Ikwerre language

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Ikwerre is an Igboid language spoken primarily by the Ikwerre people, who inhabit certain areas of Rivers State, Nigeria.

Classification

The Ikwerre language is classified as an Igboid language. Based on lexicostatistical analysis, Kay Williamson first asserted that the Ikwerre, Ekpeye, Ogba, Etche and other Igbo languages belonged to the same language cluster, and were not dialects.^[2] After subsequent studies and more research by both Williamson and Roger Blench, it was concluded that Igboid languages like Ikwerre, Ogba and their sister languages apart from Ekpeye form a "language cluster" and that they are somewhat mutually intelligible.^[3]

Phonology

Vowels

Ikwerre distinguishes vowels by quality (frontedness and height), the presence or absence of nasalization, and the presence or absence of advanced tongue root.

		Front	Back
High	+ATR	i ĩ	u ũ
	−ATR	ɪ ɪ̃	ʊ ʊ̃
Mid	+ATR	e ẽ	o õ
	−ATR	ɛ ɛ̃	ɔ ɔ̃
Low	−ATR	a ã

There is also a vowel */ə̃/ which is posited to explain syllabic nasal consonants in accounts of the language which state that Ikwerre has no nasal stops. This sound is realized as [ɨ̃] or a syllabic nasal which is homorganic to the following consonant.

Vowel harmony

Ikwerre exhibits two kinds of vowel harmony:

1. Every vowel in an Ikwerre word, with a few exceptions, agrees with the other vowels in the word as to the presence or absence of advanced tongue root.
2. Vowels of the same height in adjacent syllables must all be either front or back, i.e. the pairs /i/ & /u/, /ɪ/ & /ʊ/, /e/ & /o/, and /ɛ/ & /ɔ/ cannot occur in adjacent syllables. Vowels of different heights, however, need not match for frontness/backness either. This doesn't apply to the first vowel in nouns beginning with a vowel or with /ɾ/, and doesn't apply to onomatopoeic words.

Consonants

		Bilabial	Labiodental	Alveolar	Postalveolar or palatal	Velar		Glottal
						Unrounded	Rounded	Unrounded	Rounded
Plosive or affricate	Voiceless	p		t	tʃ	k	kʷ
	Voiced	b		d	dʒ	ɡ	ɡʷ
Fricative	Voiceless		f	s
	Voiced		v	z
Non-plosive stop	Voiced	ḅ~m
	Glottalized	ʼḅ~ʼm
Tap				ɾ~ɾ̃
Approximant				l~n	j~j̃	ɰ~ɰ̃	w~w̃	h~h̃	hʷ~h̃ʷ

The oral consonants [ḅ ʼḅ l ɾ j ɰ w h hʷ] occur before oral vowels, and their nasal allophones [m ʼm n ɾ̃ ȷ̃ ɰ̃ w̃ h̃ h̃ʷ] before nasal vowels. The "non-explosive stops" [ḅ ʼḅ] are not plosives (not pulmonic) and are equivalent to implosives in other varieties of Igbo.

The tap /ɾ/ may sometimes be realized as an approximant [ɹ].

Tone

Ikwerre is a tonal language with seven tones: high, mid, low, high-low falling, high-mid falling, mid-low falling and rising. Ikwerre also has a tonal downdrift. For example: rínya᷆ (high, mid-low falling) means "weight, heaviness", rìnyâ (low, high-low falling) means "female, wife", mụ̌ (rising) means "to learn", mụ̂ (high-low falling) means "to give birth", etc.

References

• Clements, George N.; Osu, Sylvester (2005). "Nasal harmony in Ikwere, a language with no phonemic nasal consonants". Journal of African Languages and Linguistics. 26 (2): 165–200. doi:10.1515/jall.2005.26.2.165. S2CID 144317723.
• Williamson, Kay (1970). Reading and writing Ikwerre. Ibadan: Institute of African Studies.