearth, Thomas; Link, Christa (1980). "The tone puzzle of Wobe". Studies in African Linguistics. 11 (2): 147–207.
- Singler, John Victor (1984). "On the underlying representation of contour tones in Wobe". Studies in African Linguistics. 15 (1): 59–75.
- Newman, Paul (1986). "Contour Tones in Grebo". In van der Hulst, Harry; Bogers, Koen; Mous, Marten (eds.). The Phonological Representation of Suprasegmentals. Publications in African Languages and Linguistics (Book 4). De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 190–191 (notes 12 and 14).
- Newman believes Singler is a valuable counterweight to Bearth & Link, but does not accept all his criticism; he accept the Wobe 43 toneme, for example, but believes it should be analyzed as /32/ (all tones being off by 1 compared to related dialects).
- Hofer, Verena, Numerals in Wobé language.
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