Songhay languages

Songhay
Songhai, Songai
Geographic
distribution:		 middle Niger River (Mali, Niger, Benin, Burkina Faso, Nigeria)
Linguistic Classification: Nilo-Saharan (controversial)
 Songhay
Subdivisions:
—
ISO 639-2 and 639-5: son

The Songhay, Songhai, or Songai languages (pronounced [soŋaj], or [soŋoj] in the dialects of Gao and Timbuktu; the term Sonrai is also sometimes used.) are a group of closely related languages/dialects centered on the middle stretches of the Niger River in the west African states of Mali, Niger, Benin, Burkina Faso, and Nigeria. They have been widely used as a lingua franca in that region ever since the era of the Songhay Empire. In Mali, the government has officially adopted the dialect of Gao (east of Timbuktu) as the dialect to be used as a medium of primary education.[1]

There is conflicting information on interintelligibility of Songhay languages. For example, the Gao dialect (of Koyraboro Senni Songhay language) is reportedly unintelligible to speakers of the Zarma dialect of Niger, which has by far the most number of reported native speakers of any Songhay dialect or language.[2] On the other hand, second-language speakers of Zarma were able to communicate with people in rural communities around Gao, but had difficulty in Gao city (possibly because of intermixing with other languages)[3]

For linguists, a major cause of interest in the Songhay languages has been the difficulty of determining their genetic affiliation; they are commonly taken to be Nilo-Saharan, following Greenberg 1963, but this classification remains controversial, with little evidence to support it. Dimmendaal (2008) believes that for now it is best considered an independent language family.[4]

The name Songhay is historically neither an ethnic nor a linguistic designation, but a name for the ruling caste of the Songhay Empire. Under the influence of French language usage, speakers in Mali have increasingly been adopting it as an ethnic self-designation;[5] however, other Songhay-speaking groups identify themselves with other ethnic terms, such as Zarma (Djerma) or Isawaghen.

A few precolonial poems and letters composed in Songhay and written in the Arabic alphabet are extant in Timbuktu (preserved at the Ahmad Baba Center for Documentation and Historical Research[6]). However, in modern times Songhay is written in the Latin alphabet.

Contents

Dialect groupings and geographical distribution[7]

Researchers classify the Songhay languages into two main branches, Southern and Northern.

Proposals on the genetic affiliation of Songhay

Westermann hesitated between assigning it to Gur or considering it an isolate, and Delafosse grouped it with Mande. At present, Songhay is normally considered to be Nilo-Saharan, following Joseph Greenberg's 1963 reclassification of African languages; Greenberg's argument is based on about 70 claimed cognates, including pronouns. This proposal has been developed further by, in particular, Lionel Bender and Christopher Ehret; Bender sees it as an independent subfamily of Nilo-Saharan, while Ehret, based on 565 claimed cognates, regards it as most closely related to the Maban languages of western Sudan and eastern Chad. Roger Blench notes that Songhay shares the defining singulative–plurative morphology typical of Nilo-Saharan languages, though it is difficult to show that any of the branches of Nilo-Saharan are actually related.

However, a Nilo-Saharan classification is not uncontroversial. Greenberg's argument was subjected to serious criticism by Lacroix (1969, pp. 91-92), who deemed only about 30 of Greenberg's claimed cognates acceptable, and moreover argued that these held mainly between Zarma and the neighboring Saharan languages, thus leading one to suspect them of being loanwords. Certain Songhay-Mande similarities have long been observed (at least since Westermann), and Mukarovsky (1966), Creissels (1981), and Nicolaï (1977, 1984) investigated the possibility of a Mande relationship; Creissels made some 50 comparisons, including many body parts and morphological suffixes (such as the causative in -endi), while Nicolaï claimed some 450 similar words as well as some conspicuous typological traits. However, Nicolaï eventually concluded that this approach was not adequate, and in 1990 proposed a distinctly novel hypothesis: that Songhay is a Berber-based creole language, restructured under Mande influence. In support of this he proposed 412 similarities, ranging all the way from basic vocabulary (tasa "liver") to obvious borrowings (anzad "violin", alkaadi "qadi".) Others, such as Gerrit Dimmendaal, were not convinced, and Nicolaï (2003) appears to consider the question of Songhay's origins still open, while arguing against Ehret and Bender's proposed etymologies.

Greenberg's morphological similarities with Nilo-Saharan include the personal pronouns ai (cf. Zaghawa ai), 'I', ni (cf. Kanuri nyi), 'you (sg.)', yer (eg Kanuri -ye), 'we', wor (cf. Kanuri -wi), 'you (pl.)'; relative and adjective formants -ma (eg Kanuri -ma) and -ko (cf. Maba -ko), a plural suffix -an (?), a hypothetical plural suffix -r (cf. Teso -r) which he takes to appear in the pronouns yer and wor, intransitive/passive -a (cf. Teso -o).

The most striking of the Mande similarities listed by Creissels are the third person pronouns a sg. (pan-Mande a), i pl. (pan-Mande i or e), the demonstratives wo "this" (cf. Manding o, wo) and no "there" (cf. Soninke no, other Mande na), the negative na (found in a couple of Manding dialects) and negative perfect mana (cf. Manding má, máŋ), the subjunctive ma (cf. Manding máa), the copula ti (cf. Bisa ti, Manding de/le), the verbal connective ka (cf. Manding kà), the suffixes -ri (resultative - cf. Mandinka -ri, Bambara -li process nouns), -ncè (ethnonymic, cf. Soninke -nke, Mandinka -nka), -anta (ordinal, cf. Soninke -ndi, Mandinka -njaŋ...), -anta (resultative participle, cf. Soninke -nte), -endi (causative, cf. Soninke, Mandinka -ndi), and the postposition ra "in" (cf. Manding lá, Soso ra...)

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Heath 2005
  2. ↑ Ethnologue report for Niger
  3. ↑ Personal communication with Peace Corps volunteers from Niger who traveled to Mali (c. 2003), Don Osborn
  4. ↑ Gerrit Dimmendaal, 2008. "Language Ecology and Linguistic Diversity on the African Continent", Language and Linguistics Compass 2/5:843ff.
  5. ↑ Heath 1999:2
  6. ↑ http://www.sum.uio.no/research/mali/timbuktu/research/articles/manuscript%20heritage%20timbuk.pdf
  7. ↑ A map of the dialects is provided by Ethnologue at its Web site. See the list of External Links.
  8. ↑ Heath 1999:1
  9. ↑ Songhay, Koyra Chiini at Ethnologue
  10. ↑ Ethnologue, Languages of Niger
  11. ↑ Charles & Ducroz 1976
  12. ↑ Songhay, Koyraboro Senni at Ethnologue
  13. ↑ Heath 1999:xv

External links

Bibliography

Publisher and publication abbreviations: CSLI = Center for the Study of Language and Information. IFAN = Institut Français d'Afrique Noire (since renamed the Institut Fondamental d'Afrique Noire SELAF = Société d'études linguistiques et anthropologiques de France. SUGIA = Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika, journal published by Rüdiger Köppe Verlag, Cologne (Köln). Köppe = Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.

On genetic affiliation