Dida is a dialect cluster of the Kru family

Kru languages

-References:* Westerman, Diedrich Hermann Languages of West Africa . London/New York/Toronto: Oxford University Press.-External links:* at Ethnologue*...

 spoken in Ivory Coast.

Ethnologue divides Dida into two groups, Yocoboué Dida (101,600 speakers in 1993) and Lakota Dida (93,800 speakers in 1993), which are only marginally mutually intelligible and best considered separate languages. Each is dialectically diverse: Yocoboué (Yokubwe) consists of the Lozoua (Lozwa) and Divo dialects (7,100 and 94,500 speakers), and Lakota the Lakota (Lákota), Abou (Abu), and Vata dialects. The prestige dialect

Prestige dialect

In sociolinguistics, prestige describes the level of respect accorded to a language or dialect as compared to that of other languages or dialects in a speech community. The concept of prestige in sociolinguistics is closely related to that of prestige or class within a society...

 is the Lozoua speech of the town of Guitry

Guitry, Côte d'Ivoire

Guitry, Côte d'Ivoire is a town and commune in Côte d'Ivoire....

.

Yocoboué is also known as Guitry, Yocoboue, Yokouboué, Gakpa, Goudou (Gudu), and Kagoué (Kagwe). Lakota is also known as Dieko, Gabo, Satro, Guébie (Gebye), Brabori, and Ziki.

Phonology

The Dida lects have consonant and vowel inventories typical of the Eastern Kru languages. However, tone varies significantly between dialects, or at least between their descriptions. The following phonology is that of Abu Dida, from Miller (2005).

Vowels

Dida has a ten-vowel system: nine vowels distinguished by "tenseness", likely either pharyngealization or supra-glottal phonation

Phonation

Phonation has slightly different meanings depending on the subfield of phonetics. Among some phoneticians, phonation is the process by which the vocal folds produce certain sounds through quasi-periodic vibration. This is the definition used among those who study laryngeal anatomy and physiology...

 (contraction of the larynx) of the type described as retracted tongue root, plus an uncommon mid-central vowel /ə/.

The non-contracted vowels are /i e a o u/, and the contracted vowels /eˤ ɛˤ ɔˤ oˤ/. (These could be analyzed as /iˤ eˤ oˤ uˤ/, but here are transcribed with lower vowels to reflect their phonetic realization. There is no tense contrast with the low vowel.) The formant

Formant

Formants are defined by Gunnar Fant as 'the spectral peaks of the sound spectrum |P|' of the voice. In speech science and phonetics, formant is also used to mean an acoustic resonance of the human vocal tract...

s of the tense vowels show them to be lower

Open vowel

An open vowel is defined as a vowel sound in which the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth. Open vowels are sometimes also called low vowels in reference to the low position of the tongue...

 than their non-tense counterparts: the formants of the highest tense vowels overlap the formants of the non-tense mid vowels, but there is visible tension in the lips and throat when these are enunciated carefully.

Dida has a number of diphthong

Diphthong

A diphthong , also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel...

s, which have the same number of tonal distinctions as simple vowels. All start with the higher vowels, /i eˤ u oˤ/, and except for /a/, both elements are either contracted or non-contracted, so the pharyngealization is here transcribed after the second element of the vowel. Examples are /ɓue˨teoˤ˥˩/ "bottle" (from English), /pa˨ɺeaˤ˨˩/ "get stuck", and /feɔˤ˥˩/ "little bone".

Dida also has nasal vowels, but they are not common and it is not clear how many. Examples are /fẽˤː˥/ "nothing", /ɡ͡boũ˧/ "chin", /pɔõˤ˥˧/ "25 cents" (from English "pound"). In diphthongs, nasalization shows up primarily on the second element of the vowel.

Vowel length is not distinctive, apart from phonesthesia (as in /fẽˤː˥/ "nothing"), morphemic contractions, and shortened grammatical words, such as the modal /kă˥/ "will" (compare its likely lexical source /ka˧/ "get").

Consonants

The consonants are typical for Eastern Kru:

	Labial	Alveolar	Post- alveolar	Velar	Labialized velar	Labial velar
Nasal	m	n	ɲ	ŋ
Implosive	ɓ
Plosive/affricate	p b	t d	t͡ʃ d͡ʒ	k ɡ	kʷ ɡʷ	k͡p ɡ͡b
Fricative	f v	s z		ɣ
Tap/approximant		ɺ	j		w

Syllables may be vowel only, consonant-vowel, or consonant-/ɺ/-vowel. /ɺ/ is a lateral approximant [l] initially, a lateral flap [ɺ] between vowels and after most consonants ([ɓɺeˤ˥] "country"), but a central tap after alveolars ([dɾu˧] "blood"). After a nasal (/m/, /ɲ/, /ŋ/), it is itself nasalized, and sounds like a short n. There is a short epenthetic vowel between the initial consonant and the flap, which takes the quality of the syllabic vowel that follows ([ɓᵉɺeˤ˥] "country"). Flap clusters occur with all consonants, even the approximants (/wɺi˥/ "top"), apart from the alveolar sonorants /n/, /ɺ/ and the marginal consonant /ɣ/, which is only attested in the syllable /ɣa/.

/ɓ/ is implosive in the sense that the airstream

Airstream

Airstream is a brand of luxury recreational vehicle manufactured in Jackson Center, Ohio, USA. It is currently a division of Thor Industries. The company, which now employs fewer than 400, is the oldest in the industry. Airstream trailers are easily recognized for their distinctive rounded...

 is powered by the glottis moving downward, but there is no rush of air into the mouth. /ɣ/ occurs in few words, but one of these, /ɣa˧/ "appear", occurs in numerous common idioms, so overall it's not an uncommon sound. It is a true fricative and may devoice to [x] word initially. /kʷ/ and /ɡʷ/ plus a vowel are distinct from /k/ or /ɡ/ plus /u/ and another vowel. They may also be followed by a flap, as in /kʷɺeˤ˥/ "face".

When emphasized, zero-onset words may take an initial [ɦ], and initial approximants /j/, /w/ may become fricated [ʝ], [ɣʷ]. /w/ becomes palatalized [ɥ] before high front vowels, or [ʝʷ] when emphasized.

Tones

Dida uses tone as a grammatical device. Morpho-tonology plays a greater role in verb and pronominal paradigms than it does in nouns, and perhaps because of this, Dida verbs utilize a simpler tone system than nouns do: Noun roots have four lexically contrastive tones, subject pronouns have three, and verb roots have just two word tones.

There are three level tones in Abou Dida: /˥/, /˧/, and /˨/, with about twice as common as the other two. Speaker intuition hears six contour tones: rising /˧˥/, /˨˧/ and falling /˥˧/, /˥˩/, /˧˩/, /˨˩/. (The falling tones only reach register at the end of a prosodic unit

Prosodic unit

In linguistics, a prosodic unit, often called an intonation unit or intonational phrase, is a segment of speech that occurs with a single prosodic contour...

; otherwise the low falling tone /˨˩/ is realized as a simple low tone.) However, some of these only occur in morphologically complex words, such as perfective

Perfective aspect

The perfective aspect , sometimes called the aoristic aspect, is a grammatical aspect used to describe a situation viewed as a simple whole, whether that situation occurs in the past, present, or future. The perfective aspect is equivalent to the aspectual component of past perfective forms...

verbs.

Monosyllabic nouns contrast four tones: and : /dʒeˤ˥/ "egg", /dʒeˤ˧/ "leopard", /dʒeˤ˩/ "buffalo", /dʒeˤ˧˩/ "arrow", with and being the most frequent.