Jabo language
Encyclopedia
The Jabo language is a Kru language
spoken by the Jabo people of Liberia
. They have also been known in the past as the Gweabo.
On the other hand, the commercial interaction of the Grebo peoples, together with exogamy
, produces widespread multilingualism
, magnifying the impression of homogeneity of the varieties of Grebo. Additionally, the goal of literacy
is facilitated by a unificationalist approach to the varieties.
, and extensively transcribed by his doctoral student George Herzog. Both Sapir and Herzog relied upon the cooperation of Charles G. Blooah as their native informant. Most of the material was recorded on site in Liberia by Herzog, who was primarily a folklorist
and ethnomusicologist
. His interest in the Jabo language centered on its use in the oral literature
of proverb
s and saying
s, and also in the Jabo drum-signalling
system. This became focus of the corpus he collected. There is a natural overlap between these areas, since many of the drum signals are formulaic in nature and are based on elements of the oral literature.
This may also have entailed that much of the material recorded was originally uttered in a declamatory, rhetorical, or performance style. It has not been established the degree to which such style might depart from more informal styles of Jabo speech. However, this material is the basis of what is presented below.
distinct pitch levels (or registers), independent of phonation
type or supraglottal
articulation. Furthermore, mono-moraic
(short syllable
) glides from any register to any other register were phonotactically
possible. This meant that there could possibly be sixteen distinct, segmentally
-identical short monosyllables with significative pitch contours—more if long syllables were admitted. The not-uncommon word types CVː (CVV) and CVCV could potentially have 256 possible prosodic
contours, each with a different dictionary meaning for the same three or four segments.
Sapir devised a system of "tone letters" for specifying tone, but they are inconvenient to typeset and not included in the Unicode
inventory. The common convention for Kru languages is to mark tone with subscript or superscript tone number
s following the vowel, with 1 denoting the highest register. They may also be transcribed in the IPA with tone letter
s or diacritics. The default tone of the language, in Jabo tone 2, is generally left unmarked in a diacritic system. As an example, take the word [ɟʱɑbo] "Jabo people", which is tone 2. For literacy purposes some system of diacritics would likely be preferable.
Falling contour tones (parentheses) are very rare. Where they occur, they seem to be in imitation of other languages or dialects.
position or faucalization
may also be involved. This last possibility may make it simpler to rationalize the apparent markedness
of the extreme vowels [u] and [i], which are said always to be "turbid".
Nasalized
versions of [ɛ̣], [ɔ̣], and [ạ] were reported, but it is doubtful whether they have phonemic
status. Since the articulations involved are probably to a degree mutually exclusive (velic
and pharyngeal), and since they seem to contribute similar auditory components (nasalization and "turbidity"), they are more likely to be allophones resulting from assimilation
. Sapir was an excellent phonetician, so his transcriptions may be narrowly accurate, whatever their phonological implication. In the case of Herzog or Blooah, one suspects that there may have been a normalization attempt by the transcriber. This nonetheless gives an appearance of vowel harmony to Jabo phonology.
Syllabic nasals [m̩] and [n̩] also occur. Related to this is a phenomenon of prenasalization, termed "anacrusis
" by Sapir by analogy with the metrical term. It is probably best accounted for systematically by an underlying syllabic nasal, since it occurs with some approximants
, as well as with voiced plosives.
The forms enclosed in brackets show the orthography used by Sapir/Herzog; other forms are the same.
Segments [ʃ], [ʒ], [l] and [n̪] probably have only allophonic status. Word initial [l] occurs only in loans from English. The fronted or "dental" nasal occurs in only a single word, but that word [n̪a] meaning "possessive" is very common.
Consonants here called "breathy" are those termed "emphatic" by Sapir. The plosives are here marked with a superscript hooked h ([ʱ]), while the continuants are marked with a subscript diaeresis. The contrastive use of this feature defines a major isogloss separating Jabo from Glebo.
s to represent the tonemes, whether binary or n-ary features. This in turn has implications for linguistic universals. However, the possibility exists that Sapir's analysis is overdifferentiated (i.e., the transcription is too "narrow" to claim tonemic status).
This tonal system implies an extremely high level of significative functional load
to borne by pitch in the language. As such it has been cited over the years by a number influential theorists in the phonological
field, such as Trubetskoy
and others.
A similar situation exists in the vowel space postulated by the Sapirean analysis. Since tongue and jaw position, nasalization and pharyngealization are all significative in this model, the vowel space is crowded indeed, with from 19 to 22 possible vowels, not counting diphthongs or long vowels.
The emphatic consonants of Jabo were once thought to be an example of the emergence of an implosive consonant series. There currently does not seem to be any evidence to suggest this.
survey as the basis of a unification orthography
or Ausbausprache
for the speech varieties of the Southern Grebo group, despite the prestige and precedence of Glebo.
This choice may be due to Jabo's preserving a number of "archaic" features from the proto-language, if it is indeed the case that its highly-differentiated phonology reflects a common stage of development. The pedagogic
principle would be that it is easier to teach across heterogeneous groups from a differentiated writing system (to a variety in which the contrast has been merged), than the reverse. Students speaking the less differentiated variety need only learn to ignore the "superfluous" distinctions as heterographic homonyms
, rather than memorizing numerous, seemingly random heterophonic homographs
.
Kru languages
-References:* Westerman, Diedrich Hermann Languages of West Africa . London/New York/Toronto: Oxford University Press.-External links:* at Ethnologue*...
spoken by the Jabo people of Liberia
Liberia
Liberia , officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Sierra Leone on the west, Guinea on the north and Côte d'Ivoire on the east. Liberia's coastline is composed of mostly mangrove forests while the more sparsely populated inland consists of forests that open...
. They have also been known in the past as the Gweabo.
Classification
Jabo is part of the Grebo language continuum, encoded by Ethnologue more specifically as a dialect of the Southern Grebo language. However, Jabo satisfies the ISO 639-3 criteria for an individual language:- The shared core-vocabulary score for Jabo and Seaside Grebo is reported as being as low as 75%.
- The Jabo and Grebo political territories have been distinct at least since the time of the founding of "Maryland in Africa." The two peoples are currently in different counties (Grand Kru County and Maryland County), and the Jabo claim a greater affinity for the KruKruThe Kru are an ethnic group who live in interior of Liberia. Their history is one marked by a strong sense of ethnicity and resistance to occupation. In 1856 when part of Liberia was still known as the independent Republic of Maryland, the Kru along with the Grebo resisted Maryland settlers'...
(Krao) than for the Grebo. - The physical separation of the Jabo and Grebo areas by the Deeah (Decoris) river is also an effective barrier to social intercourse and commerce.
- The Jabo and the Grebo have different origin legends, and thus have no shared identity.
- The Jabo are highly ethnocentric, and consider themselves to be a nation with its own language.
On the other hand, the commercial interaction of the Grebo peoples, together with exogamy
Exogamy
Exogamy is a social arrangement where marriage is allowed only outside of a social group. The social groups define the scope and extent of exogamy, and the rules and enforcement mechanisms that ensure its continuity. In social studies, exogamy is viewed as a combination of two related aspects:...
, produces widespread multilingualism
Multilingualism
Multilingualism is the act of using, or promoting the use of, multiple languages, either by an individual speaker or by a community of speakers. Multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. Multilingualism is becoming a social phenomenon governed by the needs of...
, magnifying the impression of homogeneity of the varieties of Grebo. Additionally, the goal of literacy
Literacy
Literacy has traditionally been described as the ability to read for knowledge, write coherently and think critically about printed material.Literacy represents the lifelong, intellectual process of gaining meaning from print...
is facilitated by a unificationalist approach to the varieties.
Sources
The Jabo language is known to scientific linguistics in some level of detail because it was analysed by the respected linguist Edward SapirEdward Sapir
Edward Sapir was an American anthropologist-linguist, widely considered to be one of the most important figures in the early development of the discipline of linguistics....
, and extensively transcribed by his doctoral student George Herzog. Both Sapir and Herzog relied upon the cooperation of Charles G. Blooah as their native informant. Most of the material was recorded on site in Liberia by Herzog, who was primarily a folklorist
Folklore
Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...
and ethnomusicologist
Ethnomusicology
Ethnomusicology is defined as "the study of social and cultural aspects of music and dance in local and global contexts."Coined by the musician Jaap Kunst from the Greek words ἔθνος ethnos and μουσική mousike , it is often considered the anthropology or ethnography of music...
. His interest in the Jabo language centered on its use in the oral literature
Oral literature
Oral literature corresponds in the sphere of the spoken word to literature as literature operates in the domain of the written word. It thus forms a generally more fundamental component of culture, but operates in many ways as one might expect literature to do...
of proverb
Proverb
A proverb is a simple and concrete saying popularly known and repeated, which expresses a truth, based on common sense or the practical experience of humanity. They are often metaphorical. A proverb that describes a basic rule of conduct may also be known as a maxim...
s and saying
Saying
A saying is something that is said, notable in one respect or another, to be "a pithy expression of wisdom or truth."There are a number of specific types of saying:...
s, and also in the Jabo drum-signalling
Drum (communication)
Developed from hollow tree trunks, and used by cultures living in deforested areas, drums served as an early form of long distance communication, and were used during ceremonial and religious functions.-Pressure drum:...
system. This became focus of the corpus he collected. There is a natural overlap between these areas, since many of the drum signals are formulaic in nature and are based on elements of the oral literature.
This may also have entailed that much of the material recorded was originally uttered in a declamatory, rhetorical, or performance style. It has not been established the degree to which such style might depart from more informal styles of Jabo speech. However, this material is the basis of what is presented below.
Tone
As analyzed by Sapir, Jabo was represented as possessing four phonemicallyPhoneme
In a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....
distinct pitch levels (or registers), independent of 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...
type or supraglottal
Vocal folds
The vocal folds, also known commonly as vocal cords, are composed of twin infoldings of mucous membrane stretched horizontally across the larynx...
articulation. Furthermore, mono-moraic
Mora (linguistics)
Mora is a unit in phonology that determines syllable weight, which in some languages determines stress or timing. As with many technical linguistic terms, the definition of a mora varies. Perhaps the most succinct working definition was provided by the American linguist James D...
(short syllable
Syllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter. A syllable is typically made up of a syllable nucleus with optional initial and final margins .Syllables are often considered the phonological "building...
) glides from any register to any other register were phonotactically
Phonotactics
Phonotactics is a branch of phonology that deals with restrictions in a language on the permissible combinations of phonemes...
possible. This meant that there could possibly be sixteen distinct, segmentally
Segment (linguistics)
In linguistics , the term segment may be defined as "any discrete unit that can be identified, either physically or auditorily, in the stream of speech."- Classifying speech units :...
-identical short monosyllables with significative pitch contours—more if long syllables were admitted. The not-uncommon word types CVː (CVV) and CVCV could potentially have 256 possible prosodic
Prosody (linguistics)
In linguistics, prosody is the rhythm, stress, and intonation of speech. Prosody may reflect various features of the speaker or the utterance: the emotional state of the speaker; the form of the utterance ; the presence of irony or sarcasm; emphasis, contrast, and focus; or other elements of...
contours, each with a different dictionary meaning for the same three or four segments.
Sapir devised a system of "tone letters" for specifying tone, but they are inconvenient to typeset and not included in the Unicode
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
inventory. The common convention for Kru languages is to mark tone with subscript or superscript tone number
Tone number
A tone number is a numeral used in a notational system for marking the tones of a language. The number is usually placed after the romanized syllable. Notice that a number may have very different meanings in different contexts since the systems may have developed independently.Other means of...
s following the vowel, with 1 denoting the highest register. They may also be transcribed in the IPA with tone letter
Tone letter
Tone letters are letters that represent the tones of a language, most commonly in languages with contour tones.-Chao tone letters :A series of iconic tone letters based on a musical staff was invented by Yuen Ren Chao and adopted into the International Phonetic Alphabet.Combinations of these tone...
s or diacritics. The default tone of the language, in Jabo tone 2, is generally left unmarked in a diacritic system. As an example, take the word [ɟʱɑbo] "Jabo people", which is tone 2. For literacy purposes some system of diacritics would likely be preferable.
| Level | Glides | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| High | a₁ [á] | (a₁₂) | (a₁₃) | (a₁₄) |
| Mid | a₂ [a] | a₂₁ | (a₂₃) | (a₂₄) |
| Low | a₃ [à] | a₃₁ | a₃₂ | (a₃₄) |
| Bottom | a₄ [ȁ] | a₄₁ | a₄₂ | a₄₃ |
Falling contour tones (parentheses) are very rare. Where they occur, they seem to be in imitation of other languages or dialects.
Vowels
The vowels marked with a subscript dot are said to be "dark" or "turbid". This is usually understood as being due to an articulation with pharyngeal constriction. Advanced tongue rootAdvanced tongue root
In phonetics, advanced tongue root and retracted tongue root, abbreviated ATR or RTR, are contrasting states of the root of the tongue during the pronunciation of vowels in some languages, especially in West Africa, but also in Kazakh and Mongolian...
position or faucalization
Faucalized voice
Faucalized voice, also called hollow or yawny voice, is the production of speech sounds with an expanded laryngeal cavity. It contrasts with harsh voice, in which the larynx is compressed....
may also be involved. This last possibility may make it simpler to rationalize the apparent markedness
Markedness
Markedness is a specific kind of asymmetry relationship between elements of linguistic or conceptual structure. In a marked-unmarked relation, one term of an opposition is the broader, dominant one...
of the extreme vowels [u] and [i], which are said always to be "turbid".
Nasalized
Nasalization
In phonetics, nasalization is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that some air escapes through the nose during the production of the sound by the mouth...
versions of [ɛ̣], [ɔ̣], and [ạ] were reported, but it is doubtful whether they have phonemic
Phoneme
In a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....
status. Since the articulations involved are probably to a degree mutually exclusive (velic
Soft palate
The soft palate is the soft tissue constituting the back of the roof of the mouth. The soft palate is distinguished from the hard palate at the front of the mouth in that it does not contain bone....
and pharyngeal), and since they seem to contribute similar auditory components (nasalization and "turbidity"), they are more likely to be allophones resulting from assimilation
Assimilation (linguistics)
Assimilation is a common phonological process by which the sound of the ending of one word blends into the sound of the beginning of the following word. This occurs when the parts of the mouth and vocal cords start to form the beginning sounds of the next word before the last sound has been...
. Sapir was an excellent phonetician, so his transcriptions may be narrowly accurate, whatever their phonological implication. In the case of Herzog or Blooah, one suspects that there may have been a normalization attempt by the transcriber. This nonetheless gives an appearance of vowel harmony to Jabo phonology.
| Front | Mid | Back | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plain | Nasal | Pharyn- geal |
Plain | Nasal | Pharyn- geal |
Plain | Nasal | Pharyn- geal |
|
| High | i | ĩ | u | ũ | |||||
| High Mid | e | ẽ | ẹ | o | õ | ọ | |||
| Low Mid | ɛ | ɛ̃ | ɛ̣ | ɔ | ɔ̃ | ɔ̣ | |||
| Low | a | ã | ạ | ||||||
Syllabic nasals [m̩] and [n̩] also occur. Related to this is a phenomenon of prenasalization, termed "anacrusis
Anacrusis
In poetry, an anacrusis is the lead-in syllables, collectively, that precede the first full measure.In music, it is the note or sequence of notes which precedes the first downbeat in a bar. In the latter sense an anacrusis is often called a pickup, pickup note, or pickup measure, referring to the...
" by Sapir by analogy with the metrical term. It is probably best accounted for systematically by an underlying syllabic nasal, since it occurs with some approximants
Approximant consonant
Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no...
, as well as with voiced plosives.
Consonants
| Bilabial | Dental | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Labial-Velar | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Voiceless | p | t | c | k | k͡p | |
| Voiced | b | d | ||||
| Breathy | bʱ | dʱ |
ɟʱ |
ɡʱ |
ɡ͡bʱ |
|
| Voiceless | f | s | ʃ ⟨⟩ | |||
| Breathy | v̤ |
z̤ |
ʒ̤ <Ẓ> | |||
| Nasal | m | n̪ | n | ɲ <ñ> | ŋ | ŋ͡m <Ŋm> |
| Approximant | w | l | j |
The forms enclosed in brackets show the orthography used by Sapir/Herzog; other forms are the same.
Segments [ʃ], [ʒ], [l] and [n̪] probably have only allophonic status. Word initial [l] occurs only in loans from English. The fronted or "dental" nasal occurs in only a single word, but that word [n̪a] meaning "possessive" is very common.
Consonants here called "breathy" are those termed "emphatic" by Sapir. The plosives are here marked with a superscript hooked h ([ʱ]), while the continuants are marked with a subscript diaeresis. The contrastive use of this feature defines a major isogloss separating Jabo from Glebo.
Implications of the Jabo evidence for linguistic theory
The metalinguistic import of the Jabo tonemic repertory becomes apparent when the attempt is made to select phonological distinctive featureDistinctive feature
In linguistics, a distinctive feature is the most basic unit of phonological structure that may be analyzed in phonological theory.Distinctive features are grouped into categories according to the natural classes of segments they describe: major class features, laryngeal features, manner features,...
s to represent the tonemes, whether binary or n-ary features. This in turn has implications for linguistic universals. However, the possibility exists that Sapir's analysis is overdifferentiated (i.e., the transcription is too "narrow" to claim tonemic status).
This tonal system implies an extremely high level of significative functional load
Functional load
In linguistics and especially phonology, functional load refers to the importance of certain features in making distinctions in a language...
to borne by pitch in the language. As such it has been cited over the years by a number influential theorists in the phonological
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
field, such as Trubetskoy
Trubetskoy
Trubetskoy , Трубецкой , Трубяцкі , Trubecki , Trubetsky , Трубецький , Troubetzkoy , Trubezkoi or Trubetzkoy , is a Ruthenian Gediminid gentry family of Black Ruthenian stock, like many other princely houses of Grand Duchy of Lithuania, later prominent in Russian...
and others.
A similar situation exists in the vowel space postulated by the Sapirean analysis. Since tongue and jaw position, nasalization and pharyngealization are all significative in this model, the vowel space is crowded indeed, with from 19 to 22 possible vowels, not counting diphthongs or long vowels.
The emphatic consonants of Jabo were once thought to be an example of the emergence of an implosive consonant series. There currently does not seem to be any evidence to suggest this.
Literacy and educational proposals
Glebo (Seaside Grebo) had possibly the earliest literary history of any speech variety in the Cape Palmas area, dating to the time of the missionary efforts associated with Maryland in Africa. Nonetheless, it is interesting to note that Jabo, rather than Glebo, has been proposed by the SILSIL International
SIL International is a U.S.-based, worldwide, Christian non-profit organization, whose main purpose is to study, develop and document languages, especially those that are lesser-known, in order to expand linguistic knowledge, promote literacy, translate the Christian Bible into local languages,...
survey as the basis of a unification orthography
Orthography
The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...
or Ausbausprache
Ausbausprache - Abstandsprache - Dachsprache
The Ausbausprache – Abstandsprache – Dachsprache framework is a tool developed by sociolinguists for analysing and categorising the status of language varieties along the cline between autonomous languages on the one hand and dialects on the other. The terms were coined by Heinz Kloss...
for the speech varieties of the Southern Grebo group, despite the prestige and precedence of Glebo.
This choice may be due to Jabo's preserving a number of "archaic" features from the proto-language, if it is indeed the case that its highly-differentiated phonology reflects a common stage of development. The pedagogic
Pedagogy
Pedagogy is the study of being a teacher or the process of teaching. The term generally refers to strategies of instruction, or a style of instruction....
principle would be that it is easier to teach across heterogeneous groups from a differentiated writing system (to a variety in which the contrast has been merged), than the reverse. Students speaking the less differentiated variety need only learn to ignore the "superfluous" distinctions as heterographic homonyms
Homonym
In linguistics, a homonym is, in the strict sense, one of a group of words that often but not necessarily share the same spelling and the same pronunciation but have different meanings...
, rather than memorizing numerous, seemingly random heterophonic homographs
Homonym
In linguistics, a homonym is, in the strict sense, one of a group of words that often but not necessarily share the same spelling and the same pronunciation but have different meanings...
.