Introduction
The Gbe languages form a dialect continuum stretching across the area between eastern Ghana and western Nigeria. More specifically, the Volta river in Ghana forms the western border of the Gbe area and the Weme river in Nigeria forms the eastern border. The northern border is between 6 and 8 degrees of latitude and the southern border is the Atlantic coast. The total number of speakers of Gbe languages is approximately four million (Capo 1988).
The Gbe language area is bordered mainly by other Kwa languages, except for the east and north-east, where Yorùbá is spoken. To the west, Gbe is bordered by Ga-Dangme, Guang and Akan. To the north, it is bordered by Adele, Aguna, Akpafu, Lolobi, and Yorùbá.
The dialect continuum as a whole was called 'Ewe' by Westermann, the most influential writer on the cluster. He used the term 'Standard Ewe' to refer to the written form of the language. Other writers have called the Gbe languages as a whole 'Aja', after the name of the local language of the Aja-Tado area in Benin. However, use of this single language's name for the language cluster as a whole was not only not acceptable to all speakers but also rather confusing.
Since the establishment of a working group at the West African Languages Congress at Cotonou in 1980, H.B. Capo's suggestion of a name has been generally accepted: 'Gbe' , which is the word for 'language/dialect' in each of the languages.
Classification
Greenberg (1963), following Westermann (1952), places the Gbe languages in the Kwa subfamily of the Niger-Congo phylum. Recent analysis does not consider old Kwa to be a valid genetic unit, and situates the languages Yoruba and Igbo in the Benue-Congo subfamily. The remaining languages (including the Gbe languages) are usually labeled New Kwa to avoid confusion with the old, larger Kwa family.
Languages
Capo (1991) divides Gbe in the following five major subgroups:
| Name |
Alternate names |
Speakers |
Some dialects |
Region |
|
Ewe
|
Vhe, Ewegbe |
3 000 000 |
Anlo, Kpando, Ho, Fodome |
lower half of Ghana east of the Volta river; southwest Togo |
|
Gen
|
Ge, Mina, Gengbe |
340 000 |
Gliji, Anexo, Agoi |
Lake Togo, around Anexo |
| Aja |
Ajagbe, Adja |
1 357 800 |
Dogbo, Sikpi |
Togo, Aja area along Mono river in the inlands |
|
Fon
|
Fongbe, Popo |
1 525 000 |
Gungbe, Kapse, Agbome, Maxi |
southeast Togo, Benin west of the Weme river and along the coast |
|
Phla-Phera
|
Fla, Offra |
[?] |
Alada, Toli, Ayizo |
Togo and Benin along the coast and around Ahéme lake |
(sources: Capo (1991), Aboh (1997), SIL/Ethnologue)
History
Before 1600
Ketu, in present day Benin, might be an appropriate starting point for a brief history of the Gbe-speaking peoples. Ewe traditions refer to Ketu as Amedzofe (origin of humanity) or Mawufe (home of the Supreme Being). It is believed that the inhabitants of Ketu were originally part of the Oyo people of Nigeria and were pressed westward by a series of wars between the 10th and the 13th century. In Ketu, the ancestors of the Gbe-speaking peoples separated themselves from other refugees and began to establish their own identity.
Yoruba attacks between the 13th and the 15th century drove a large section of the group still more westward. They settled at the ancient kingdom of Tado (or Stado, Stádó) on the Mono river (in present-day Togo). The Tado kingdom was an important state in West Africa up to the late 15th century.
In the course of the 13th or 14th century, the Notsie (or Notsye, Wancé) kingdom was established by emigrants from the Tado kingdom; Notsie would later (around 1500) become the home of another group of migrants from Tado, the Ewe people . Around 1550, emigrants from Tado established the Allada (or Alada) kingdom, which became the center of the Fon people. Tado is also the origin of the Aja people; in fact, the name Aja-Tado (Adja-Tado) is frequently used to refer to their language.
The Ewe, Aja and Fon are not the only Gbe-speaking peoples. The Gen people (Mina, Ge), probably of Ga and Fante origin, clearly speak Gbe, as well as the Phla, who according to Capo 1991 might have migrated from Tado as early as the 11th century.
European traders and the transatlantic slave trade
Little is known of the history of the Gbe languages during the time that only Portuguese, Dutch and Danish traders landed on the Gold Coast (roughly 1500 to 1650). The trade of mostly gold and agricultural goods did not exercise much influence on social and cultural structures of the time. No need was felt to investigate the indigenous languages and cultures; the languages generally used in trade at this time were Portuguese and Dutch. The few written accounts that stem from this period focus on trade.
As more European countries established trade posts in the area missionaries were sent out. As early as 1658, a translation of the Doctrina Christiana in the language of Allada was made by Spanish missionaries (reprinted in Labouret & Rivet 1929). This document is most probably the earliest text in any West African language.
The relatively peaceful situation profoundly changed with the rise of transatlantic slave trade which reached its peak in the late 18th century when as many as 15 000 slaves per year were exported from the area around Benin as part of a triangular trade between the European mainland, the west coast of Africa and the colonies of the New World (notably the Caribbean). The main actors in this process were Dutch (and to a lesser extent English) traders; captives were supplied mostly by cooperating coastal African states.
The Bight of Benin (which is precisely the area where the Gbe languages are spoken) was one of the epicenters of the slave trade at the turn of the 18th century. The export of 5 per cent of the population each year resulted in overall population decline. Moreover, since the majority of the exported captives were male, the slave trade led to imbalance in the female/male ratio. In some parts of the Slave Coast the ratio reached two adult women for every man. Several wars (sometimes deliberately provoked by European powers in order to divide and rule) further distorted social and economical relations in the area. Because of the lack of earlier linguistic data it is hard to trace the inevitable linguistic changes that resulted from this turbulent period.
Colonisation and onwards
Around 1850, the transatlantic slave trade had virtually halted. As the grip of European colonial powers strengthened, slave raiding became prohibited, trading focused on goods again and the Europeans took it to be their calling to christianize the colonized parts of Africa. In 1847 the Norddeutsche Missions-Gesellschaft (Bremen) started its work in Keta.
In 1857, the first Ewe grammar appeared: Schlüssel der Ewesprache, dargeboten in den Grammatischen Grundzügen des Anlodialekts by missionary J.B. Schlegel of the Bremen mission. Five different dialects of Gbe (at that time called the Ewé Language-Field) were already distinguished by Schlegel, notes Robert Needham Cust in his 1883 The Modern Languages of Africa (p. 204). The dialects listed by Cust do not map exactly onto the five subgroups now distinguished by Capo, which is not too surprising since Cust himself repeatedly admits that he relies on a multitude of often conflicting sources. Fon is in fact listed twice (once as 'the dialect of the province of Dahomé' and once as 'Fogbe').
Where previous literature consisted mostly of travel journals sometimes accompanied by short word lists, Schlegel's work marked the beginning of a period of prolific lexicographic and linguistic research into the various Gbe languages. Important writers of this period include Christaller (Die Volta-Sprachen-Gruppe, 1888), Henrici (Lehrbuch der Ephe-Sprache, 1891, actually the first comparative Gbe grammar), Knüsli (Ewe-German-English Vocabulary, 1892) and Delafosse (Manuel Dahoméen (Fon), 1894).
In 1902 the missionary Diedrich Hermann Westermann contributed an article to the Zeitschrift für Afrikanische und Oceanische Sprachen, titled Beiträge zur Kenntnis der Yewe-Sprachen in Togo. Westermann was to become one of the most productive and influential writers on the Gbe languages and his output arguably dominated the Gbe literature and analysis of the first half of the 20th century. He consistently used the term 'Ewe' to denote the Gbe dialect continuum. Among his most important works on Gbe are his 1930 A Study of the Ewe language and his 1954 Wörterbuch der Ewe-Sprache.
From 1930 on, publications on various Gbe languages have been appearing at a quick rate. The vast majority of publications deals with individual Gbe languages. A significant exception is formed by the extensive comparative linguistic research of Hounkpati B.C. Capo, resulting in an internal classification of the Gbe languages and in a reconstruction of the proto-Gbe phonology. Much of the comparative research for Hounkpati B.C. Capo's influental classification of the Gbe languages was carried out in the seventies, and partial results trickled down in the late seventies and early eighties in the form of articles on specific phonological developments in various branches of Gbe and, notably, in the form of a unified standard orthography of Gbe. In his 1988 work Renaissance du Gbe, the internal classification of Gbe was published in full for the first time. In 1991, Capo published a comparative phonology of Gbe.
In the early nineties, the Summer Institute of Linguistics initiated a study to assess which Gbe communities could benefit from existing literacy efforts and to determine whether additional development programs in some of the remaining communities would be needed. Comparative linguistic research carried out in the course of this study was to shed more light on the relations between the various varieties of Gbe. Some of the results of this study were presented in Kluge (2000). In general, the SIL studies corroborated many of Capo's findings and led to adjustment of some of his more tentative groupings.
Linguistic features
The Gbe languages are relatively well documented, but linguistic research has concentrated mostly on individual dialects or languages. Moreover, many linguistic publications on the individual Gbe languages only focus on some linguistic problems or peculiarities, like the Extra High tone of the Anlo-Ewe dialect or the serial verb construction of Ewe.
Some linguistic features common to the Gbe languages are laid out below:
Sounds
Vowels
The following vowels are found in Gbe languages:
It should be noted that none of the Gbe languages has all of the above sixteen vowel qualities. In general, each Gbe lect makes use of a subset of fourteen vowels, seven oral and seven nasalised. The vowels i ĩ u ũ e o ɛ̃ ɔ ɔ̃ a ã are attested in all Gbe languages.
Nasality plays an important role in the Gbe vowel inventory: every vowel in a Gbe language occurs in a non-nasalized and a nasalized form. Capo (1991) observes that the degree of nasality of nasal vowels is less when they occur after nasal consonants than after non-nasal ones.
Consonants
The following phonetic segments are attested in Gbe lects:
Phonetic inventory of consoants in Gbe languages
| Capo 1991:39 |
bilabial |
labio-
dental |
lamino-
dental |
lamino-
alveolar |
apical post-
alveolar |
alveo-
palatal |
palatal |
velar |
uvular |
labio-
palatal |
labio-
velar |
labialised
uvular |
| stops |
p b |
|
t d |
|
ɖ |
|
|
k g |
|
|
kp͡ gb͡ |
|
| nasals |
m |
|
|
|
n |
|
ɲ |
ŋ |
|
|
ŋʷ |
|
| affricates |
|
|
ʦ ʣ |
|
|
ʧ ʤ |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| fricatives |
|
f v |
|
s z |
|
ʃ ʒ |
|
|
χ ʁ |
|
|
χʷ ʁʷ |
| trills |
|
|
|
|
r r̃ |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| approximants |
|
|
|
|
l l̃ |
|
j j̃ |
ɣ |
|
ɥ ɥ̃ |
|
w w̃ |
Notes
- When symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a voiced consonant except for the trills & approximants rows, where the symbol to the right represents a nasalised consonant.
- The voiced apico-postalveolar stop is generally written with the symbol for the alveolar voiced retroflex consonant [ɖ]. It aprroximates this sound, but is not as retroflex.
- The above table lists the attested phonetic segments. Some of the sounds listed here are in free variation with other sounds (e.g., r and r̃ with l and l̃). The reader is referred to the individual languages for an overview of their phoneme inventory.
No Gbe language exhibits all of the above forty-two phonetic segments. According to Capo (1991), all of them have the following twenty-three consonants in common: b m t d ɖ n k g kp͡ gb͡ ɲ f v s z χ ʁ r r̃ l l̃ y w
Nasality in Gbe
It has been argued (e.g. by Capo 1981) that nasality in Gbe languages can be analysed phonemically as being a feature relevant to vowels and not to consonants. Thus, underlying nasal vowels are recognized; nasal consonants on the other hand are treated as predictable variants of their non-nasal counterparts. Non-syllabic nasal consonants are, for example, always followed by a nasal vowel. Syllabic nasal consonants are analysed as reduced forms of consonant-vowel syllables.
Tone
The Gbe languages are tonal languages. In general, they have three tone levels, High (H), Mid (M), and Low (L), of which the lower two are not phonemically contrastive. Thus, the basic tonemes of Gbe are 'High' and 'Non-High'. The High toneme may be realised as High, Mid, or Rising.
The tones of Gbe nouns are often affected by the consonant of the noun stem. The voicing of this consonant affects the realisation of the Non-High toneme roughly as follows: If the consonant is a voiced obstruent, the Non-High toneme is realised as Low and if the consonant is a voiceless obstruent the Non-High toneme is realised as Mid. The consonants that induce tonal alternations in this way are sometimes called depressor consonants .
Morphology
The basic syllable form of Gbe languages is commonly rendered (C1)(C2)V(C3), meaning that there at least has to be a nucleus V, and that there are various possible configurations of consonants (C1-3). The V position may be filled by any of the vowels or by a syllabic nasal. It also is the location of the tone. While virtually any consonant can occur in the C1 position, there exist several restrictions on the kind of consonants that can occur in the C2 and C3 positions. In general, only liquid consonants may occur as C2, while only nasals occur in the C3 position.
Most verbs in Gbe languages have one of the basic syllable forms. Gbe nominals are generally preceded by a nominal prefix consisting of a vowel (cf. the Ewe word aɖú, 'tooth'). The quality of this vowel is restricted to the subset of non-nasal vowels. In some cases the nominal prefix is reduced to schwa or lost: the word for 'fire' is izo in Phelá, əʤo in Wací-Ewe and ʤo in Pecí-Ewe.
The Gbe languages are isolating languages. As such, many semantic features are expressed by lexical items. Of more agglutinative nature are the commonly used periphrastic constructions.
In contrast to Bantu languages, a major branch of the Niger-Congo language family, Gbe languages have very little inflectional morphology. There is for example no subject-verb agreement whatsoever in Gbe. Furthermore there is no gender agreement, nor are nouns inflected for number. That being said, it is not the case that Gbe languages do not possess a inflection system: the Gbe languages make extensive use of a rich system of tense/aspect markers.
The Gbe languages make extensive use of reduplication and triplication in the formation of new words, especially nouns, adjectives and adverbs. Reduplication is used for example in deriving nouns and adjectives from verbs: the verb lá̃, 'to cut', is nominalised by reduplication, yielding lãlá̃, 'the act of cutting'. Triplication is used to intensify the meaning of adjectives and adverbs, e.g. Ewe ko 'only' > kokooko 'only, only, only'.
Syntax
The constituent order of Gbe clauses is generally Subject Verb Object, except in the imperfective tense and some related constructions according to Aboh (2004).
The Gbe languages do not lend much support to the traditional distinction between tense and aspect. The only tense that is expressed by a simple morphological marker in Gbe languages is the future tense. The future marker is ná or a, as can be seen from the examples below. Other tenses are arrived at by means of special time adverbs or by inference from the context, and this is where the tense/aspect distinction becomes blurred. For example, what is sometimes referred to as perfective aspect in Gbe blends with the notion of past tense since it expresses an event with a definite endpoint, located in the past (see example sentences below).
- ŋútsu á a ɸlè xéxí (man DET FUT buy umbrella) the man will buy an umbrella (Ewegbe, future marker)
- ŋútsu á ɸlè xéxí (man DET buy-PERF umbrella) the man bought an umbrella (Ewegbe, perfective)
Focus is used to draw attention to a particular part of the utterance, to signify contrast or to emphasize something. Focus is expressed in Gbe languages by leftward movement of the focused element and by way of a focus marker wɛ́ (Gungbe, Fongbe), yé (Gengbe) or é (Ewegbe), suffixed to the focused element.
- àxwé yé Kòfí tù (house FOC Kofi build-PERF) Kofi built A HOUSE (Gengbe, focus) [source: Aboh 2004]
Questions can be constructed in various ways in Gbe languages. A simple declarative sentence can be turned into an interrogative utterance by use of a sentence-final question marker à. Another way of forming questions is by using question words. These so-called question word questions are much akin to focus constructions in Gbe. The question word is found sentence-initial, along with the focus marker. The close relationship to focus is also clear from the fact that in Gbe, a sentence cannot contain a question word and a focused element simultaneously.
- Afua de Gɛ à? (Afua reach-PERF Gɛ QUESTION) Did Afua go to Accra? (Ewegbe, question)
- étɛ́ Sɛ́ná xìá? (what Sena read-Perf) What did Sena read? (Gungbe, question word question) [source: Aboh 2004]
Topicalization is a means of signaling the subject that is being talked about. In Gbe languages, the topicalised element is moved to the sentence-initial position. In some Gbe languages, a topic marker is suffixed to the topicalised element. In other Gbe languages the topic has to be definite. A topicalised element precedes the focused element in a sentence containing both.
- ...ɖɔ̀ dàn ɔ́, Kòfí wɛ̀ hùì (that snake Det Kofi FOC kill-PERF-it) ...that the snake, KOFI killed it (Fongbe, topic) [source: Aboh 2004]
Negation is expressed in various ways by Gbe languages. In general, three methods of negation can be distinguished. Languages like Gungbe express negation by a preverbal marker má. In Fongbe-type languages, negation can be expressed like in Gungbe, or with a sentence-final marker ã. In languages like Ewegbe, both the preverbal marker mé and a sentence-final marker o are required.
Sentential negation (examples adapted from Aboh 2003 unpublished handout)
| Kɔ̀jó má xɔ̀ kátikáti lɔ́ |
Kojo NEG buy kite DET |
Kojo did not buy the kite |
(Gungbe) |
| Kɔ̀kú má ná xɔ̀ àsɔ́n ɔ́ |
Koku NEG FUT buy crab DET |
Koku will not buy the crab |
(Fongbe) |
| Kɔ̀kú ná xɔ̀ àsɔ́n ɔ́ ã |
Koku FUT buy crab DET NEG |
Koku will not buy the crab |
(Fongbe) |
| Kòfi mé ɖù nú ò |
Kofi NEG eat thing NEG |
Kofi did not eat |
(Ewegbe) |
Gbe languages share a syntactic feature that is not uncommon in Niger-Congo languages: the serial verb construction. This means that two or more verbs can be juxtaposed in one clause, sharing the same subject, lacking conjunctive markings, resulting in a meaning that expresses the consecutive or simultaneous aspect of the actions of the verbs.
- Kofí trɔ dzo kpoo (Kofi turn-PERF leave-PERF quietly) Kofi turned and left quietly (Ewegbe, serial verb construction)
Gbe and Caribbean creole languages
The Gbe languages (notably Ewe, Fon and Anlo) served as substrate in the genesis of several Caribbean creole languages. For example, Lefebvre (1985) argued that Haitian Creole is classifiable as having French vocabulary mixed with the syntax of a Gbe language.
A recent research project of the Leiden-based Research School CNWS on this topic concerns the relation between Gbe and Surinamese creoles. The project is titled A trans-Atlantic Sprachbund? The structural relationship between the Gbe-languages of West Africa and the Surinamese creole languages.
References
Gbe in general
- Aboh, O. Enoch (2004) The Morphosyntax of Complement-Head Sequences (Clause Structure and Word Order Patterns in Kwa) New York etc.:Oxford University Press. (Book based on a thorough 1998 PhD dissertation about the syntax of the Gungbe language with an excellent overview of some common properties of the Gbe languages.)
- Capo, Hounkpati B.C. (1988) Renaissance du Gbe: Réflexions critiques et constructives sur L'EVE, le FON, le GEN, l'AJA, le GUN, etc. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag. (Extensive description of various common features of Gbe, including a short history of the language cluster.)
- 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). (Contains, besides a comparative phonology of Gbe, much history, extensive background information, a listing of many dialects, and a classification.)
- Duthie, A.S. & Vlaardingerbroek, R.K. (1981) Bibliography of Gbe - publications on and in the language Basel: Basler Afrika Bibliographien. (May be somewhat outdated, but still a worthwile and very complete bibliography.)
- Pasch, Helma (1995) Kurzgrammatik des Ewe Köln: Köppe. (Contains a foreword with some general information on the Gbe languages and lists dialectal variants for many grammatical features.)
- Westermann, Diedrich Hermann (1930) A Study of the Ewe Language London: Oxford University Press. (Still recognised a valuable resource for information about what is now called Gbe.)
Other sources
- 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.
- Cust, Robert Needham (1883) Modern Languages of Africa.
- Henrici, Ernst (1888) Das Deutsche Togogebiet und meine Afrikaresie 1887 (mit einer Karte des Togogebietes und des unteren Volta und einere Tafel der Gebirgsprofile). Leipzig: Verlag von Carl Reiner. (145 p.)
- Henrici, Ernst (1891) Lehrbuch der Ephe-Sprache (Ewe) Anlo-, Anecho- und Dahome-Mundart (mit Glossar und einer Karte der Sklavenküste). Stuttgart/Berlin: W. Spemann. (270 p.)
- Hintze, Ursula (1959) Bibliographie der Kwa-Sprachen und der Sprachen der Togo-Restvölker (mit 11 zweifarbigen Sprachenkarten). Berlin: Akademie-Verlag.
Linguistic topics
- Ansre, Gilbert (1961) The Tonal Structure of Ewe. MA Thesis, Kennedy School of Missions of Hartford Seminary Foundation.
- Capo, Hounkpati B.C. (1981) 'Nasality in Gbe: A Synchronic Interpretation' Studies in African Linguistics, 12, 1, 1-43.
- Clements, George N. (1977) 'Four tones from three: the extra-high tone in Anlo Ewe'. In Kotey and Der-Houssikian (eds.) Language and linguistic problems in Africa. South Carolina: Hornbeam Press Inc.
- Lefebvre, Claire (1985) 'Relexification in creole genesis revisited: the case of Haitian Creole'. In Muysken & Smith (eds.) Substrate versus Universals in Creole Genesis. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
External links
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