Ewe language

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Ewe
Èʋe / Èʋegbe
Spoken in Ghana, Togo, Benin
Region Southern Ghana east of the Volta River, southern Togo, southwest Benin
Ethnicity Ewe people
Native speakers 3.1 million, (1991 and 2003)  (date missing)
Language family
Writing system Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-1 ee
ISO 639-2 ewe
ISO 639-3 ewe
This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters.

Ewe (Èʋe or Èʋegbe IPA: [èβeɡ͡be])[1] is a Niger–Congo language spoken in Ghana, Togo and Benin by approximately three million people according to 1991 and 2003 estimate of those living in Ghana and Togo respectively.[2] Ewe is part of a cluster of related languages commonly called Gbe branch of the Volta–Niger languages, spoken in southeastern Ghana, Togo, and parts of Benin. Other Gbe languages include Fon, Gen, Phla Phera, and Aja. Like other Gbe languages, Ewe is a tonal language.

The German Africanist Diedrich Hermann Westermann published many dictionaries and grammars of Ewe and several other Gbe languages. Other linguists who have worked on Ewe and closely related languages include Gilbert Ansre (tone, syntax), Herbert Stahlke (morphology, tone), Nick Clements (tone, syntax), Roberto Pazzi (anthropology, lexicography), Felix K. Ameka (semantics, cognitive linguistics), Alan Stewart Duthie (semantics, phonetics), Hounkpati B. Capo (phonology, phonetics), Enoch Aboh (syntax), and Chris Collins (syntax).

Contents

[edit] History

Traditional Ewe stories speak of a migration of the Ewe people from an area in present-day Benin, a town called Ketu, to the currently inhabited southeastern region of Ghana. Ketu was populated by other peoples as well and Ewe migration was due to[clarification needed] the flourishing group, the Yoruba. It is believed that the Ewe settled in Togo and later moved to southeastern Ghana.

[edit] Sounds

[edit] Consonants

Bilabial Labiodental Alveolar Retroflex Palatal Velar Labial-velar Glottal
Stop voiceless p t k k͡p
voiced m ~ b d n ~ ɖ ɲ ~ j ŋ ~ ɡ ɡ͡b
Affricate voiceless t͡s
voiced d͡z
Fricative voiceless ɸ f͈ s x
voiced β v͈ z ɣ ~ w ʁ/ɦ
Approximant l ~ l̃

H is a voiced fricative which has been described as uvular, [ʁ], pharyngeal, [ʕ], or glottal [ɦ].

The nasal consonants [m, n, ɲ, ŋ] are not distinctive, as they only appear before nasal vowels. Ewe is therefore sometimes said to have no nasal consonants. However, it is more economical to argue that nasal /m, n, ɲ, ŋ/ are the underlying form, and are denasalized before oral vowels. (See vowels below.)

[ɣ] occurs before unrounded (non-back) vowels and [w] before rounded (back) vowels.

Ewe is one of the few languages known to contrast [f] vs. [ɸ] and [v] vs. [β]. The f and v are stronger than in most languages, [f͈] and [v͈], with the upper lip noticeably raised, and thus more distinctive from the rather weak [ɸ] and [β].[3]

/l/ may occur in consonant clusters. It becomes [ɾ] (or [ɾ̃] after coronals.

[edit] Vowels

Front Back
Close i, ĩ u, ũ
Close-mid e, ẽ o, õ
Open-mid ɛ, ɛ̃ ɔ, ɔ̃
Open a, ã

The tilde (~) marks nasal vowels, though the Peki dialect lacks /õ/. Many varieties of Ewe lack one or another of the front mid vowels, and some varieties in Ghana have the additional vowels /ə/ and /ə̃/.

Ewe does not have a nasal–oral contrast in consonants. It does, however, have a syllabic nasal, which varies as [m n ŋ], depending on the following consonant, and which carries tone. Some authors treat this as a vowel, with the odd result that Ewe would have more nasal than oral vowels, and one of these vowels has no set place of articulation. If it is taken to be a consonant, then there would be the odd result of a single nasal consonant which could not appear before vowels. If nasal consonants are taken to underlie [b ɖ ɡ], however, then there is no such odd restriction; the only difference from other consonants being that only nasal stops may be syllabic, a common pattern cross-linguistically.

[edit] Tones

Ewe is a tonal language. In a tonal language, pitch differences are used to distinguish one word from another. For example, in Ewe the following three words differ only in their tones:

  • tó 'mountain' (High tone)
  • tǒ 'mortar' (Rising tone)
  • tò 'buffalo' (Low tone)

Phonetically, there are three tone registers, High, Mid, and Low, and three rising and falling contour tones. However, in most Ewe dialects only two registers are distinctive, High and Mid. These are depressed in nouns after voiced obstruents: High becomes Mid (or Rising), and Mid becomes Low. Mid is also realized as Low at the end of a phrase or utterance, as in the example 'buffalo' above.

[edit] Pragmatics

The Ewe language uses phrases of overt politeness, such as “Please” and Thank you.” A common, friendly greeting extended to an individual of a European descent is “White person.”[citation needed]

[edit] Writing system

The African Reference Alphabet is used when Ewe is represented orthographically, so the written version is a bit like a combination of the Latin alphabet and the International Phonetic Alphabet.

A a B b D d Ɖ ɖ Dz dz E e Ɛ ɛ F f Ƒ ƒ G g Gb gb Ɣ ɣ
/a/ /b/ /d/ /ɖ/ /d͡z/ /e/, /ə/ /ɛ/ /f/ /ɸ/ /ɡ/ /ɡ͡b/ /ɣ/
H h I i K k Kp kp L l M m N n Ny ny Ŋ ŋ O o Ɔ ɔ P p
/h/ /i/ /k/ /k͡p/ /l/ /m/ /n/ /ɲ/ /ŋ/ /o/ /ɔ/ /p/
R r S s T t Ts ts U u V v Ʋ ʋ W w X x Y y Z z
/l/ /s/ /t/ /t͡s/ /u/ /v/ /β/ /w/ /x/ /j/ /z/

An n is placed after vowels to mark nasalization. Tone is generally unmarked, except in some common cases which require disambiguation, e.g. the first person plural pronoun mí 'we' is marked high to distinguish it from the second person plural mi 'you', and the second person singular pronoun wò 'you' is marked low to distinguish it from the third person plural pronoun wó 'they/them'

  • ekpɔ wò [ɛ́k͡pɔ̀ wɔ̀] — 'he saw you'
  • ekpɔ wo [ɛ́k͡pɔ̀ wɔ́] — 'he saw them'

[edit] Grammar

[icon] This section requires expansion.

Ewe is a subject–verb–object language.[4] The possessive precedes the head noun.[5] Adjectives, numerals, demonstratives and relative clauses follow the head noun. Ewe also has postpositions rather than prepositions.[6]

Ewe is well known as a language having logophoric pronouns. Such pronouns are used to refer to the source of a reported statement or thought in indirect discourse, and can disambiguate sentences that are ambiguous in most other languages. The following examples illustrate:

  • Kofi be e-dzo 'Kofi said he left' (he ≠ Kofi)
  • Kofi be yè-dzo 'Kofi said he left' (he = Kofi)

In the second sentence, yè is the logophoric pronoun.

Ewe also has a rich system of serial verb constructions.

[edit] Status

[icon] This section requires expansion.

Ewe is a national language in Togo and Ghana.

[edit] References

  1. ^ [1], p. 243
  2. ^ Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (ed.), 2005. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Fifteenth edition. Dallas, Tex.: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com/
  3. ^ Venda also has this distinction, but in that case [ɸ] and [β] are slightly rounded, rather than [f] and [v] being raised. (Hardcastle & Laver, The handbook of phonetic sciences, 1999:595)
  4. ^ Ameka, Felix K. (1991). Ewe: Its Grammatical Constructions and Illocutionary Devices. Australian National University: Sydney.
  5. ^ Westermann, Diedrich. (1930). A study of the Ewe language. London: Oxford University Press.
  6. ^ Warburton, Irene and Ikpotufe, Prosper and Glover, Roland. (1968). Ewe Basic Course. Indiana University-African Studies Program: Bloomington.

[edit] Bibliography

 This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (January 2010)
  • Ansre, Gilbert (1961) The Tonal Structure of Ewe. MA Thesis, Kennedy School of Missions of Hartford Seminary Foundation.
  • Ameka, Felix Kofi (2001) 'Ewe'. In Garry and Rubino (eds.), Fact About the World's Languages: An Encyclopedia of the World's Major Languages, Past and Present, 207-213. New York/Dublin: The H.W. Wilson Company.
  • Clements, George N. (1975) 'The logophoric pronoun in Ewe: Its role in discourse', Journal of West African Languages 10(2): 141-177
  • Collins, Chris. (1993) Topics in Ewe Syntax. Doctoral Dissertation, MIT.
  • Capo, Hounkpati B.C. (1991) A Comparative Phonology of Gbe, Publications in African Languages and Linguistics, 14. Berlin/New York: Foris Publications & Garome, Bénin: Labo Gbe (Int).
  • Pasch, Helma (1995) Kurzgrammatik des Ewe Köln: Köppe.
  • Westermann, Diedrich Hermann (1930) A Study of the Ewe Language London: Oxford University Press.

[edit] External links

Ewe language edition of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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