Micheli, Ilaria: Profilo grammaticale e vocabolario della lingua kulango (Cte dIvoire).

(Dissertationes VI) Universit degli Studi di Napoli LOrientale and Istituto Italiano per lAfrica e lOriente, Naples 2007. 377 pp. Price 50, (to be requested from the bureau of the Rector of the Universit degli Studi di Napoli LOrientale). ISSN 1723-8226. It is a fortunate event that, in the dearth of in-depth studies on Gur languages, two major monographs by young researchers appeared on Kulango (K.), one of their medium-large language groups. The first one, Micheli (2007) is reviewed here; the second one, Elders (2008) will be the subject of a separate review. According to the Ethnologue (16th edition, Lewis 2009), northern Kulango (K.) from Bouna and southern K. from Bondoukou are now spoken by respectively 157. 500 and 104.000, i.e., more than 260.000 native speakers mainly in the north-east of the Ivory Coast, with a minority in the adjoining border areas of western Ghana. It is however likely that this general picture simplifies a more complex situation. Indeed, Micheli distinguishes (p. 15) her K. of Nassian, to the south of Bondoukou, as a third dialect different from the K. of Bondoukou in her monograph, aimed at documenting this very dialect. On the other hand, Elders doesnt separate the dialect of Nassian from that of Bondoukou in his Grammaire, which is however a large description of northern K. rather that its southern variety or varieties. It was published posthumously the following year, thanks to the detailed editing work done by Gudrun Miehe and Pascal Boyeldieu on the manuscript its author had submitted to the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft in 2006, a few months before his premature death while doing field research in Mali. However, Eders (2008: 1) mentions a different K. dialect, the Nabay, spoken in two villages to the northwest of the main K.-speaking areas but doesnt seem to provide data in order to assess its relationship with them and with the other minor languages that are most closely associated with K., i.e., Loma and Teen. Even though Micheli states in her Profilo grammaticale that her grammar is a simple description, accessible also for non specialists (p. 14), her treatment of the language shows a considerable degree of sophistication. It includes a detailed grammatical description in Italian and a large Kulango-French vocabulary (pp. 157-377) with a considerable corpus of sentences and proverbs as examples of how the different lexical items are used. Throughout her monograph, it is clear that Micheli is not only interested in describing the language adequately and accurately, but also that she has a considerable interest in anthropological linguistics. The grammatical part is divided into five chapters, plus three appendixes and the bibliography: I. The sound system of Kulango, II. The noun and nominal morphology, III. The verb and verbal morphology, IV. The syntax of the simple sentence, and V. The syntax of complex sentences. The first chapter deals extensively with phonological phenomena such as minimal pairs, vowel harmony, sound alternations, syllable structures and tonal processes. According to Micheli (pp.26 ff. and 73 ff.) Nassian K. has H, M and L tones, and makes use of tonal oppositions especially in its pronominal and verbal morphology, much less so for distinguishing lexical differences. She states explicitly (p. 16) that she has followed the orthographical choices made by the Catholic missionaries for their publications in K., for instance, she uses ny instead of for the palatal nasal. Another consequence of this is that tones are marked in the grammatical part only when it is strictly necessary to do so, but not in the dictionary. In this manner, it is more easy to read for literate K. readers, who are used to the missionaries orthography. In chapter II Micheli discusses not only the inflectional morphology of nouns (pp. 29-38), but also the formation of compound and derived nouns, adjectives, adverbs, demonstratives, different kinds of personal pronouns, interrogatives, numerals and ideophones. The major aspect of K. inflectional morphology in nouns is its noun class system, where Micheli identifies 17 classes for the singular (sg.) and 12 for the plural (pl.). They are always marked by suffixes and are paired into a complex system of 37 genders plus a few isolated pairs. A full list of K. nouns and their genders can be found in Appendix A (p. 132 ff.). For instance:

- gender G has cl. 4 in the sg. and cl. 18 in the pl., like t!!l"-y! red ant (pl. t!!l"-#); it includes small animals and, interestingly, du &u & l-yo (pl. du &u & li-u & ) shadow of a living being; - gender M has cl. 4 in the sg. and cl. 20 in the pl., like ege-'mo chin (pl. ege-m); it includes parts of the body, but also words from other semantic fields such as zaga-'mo honey and p"-'m! debt; - gender Z has cl. 10 in the sg. and cl. 21 in the pl., like gb""-ro toad (pl. gb""-n); it includes only animals; - the default gender (Michelis gender A) has cl. 1 in the sg. and cl. 18 in the pl., like na &a & cow, bull (pl. na &a & -#); it is semantically quite heterogeneous and most loanwords are assigned to it, e.g., b""t( (~ m""t() belt (pl. b""t(-$ ~ m""t(-$) < English belt. In spite of such a rich system of class distinctions in nouns, K. adjectives and 3rd person pronouns display a strongly reduced system, that distinguishes only between animates and inanimates, e.g.: - the subject clitics with perfective verbs (Series 2, pp. 57 and 73) are h# 3rd sg. animate, h! 3rd sg. inanimate, b! 3rd pl. animate, and # 3rd pl. inanimate; - the possessive prefixes (p. 62) are h# 3rd sg. animate, h! 3rd sg. inanimate, b! 3rd pl. animate, and # 3rd pl. inanimate; This difference is interpreted by Micheli in a historical perspective as evidence of a decay of the class system: it has been replaced by a much simpler system in the parts of speech that agree with nouns, while there is only one really productive gender, which most new words are assigned to, i.e., the above gender A (sg. cl. 1, pl. cl. 18). However, a certain productivity of other classes can be observed in derivation, especially in deverbal derivation where, e.g., the cl. 2 suffix marks derived action or state nouns such as k!r(-gy! stroll, walk from k!r( to stroll, to walk, gar(-gy! hardness, strength from gar( be hard, be strong, etc. A few class suffixes appear to be different from the other ones, because they are opaque to vowel harmony and have H instead of L tones. The clearest examples are cl. 11 [-s ! ] and its pl., cl. 24 [-s"! g"# ], that mostly appear in agent nouns such as k!r(-s" stroller, walker from the above k!r( to stroll, to walk, lo-s" singer from lo to sing, etc.. The different phonological behaviour and the fact that the other noun class suffixes replace the sg. class suffix, rather than being added to it, justify the hypothesis that present-day -s" is an old noun that had cl. 1, i.e., - in its sg. and a residual class -g! in its pl.. The same pattern occurs in d##y# bush spirit who lives in natural elements, pl. d##y$g!. Historically lo-s"g! singers is thus not [N + CLASS MARKER], but rather an old compound, i.e., [N + N + CLASS MARKER] (pp. 34, 40 ff.). Counting is an area of interest for anthropological linguists, and Micheli devotes some pages to K. numerals (pp. 68 ff.). Interestingly, there is a general way of counting nouns, and a dedicated way for counting money. The general way is a quinary system until 9, and a vigesimal one from 20 to 90. More precisely, the general numerals have 5, 10, 20 and 100 and 1000 as pivots. For instance: taa 1, t! 5, t-r! taa 6 (lit. five-with one), nuunu 10, iplu 20, iplu l" nuunu 30 (lit. twenty and ten), ipwo-nyu 40 (lit. two twenties, with ipwo pl. of iplu 20 and nyu 2), ky(& m sa &a & b( 300 (lit. three hundred, with ky(& m 100 and sa &a & b( 3).

For counting money, instead, there are three pivots: babru 5 CFA francs, p!n 25 CFA francs, and kotuku 1000 CFA francs. For instance: - babru taa 5 CFA francs (lit. one b.), babru na 20 CFA francs (lit. four b.), - p!n taa 25 CFA francs (lit. one p.), p!n na 100 CFA francs (lit. four p.), p!n iplu 500 CFA francs (lit. twenty p.), - kotuku taa le p!n taa 1025 CFA francs (lit. one k. and one b.). Verb morphology is discussed on pp. 72 ff. Micheli (p. 72) stresses the fact that the K. verbal system is based on aspect and mood, and only secondarily on tense, i.e., on the indication of the time of the event or state denoted by the verb. In negative and interrogative clauses, and obviously in affirmative and negative imperative forms, tense is not marked at all, while aspect is marked even if less than in plain affirmative declarative forms. In her description, Micheli follows and develops the seminal paper on K. verb by Crevatin (1997). The system makes use of a combination of three series of subject pronouns and of tonal oppositions both on the subject pronouns and on the verb stem, that doesnt change in its segmental form. The shortest form of the subject pronouns is Michelis Series 2, used mainly with perfective verbs, the other two are lengthened (Series 3, with present and future imperfective verbs) and enlarged by -a (Series 1, with habitual verbs). For instance: 1st sg. 3rd sg. animate Series 2 (Pro2) m( h# Series 3 (Pro3) m(( h## Series 1 (Pro1) m(a ha &

The basic aspect and mood distinctions in affirmative declarative verbal forms, discussed by M. on pp. 74 ff., can be resumed as follows (with H, L and M indicating respectively H, L and M tones): Pro1 H + VStem L (~ M) Pro2 L + VStem H Pro2 H + VStem H l) + Pro2 H + VStem L Pro3 H + VStem M Pro3H + y + VStem M Habitual Perfective, Punctual Imperative Jussive (azione ottativa o ingiuntiva, p. 79) Durative, Actual, Immediate or Ingressive Future, Present or Future apodosis of a conditional sentence Future

Negation is marked either by that precedes the subject pronoun and -(, at the end of the clause, or only by clause final -(,. Alternatively, the verb ka( (~ kaa) refuse can be used with the deverbal noun of the lexical verb, especially for perfective forms. Third pl. forms can be used as functionally equivalent to passive forms (p. 67 f.). A considerable number of periphrastic and serial verb constructions (p. 91 f.) express values such as immediate past, iterative, ingressive, augmentative, diminutive, etc. Also causatives are formed with a periphrasis, i.e., by using the verb d" to cause, as in: M(d", b..-n( I cause child-DEF.ANIM. I had the child drink the water h#he n drink y!k"-r" water-DEF.INANIM.

However, there are several verbs that display a causative stem extension -ka, like kpr" wake up (intr.) vs. kpr"ka wake up (tr.), ny(0 see vs. ny(0 ka (0 show, etc. Several fossilized derivational types are listed by Micheli on p. 97 f. Most of them seem to have an intensive force, like -ra as in hara throw several times vs. ha hurl, throw, vowel lengthening as in h$$ push insistently vs. h$ push, etc. A long section (pp. 99-132) is devoted to syntax. In accordance with her stated aim of writing a grammar accessible also for non specialists (p. 14, and see above), Micheli has chosen to organize this section following the traditional Italian way of describing syntax, rather than following a theoretical model that requires a more specialised knowledge of linguistic theory such as some version of generative grammar, dependency grammar, functional grammar, etc. It has been already written above that, in this manner, she separates chapter IV The syntax of the simple sentence from chapter V The syntax of complex sentences (La sintassi del periodo). Chapter IV discusses the basic SVO word order of K. and nominal, i.e., verbless clauses, how direct objects are distinguished from indirect ones, the structure of simple and complex noun phrases, indirect complements and the functions of postpositions, noun phrases with relative clauses and with appositions. Importantly, Micheli distinguishes true genitival constructions, where the possessor with or without the definiteness marker is followed by the possessee with or without its possessive clitic, from compound nouns, like the following two examples: (Complex NP with multiple possessors) (& gbrag!-n( b! v""l! b! ha(& chief-DEF.ANIM. their: ANIM. brother their: ANIM. field The field of the chiefs brother (lit. chief-the their brother their field, with the 3rd pl. anim. possessive b! used as form of polite respect instead of the 3rd sg. anim. h#) (Compound noun) bi'o kw!(-s" drum beat-CL11 Drummer (lit. drum beater) The order is head-final in both types, but there appear to be both syntactic and phonological reasons for distinguishing the two. How alienable and inalienable possession are expressed at clause level is discussed not in chapter IV, but in chapter III in connection with the verb be (p. 88 f.). Chapter V discusses the use of parataxis and how sequences of events are represented in K. narratives (p. 122 f.), how speech is reported and som generational differences Micheli observed in her informants in this regard, sentential complements, as well as different kinds of circumstantial dependent clauses such as consecutives, temporal and final clauses, etc. The long Appendix A has already been mentioned above in connection with the noun class system. Appendix B discusses the major contact phenomena of K., especially for the Nassian dialect, and lists a number of loanwords from Akan, Dyula, Arabic, and European languages such as Portuguese, French and English. Appendix C describes the personal names of Nassian K., a system based on the day of the week the person was born, that appears to have been heavily influenced by Abron, Ashanti, Anyi and Bawle. Finally, the entries of the rich Kulango-French dictionary are organised considering digraphs as single sounds, e.g., words beginning with gb and gy like gbal" prepare (a sauce, food) or gyakuma & cat are not listed together with those that begin with g such as g!l! spot, fleck, but separately. Tense (+ATR) and lax (-ATR) vowels are listed together, with the tense ones preceding the lax ones, e.g., after the two words that begin with 'm, one finds three words in o immediately followed by three other words in !; then there are 10 pages of words beginning with p. The entries themselves range from short and simple ones such as that of the postposition -ti below, to more complex ones such as tege kid goat, with sentences and proverbs that exemplify

how the word is used, cultural explanations about the meaning of the quoted proverbs, and a list of derived and compound words such as kpal(g#tege sacrifice (kpal(-g# lit. thing of the oracle consultation) kid. -ti (postp.): Sur. tege (n.): cabri. (pl. te ) b! yuu m" tege: ils ont vol mon cabri. m#m tege p"" # y$gb$l$naga-r", "%ny"% h#&#& nya%'# y#gyag!: si un cabri meurt derrire ta maison alors ton nom sera sali (car tout le monde va croire que cest toi qui la tu). 1 *tesa%, tey$r$, tebi&i&: cabri mle, femelle, petit; *kpal"g#&tege: cabri du sacrifice; *y$p!!tege: cabri quil faut donner la famille dune fille pour lavoir rendue enceinte; *yuutege: cabri quil faut donner en reparation la famille laquelle on a vol qqch; *saak!tege: cabri pour le sacrifice la terre. In conclusion, Ilaria Michelis monograph shows how a linguist with anthropological linguistic interests can provide both an excellent in-depth description of the grammatical system of a language, and an extensive dictionary enriched by cultural observations both on how single lexical items are used, and on designated culturally important lexical fields such as the counting system and personal names. G iorg io Bant i References
Crevatin, Franco 1997. Profili linguistici africani: 1. il verbo nella lingua Koulango (Gur; Cte dIvoire). In: Incontri Linguistici 20. Elders, Stefan 2003 a. The dependent conjunction in Kulango. In: M.E. Kropp Dakubu and E.K. Osam (eds.) Studies in the languages of the Volta Basin I. Legon: Linguistics Department of the University of Ghana. 43-60 , 2003 b. Ltat dannexion en kulango. In: Gur Papers / Cahiers Voltaques 6: 67-81. , 2006. Le chef comme morphme: les noms complexes en possesseur de et chef en kulango. In: Kerstin Winkelmann and Dymitr Ibriszimow (eds.) Zwischen Bantu und Burkina. Festschrift fr Gudrun Miehe zum 65. Geburtstag. Cologne: Rdiger Kppe. 59-78. , 2008. Grammaire kulango (parler de Bouna, Cte dIvoire), edited by Gudrun Miehe and Pascal Boyeldieu. (Gur Monographs, 10) Rdiger Kppe, Cologne. Kouakou Appoh Enoc Kra. 2005. Parlons koulango: Cte d'Ivoire. Paris: L'Harmattan. Lewis, M. Paul (ed.), 2009: Ethnologue. Languages of the World, 16th edition. Dallas (Tex.): SIL International. [Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com/.] Micheli, Ilaria, 2005 a. Problemi di lingua e cultura kulango (Cte dIvoire). Naples: Ph.D. dissertation at the Universit degli Studi di Napoli LOrientale. , 2005 b. Lespressione del possesso nel kulango di Nassian. In: Incontri Linguistici 28: 193-97. , 2007 a. Casi di polisemia kulango. In: Incontri Linguistici 30: 196-200. , 2008 a. Larte del dire kulango (Cte dIvoire). In: La Ricerca Folklorica 56: 123-29. , 2008 b. Lungo le vie delloro in Africa Occidentale. In: Franco Crevatin (ed.) Il luogo della mediazione. Trieste: Deputazione di Storia Patria per la Venezia Giulia. 223-48. , 2009. Mande and Akan loans in Kulango social structure terminology and culture. In: La Ricerca Folklorica 57: 133-39. , 2011. Two points in Kulango grammar: I. Analytic Equivalents for fossilized verb extension II. The diminutive alteration. In: Luca Busetto, Roberto Sottile, Livia Tonelli and Mauro Tosco (eds.). He bitaney lagge. Studies on language and African linguistics in honour of Marcello Lamberti. Milan: Qu.A.S.A.R. 91-102. Naden, Tony, 1989: Gur. In: John Bendor-Samuel (ed.) The Niger-Congo languages. Lanham, New York and London: University Press of America. 141-168.