Grassfields Bantu Fieldwork: Dschang Tone Paradigms

Steven Bird

Language experts:
Pierre-Marie Akenmo (Foréké Dschang),
André Dongfouet (Foréké Dschang),
and Pierre Ngogeo (Bafou).

Introduction

This file contains documentation on Grassfields Bantu Fieldwork: Dschang Tone Paradigms, Linguistic Data Consortium (LDC) catalog number LDC2003S02 and ISBN 1-58563-254-6.

The data contains tone paradigms of the language Yémba (Bamileke Dschang), a Bamileke (Grassfields Bantu) language spoken by 300,000+ people in Southwestern Cameroon.

Data

There are 45 paradigm pages in html format. Each page lists 32 utterances, varying across subject, verb, and object. Each utterance has 1 to 3 links to recordings in .wav format, as well as a laryngograph recording (also in .wav format). Phonetic transcription has been done for every utterance; tonological transcription has been done for a little more than half.

Please see the paradigm index for a listing of the paradigm pages with links to each page.

Please see file.tbl for a complete list of files.

Please go to the doc directory for the documentation files.

Speaker Information:

Pierre-Marie Akenmo was born in 1971 in Foréké Dschang and has lived in the language area for most of his life. His father was also from Foréké Dschang (southern dialect) and his mother was from Bafou (northern dialect).

André Dongfouet was born in 1939 in Foréké Dschang and has lived in the language area for most of his life.

Pierre Ngogeo was born in 1938 in Bafou, and has lived in the language area for most of his life. Both parents were also from Bafou.

References:

Hyman, Larry M (1985). Word domains and downstep in Bamileke-Dschang, Phonology Yearbook, 2, pp 45-83.
Hyman, Larry M (1980). Relative time reference in the Bamileke tense system, Studies in African Linguistics, 11, pp 227-237.
Steven Bird and Maurice Tadadjeu (1997), Petit Dictionnaire Yémba-Français (Dschang-French Dictionary), Cameroon: ANACLAC.

Production Information

Recorded: June 1997, Dschang, Western Province, and recording studio of SIL Cameroon, Yaoundé

Digitized, Labelled and Segmented: 1997-1998 Phonetics Laboratory, University of Edinburgh

Transcribed and Annotated: 1998-2002 LDC, University of Pennsylvania

Sponsorship:

SIL Cameroon

Economic and Social Research Council (UK) Grant R000235540

National Science Foundation (US) Grant 9983258

Linguistic Data Consortium

Credits: I am indebted to the following people for helping with the collection and publication of this material:
Gretchen Harro, Nancy Haynes, John Bell, & Nori Heikkinen.

LDC#: LDC2003S02

ISBN: 1-58563-254-6

Updates

Additional information, updates and bug fixes may be available in the LDC catalog entry for this corpus LDC2003S02.