Songhay languages

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The Songhay languages (IPA: [soŋaj]; in the dialects of Gao and Timbuktu: [soŋoj]) are a group of closely related languages/dialects centered on the middle stretches of the Niger River in present day Mali and Niger, widely used as a lingua franca there ever since the era of the Songhay Empire. 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, and a number of alternatives have been proposed in subsequent literature.

The name Songhay is historically neither an ethnic nor a linguistic term, but a name for the ruling caste of the Songhay Empire. Under the influence of French language usage, speakers in Mali are increasingly adopting it as an ethnic term^[1]; however, other Songhay-speaking groups identify themselves with other ethnic terms, such as Zarma (Djerma) or Isawaghen. In Mali, the dialect of Gao (downriver, east, of Timbuktu) has been officially adopted as the standard soŋoy for primary schooling.^[2]

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

• Southern Songhay is centered on the Niger River. This branch has been provisionally classified by some workers into Eastern and Western. Heath 2005 describes shortcomings of this model. Nicolaï 1981 cautiously refrains from proposing a simple classification of Southern into two or three divisions. The western division contains Koyra Chiini (KCh), "town language",^[3] the local language of the historically eminent university town of Timbuktu (French Tombouctou), and Djenné Chiini. The Eastern division contains the remaining Southern languages and dialects. Zarma (Djerma), the most widely spoken Songhay language with its two million speakers (1998)^[4], is a major language of southwestern Niger (where the Niger River flows) including the capital Niamey. Downriver of Zarma is Dendi, heavily influenced by Bariba. Upriver of Zarma is Kaado, spoken up to the border of Mali. In Mali, Koyraboro Senni or Koroboro Senni (KS), "town dweller language", with 400,000 speakers^[5], is the language of the town of Gao, the seat of the old Songhay Empire. To its west is Koyra Chiini with about 200,000 speakers.^[5] Humburi Senni, classified by Nicolaï 1981 as "Central Southern Songhay", is spoken in an enclave around Hombori, south of the Niger River's great bend. Another Eastern Southern dialect was discovered in 1998 in several villages about 120 km west of Hombori: its speakers call it Tondi Songway Kiini (TSK), "mountain Songhay language". Among the Malian Songhay languages, TSK is the only one with lexical tones, and in several ways it seems to be the most conservatively evolved member.^[6]
• The much smaller Northern Songhai is a group of heavily Berber-influenced dialects spoken in the Sahara. The nomadic varieties include Tihishit in central Niger around Mazababou (with two sub-dialects, Tagdal and Tabarog) and Tadaksahak spoken around Menaka northeast of Gao^[7]. The sedentary varieties include Tasawaq in northern Niger (with two dialects, Ingelsi in In-Gall and the extinct Emghedeshie of Agadez) and Korandje far to the north on the Algeria-Morocco border at Tabelbala. Varieties of Tamasheq are the main influence on all of these except Korandje, which appears to be influenced more by Northern Berber. With Berber influence extending not only to the lexicon but even sometimes into inflectional morphology, these are sometimes viewed as mixed languages (cf. Alidou & Wolff 2001).

A few pre-colonial poems and letters in Songhay exist in Timbuktu (preserved at the Ahmad Baba Center for Documentation and Historical Research[1]) written in the Arabic alphabet. However, in modern times Songhay is written in the Latin alphabet.

Contents 1 Proposals on the genetic affiliation of Songhay 2 References 3 External links 4 Bibliography 4.1 On genetic affiliation

[edit] Proposals on the genetic affiliation of Songhay

Before Greenberg, Songhay's affiliation was unclear. 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 point 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 a member of the Western Sahelian branch, together with the Maban languages of western Sudan and eastern Chad.

However, this point 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 found some 50 comparisons, including many body parts and morphological suffixes (such as the causative in -endi), while Nicolaï found 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 possible 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 cogently against Ehret and Bender's proposed etymologies.

Greenberg's claimed morphological similarities with Nilo-Saharan include the pronouns I ai (eg Zaghawa ai), you ni (eg Kanuri nyi), we yer (eg Kanuri -ye), you (pl.) wor (eg Kanuri -wi), relative and adjective formants -ma (eg Kanuri -ma) and -ko (eg Maba -ko), a plural suffix -an (?), a hypothetical plural suffix -r (eg Teso -r) which he takes to appear in the pronouns yer and wor, intransitive/passive -a (eg. Teso -o). Only a small selection of the claimed cognates outside Songhai are given here.

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" (Manding o, wo) and no "there" (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 (Manding máa), the copula ti (Bisa ti, Manding de/le), the verbal connective ka (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...)

[edit] References

1. ^ Heath 1999:2
2. ^ Heath 2005
3. ^ Heath 1999:1
4. ^ Ethnologue, Languages of Niger
5. ^ ^{a b} Songhay languages at Ethnologue
6. ^ Heath 2005
7. ^ Heath 1999:xv

[edit] External links

• Songhai/Zarma Language Page
• Relative Clauses in Tadaksahak
• Some verb morphology features in Tadaksahak
• PanAfrican L10n page on Songhai & Zarma
• Publications of linguist Jeffrey Heath on Songhay languages
• Language and Culture Djerma
• Maps showing the Songhay languages of Mali and Niger

[edit] Bibliography

Publisher and publication abbreviations: CSLI = Center for the Study of Language and Information. 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.

• Charles, M. C. & J. M. Ducroz. 1976. Lexique songay-français, parler kaado du Gorouol. Paris: Leroux.
• Dupuis-Yakouba, Auguste. 1917. Essai pratique de méthode pour l'étude de la langue songoï ou songaï [. . .]. Paris: Ernest Leroux.
• Heath, Jeffrey. 1999. A grammar of Koyra Chiini : the Songhay of Timbuktu. Mouton de Gruyter. 453 pp
• Heath, Jeffrey. 1999. Grammar of Koyraboro (Koroboro) Senni, the Songhay of Gao. Köln: Köppe.
• Heath, Jeffrey. 2005. Tondi Songway Kiini (Songhay, Mali): reference grammar and TSK-English-French dictionary. Stanford: CSLI. 440 pp
• Nicolaï, Robert. 1981. Les dialectes du songhay: contribution à l'étude des changements linguistiques. Paris: SELAF. 302 pp
• Nicolaï, Robert & Petr Zima. 1997. Songhay. LINCOM-Europa. 52 pp
• Prost, André. 1956. La langue soŋey et ses dialectes. Dakar: IFAN. Series: Mémoires de l'Institut français d'Afrique noire; 47. 627 pp
• Alidou, Husseina & Ekkehardt Wolff. 2001. "On the Non-Linear Ancestry of Tasawaq (Niger), or: How “Mixed” Can a Language Be?" in ed. Derek Nurse, Historical Language Contact in Africa, Köln: Rüdiger Köppe.

[edit] On genetic affiliation

• Bender, M. Lionel. 1996. The Nilo-Saharan Languages: A Comparative Essay. München: LINCOM-Europa. 253 pp
• D. Creissels. 1981. "De la possibilité de rapprochements entre le songhay et les langues Niger-Congo (en particulier Mandé)." In Th. Schadeberg, M. L. Bender, eds., Nilo-Saharan : Proceedings Of The First Nilo-Saharan Linguistics Colloquium, Leiden, September 8-10, pp. 185-199. Foris Publications.
• Ehret Christopher. 2001. A Historical-Comparative Reconstruction of Nilo-Saharan. SUGIA - Supplement 12. Köln: Köppe. 663 pp
• Joseph Greenberg, 1963. The Languages of Africa (International Journal of American Linguistics 29.1). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
• Lacroix, Pierre-Francis. 1971. "L'ensemble songhay-jerma: problèmes et thèmes de travail". In Acte du 8ème Congrès de la SLAO (Société Linguistique de l’Afrique Occidentale), Série H, Fasicule hors série, 87–100. Abidjan: Annales de l’Université d’Abidjan.
• Mukarovsky, H. G. 1966. "Zur Stellung der Mandesprachen". Anthropos, 61:679-88.
• Nicolaï, Robert. 1977. "Sur l'appartenance du songhay". Annales de la faculté des lettres de Nice, 28:129-145.
• Nicolaï, Robert. 1984. Préliminaires à une étude sur l'origine du songhay: matériaux, problématique et hypothèses, Berlin: D. Reimer. Series: Marburger Studien zur Afrika- und Asienkunde. Serie A, Afrika; 37. 163 pp
• Nicolaï, Robert. 1990. Parentés linguistiques (à propos du songhay). Paris: CNRS. 209 pp
• Robert Nicolaï. 2003. La force des choses ou l'épreuve 'nilo-saharienne': questions sur les reconstructions archéologiques et l'évolution des langues. SUGIA - Supplement 13. Köln: Köppe. 577 pp