Last Updated: 2020-07-17
COMPROMISED: unclear how reliably +ATR vowels are marked
Background
Language Family: Niger-Congo / Atlantic-Congo / Atlantic / Northern / Bak / Jola / Jola Proper / Jola Central / Jola-Fogny
- Jola-Fogny, also known as Jola-Fonyi, Diola-Fogny, Joola, or Jola, is spoken primarily in the Casamance region of Senegal with a smaller population of speakers residing in Gambia.
Phonology
Consonants
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Place of Articulation
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Manner of Articulation
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Labial
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Alveolar
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Palatal
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Velar
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Glottal
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Stops
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p b
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t d
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c ɟ
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k ɡ
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Fricatives
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f
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s
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h
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Nasals
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m
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n
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ɲ
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ŋ
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Trills
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r
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Laterals
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l
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Approximants
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w
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j
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Note: For phonemes that share a cell, those on the left are voiceless and those on the right are voiced
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Vowels
- Jola-Fogny has 10 vowels: five +ATR/tense (advanced tongue root) and five -ATR/lax. +ATR vowels are transcribed orthographically with an acute accent (´) (Gero and Levinsohn 1993, 80).
- Length is phonemic for all vowels and is marked by duplicate graphemes (Wade and Sall 2005).
- Diphthongs exist in Jola-Fogny, but they are rare (Easterday 2019, 385). Only /iu/ appears in the Crúbadán corpus.
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Front
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Central
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Back
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High
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i
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u
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Near-high
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ɪ
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ʊ
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High-Mid
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e
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ɘ
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o
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Low-Mid
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ɛ
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ɔ
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Low
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a
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Diphthongs
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/eʊ/, /iu/, /ɪe/, /ɔa/, /eɪ/
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Alphabet
- Accented vowels are not considered to be part of the alphabet by Jola-Fogny speakers, but because they correspond to different phonemes compared to their non-accented counterparts, I have chosen to include them below.
- Apostrophes are used intervocalically to distinguish between two independent short vowels and long vowels (Wade and Sall 2005, 3).
- Looking at other Niger-Congo languages with similar vowel inventories (e.g. Igbo), +ATR vowels, which are more common, don’t generally occur in words with -ATR vowels (Ringen 1979, 248). This is ultimately reflective of the vowel harmony present in the language (Sapir 1975, 6). Due to this, all vowels following a marked +ATR vowel (generally the first vowel in a word) are unmarked (i.e. they don’t have an acute accent) (Wade and Sall 2005, 3).
- The transcription of the Crúbadán corpus is somewhat suspect as the -ATR vowels appear more frequently than the +ATR vowels, which is contrary to what is expected. Therefore, the marking of +ATR vowels is suspect. I have opted to classify this language as compromised as it is unclear how reliably +ATR vowels are marked.
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Grapheme
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Phoneme
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a
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/ɘ/
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á
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/a/
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b
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/b/
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c
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/c/
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d
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/d/
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e
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/ɛ/
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é
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/e/
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f
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/f/
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g
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/ɡ/
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h
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/h/
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i
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/ɪ/
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í
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/i/
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j
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/ɟ/
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k
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/k/
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l
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/l/
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m
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/m/
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n
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/n/
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ñ
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/ɲ/
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ŋ
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/ŋ/
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o
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/ɔ/
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ó
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/o/
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p
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/p/
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r
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/r/
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s
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/s/
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t
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/t/
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u
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/ʊ/
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ú
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/u/
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w
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/w/
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y
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/j/
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Syllable Structure
- Syllables in Jola-Fogny follow the order of (C)V(C)(C) (Sapir 1965, 6–9).
Misc. Rules
- Geminate consonants are present throughout Jola languages, which are marked by repeated graphemes (Wade and Sall 2005, 2). Jola-Fogny is specifically said to only have nasal geminates. However, in the rules, I have accounted for all possible geminate consonants.
- Consonants tend to prenasalize preceding nasals (ibid.).
- Velar stops are realized as post-velar preceding /u/ and palatal preceding front vowels (Sapir 1965, 5).
- /ɘ/ reduces to schwa when unstressed (Sapir 1965, 6).
- Vowels nasalize preceding nasal consonants (Wade and Sall 2005, 3).
References
Ringen, Catherine O. 1979. “Vowel Harmony in Igbo and Diola-Fogny.” Studies in African Linguistics 10 (3): 262–71.
Sapir, David J. 1965. A Grammar of Diola-Fogny: A Language Spoken in the Basse-Casamance Region of Senegal. Cambridge University Press.
———. 1975. “Big and Thin; Two Diola-Fogny Meta-Linguistic Terms.” Language in Society.