Medumba language

Medumba is a Bamileke language of Cameroon. The people who speak it originate from the Nde division of the West Region of the country, with their main settlements in Bangangté, Bakong, Bangoulap, Bahouoc, Bagnoun and Tonga. It is a major Bamileke language, and is located in an area where sacred kingship played a pivotal role in government, justice, and diplomacy. The modern history of the Bamileke area, which was a German colony placed under French trusteeship by the League of Nations in 1919, is closely associated with the nationalist movement of the Union des Populations du Cameroun, which developed primarily in the coastal hinterland and the western highlands. From 1956 to the late 1960s, this area of Cameroon experienced a period of unrest; this episode continues to shape Bamileke political culture, and has an impact on language identity and the linguistic landscape.
The Medumba-speaking area is famous for a bi-annual cultural festival — FESTAC: Festival des arts et de la culture ''Medumba'' — that promotes the Medumba language, as well as dance, artwork and food styles of the 14 different villages of the locality. The festival, which takes place over a 2-week period in early July, is hosted in Bangangte.

Language resources

Scholarship on the Bamileke cluster

Medumba is part of the Eastern Group of the Bamileke Cluster, which also include Fe'fe', Ghomálá', Kwa', and Nda'nda'. The Bamileke cluster — along with Ngemba, Nkambe and Nun — is part of the Eastern Grassfields subgroup which, together with the Ring languages and the Southwest Grassfields languages, constitute the Grassfield language grouping.
Medumba figures prominently in linguistic research on the Bamileke cluster, partly because of the high quality of the work done by Jan Voorhoeve in the 1960s and 1970s, including work on :

morpheme structure constraints
personal pronouns
noun classes
tone of nouns
traditional Bamileke narratives
general linguistic description of the Bangangte dialect

This work was pursued by L. Hyman in the 1980s, on the closely related language Fe'fe'. It was re-invigorated in the early 2010s by research groups at Boston University and at the University of British Columbia. Some of these publications include:
Also notable are the scholarly contributions of Medumba speaker-linguists, including :

Keupdjio 2011, MA thesis on content questions
Kouankem 2011, PhD dissertation on nominal syntax
Kouankem 2013 on concord

Recent work on Medumba is part of a more general push towards documenting the languages of Africa, in the face of rising levels of language endangerment. Cameroon — along with Nigeria, Sudan, and Ethiopia — is reported to have one of the highest language mortality rates in Africa.

Literacy and orthography

Efforts to develop a Medumba orthography date back to the beginning of the 20th century, and are associated with the following milestones:1926: Protestant missionaries develop an orthography for use in primary schools to facilitate the penetration of the Christian Bible in the region.1957: The French administration prohibits the use of local languages in the territories of the Union Française.1973, 20 December: CEPOM is created; its mission is to promote research on Medumba and develop literacy materials.
Currently, educational materials, literature and dictionaries for the language are produced by CEPOM, based in Bangangte. The combined output of missionary and CEPOM work has produced more than 80 publications on Medumba language and culture; these are published in French, English, and Medumba. Over time, publications in Medumba have used six different orthographies:1926: published in a collection of 12 songs1945: published in a book on religious history and a syllabary1967: publication of the New Testament and Tshô Pangante1973: publication of Cam Medumba and zi'te nkite1979: publication of Mbwog NkUd MedUmbA and Tons, Textes...1985, 2 February: adoption of the current orthography at the 4th CEPOM Council
The current alphabet is given in the following table.

Uppercase

Ɑ

Lowercase

IPA symbol

tʃ

u, ʊ

In addition to simplex consonants, Medumba has numerous complex consonants, and these are represented as digraphs or trigraphs; see Table 2. Nasals, stops, and fricatives can be labialized; in the orthography this is represented as a CW digraph. Stops and fricatives can be pre-nasalized; in the orthography this is represented as an NC digraph or an NCW trigraph.
Orthographic conventions for tone-marking are as follows:

High-tone is not marked.
Low-tone is marked as a grave accent on the vowel, e.g. à.
Rising Low-High is marked as a caron on a single vowel, e.g. ɛ̌.
Falling High-Low is marked as circumflex on a single vowel, e.g. ʉ̂.

Recent developments in digital literacy have had an impact on Medumba. For example, a seven-language electronic calendar — in French, English, and the five national languages — sends information on time and date to an LCD screen via a VGA controller. The calendar has been developed as a way of mitigating the impact of language competition, and with the specific goal of raising the profile and prestige of the national languages in a context of language endangerment.

Media

Radio Medumba Bangangté was established in 2000 by Kum Ntsi' Medumba.

Phonology

Vowels

According to and, Medumba has 12 phonemic simple vowels given in the following inventory:
Additionally, Medumba has five phonemic diphthongs:,,,, and.

Consonants

The following table gives the simple phonemic consonants in Medumba according to. Consonants in parentheses are phonemic but extremely rare.
Only nasals, /b/, /d/, /g/, and /ʙ/ appear in both onset and coda positions.
Approximants /w, j/ also may occur according to Nganmou.
In addition to simple consonants Medumba has a large number of consonants with secondary articulation. Complex consonants only occur in onset position. The inventory of complex consonants according to is:

Morphology

Affixation

Medumba has several affixes including:

the suffix -te, which attaches to verbs to derive the counterpart iterative form. While many -te forms have a counterpart base to which the may or may not transparently related, many of them seem to be frozen forms, for which the underived no longer exists.
homorganic nasal prefixal N-, which is found in two contexts:
* it attaches to verbs to derive nouns
* it attaches to verbs to derive non-initial verbs
suffixal H-tone
prefixal H-tone

IPA	orthography	gloss	IPA	orthography	gloss	source
	bà L	'be red'		bà-tə LL	'change'	V1976:111
	bɛd H	'crever, pierce, explode'		bɛd-tə HH	'ask'	V1976:112
	cwed H	'wipe'		cwed-tə HH	'pick up'	V1976:114
	fàg L	'rip'		fàg-tə LL	1. 'rip' 2. to separate from each other	V1976:116
	ghub H	'become quiet'		ghub-tə HH	'be late'	V1976:118
	kùb L	'be covered with écailles'		kùb-tə LL	'escroquer'	V1976:121
	làb L	'hit'		làb-tə LL	1. 'hit with small hits' 2. 'thank, pray'	V1976:26 V1976:122
	lɑ' L	'to become angry'		lɑ'-tə LL	'reveal, show'	V1976:122
	mɑ' L	1. throw 2. project 3. clothe again		mɑ'-tə LL	'cotiser'	V1976:123
	tɛn H	'push'		tɛn-tə HH	'push with small shakes'	V1976:26

Tonal inflection

Nominal tone classes: LL, HH, HL, LH

Tone on Nouns: : Voorhoeve introduced a non-segment tone in order to distinguish two different low tone noun groups and two different high tone noun groups. For instance, naʔ and mfən both bear a segment low tone, but their tonal realization is different in the context such as mə jən mfən ___. For instance, naʔ in mə jən mfən naʔ bears a non-low tone, whereas mfen in mə jən mfən mfən bears a low tone. He proposed a four-way distinction, L, L, H, and H to account for the nominal tone groups.

Verbal tone classes: L, H

Tone on Verbs: : The radical of the verb has only one tonal contrast, which is a Low and High contrast. The tone of radical may be realized differently in different contexts. For instance, a low tone verb that has a nasal prefix has a different tone from its non-prenasalized counterpart. Examples are provided to illustrate this phenomenon. Give examples of CV, CVC, CV-L and CVC-L)
The examples above show that the Low tone radical is realized as a high tone if the verb is prenasalized, whereas it is realized as a low-mid tone if the verb is not prenasalized. The High tone radical is realized as [mid tone regardless of prenasalization. This effect is also found in Bamileke-FeʔFeʔ.

Noun classes

Voorhoeve identifies two characteristics of noun classes that surface in Medumba:

Systems of pairings between singular and plural prefixes
Concording nominal and prenominal prefixes

Voorhoeve also assumes that pronominal prefixes exist within the noun class system, with these prefixes consisting of inherent tone morphemes such as the left-edge floating tone. The added prenominal tone creates a tonal difference between singular and plural noun class pairs, with generation of the plural form created by the singular.
Noun classes can be detached by singular and plural pairs.
Voorhoeve ascertains that the nasal prefix serves as a distinguishing factor between singular and plural noun pairs. As seen in Table 19, this nasal prefix does not surface in all constructions, especially with singular nouns that are already nasal word-initially.
Other noun classes in Medumba, however, exhibit derivation from Proto-Bantu noun classes, which had a strict parallel between singular and plural classes. In comparing agreement systems of Bamileke languages, Medumba behaves independently from the expected system. Compared to Proto-Bantu noun classes, there seems to be a noun class merger in Medumba. This merger occurs through the compression of various Proto-Bantu noun classes into a generalized noun class in Medumba.
Proto-Bantu noun classes typically assign particular words to certain noun classes, but this is not exhibited in Medumba. This would imply the dissolution of strict noun classes like the ones found in Proto-Bantu, as the set noun classes are merging into one class, albeit still maintaining a noun class-like form. The flexibility of noun classes in Medumba could be correlated with inflectional morphemes acting as the noun class system, with these morphemes surfacing as left-edge floating tones.
Loan words are normally inserted into unrestricted noun classes. For example, látrɨ́, the loan word for "light" from English, can either be viewed as a mass noun or not, depending on the speaker. In the case of Medumba, this allows for any noun class to take a loan word.
In looking at interspeaker variation on the addition of loan words in Medumba noun classes, the instability of a formal noun class allows flexibility with speakers of various dialects This could be due to disagreement on how to lexicalize a new loan word between the various dialects. One such example is the loan word for "light",. While one speaker chose to pluralize as, the other speaker refused to pluralize as they believed it was a mass noun.
Younger speakers of Medumba are beginning to use forms of words that do not account for noun class, such as the first person possessive form. The first person possessive form normally varies depending on the noun it is possessing, such as in or . It is unknown as to how much younger speakers know about noun classes and agreement.

Pronouns: simplex, possessive, complex, reciprocal

Bamileke distinguishes four sets of personal pronouns: simplex, possessive, complex, and reciprocal.

Simplex pronouns

Simplex pronouns are differentiated according to syntactic position:

subject forms are V, CV, or CVC, and surface with Low tone or High tone
object forms are V, CV, or CVC, and surface with Low toner or High tone
elsewhere forms occur as indirect object, object of P, or in non-argument position

Almost all plural pronouns often begin with b-, which is a marker of plurality; see Table 15. The only exception to this is the 2pl pronoun jin, which is the elsewhere form.
The tone simplex pronouns depends on the following verb or auxiliary or the preceding verb. Examples of tone variation of pronoun in subject position. Example illustrates 1sg mə, 2sg u, 3sg o, and 3pl bu also behave as in. Example illustrate 1pl bag; 2pl bin also behaves as in.

Examples of tone variation of pronoun in object position. Example illustrates 1sg am; example illustrates 1pl jag.

Possessive and appositional pronouns

The tonal structure of possessive pronouns depends on the tonal structure of the preceding noun.
Provide examples ; use template from subject and object pronouns above.

Complex plural pronouns

Complex plural pronouns specify the composition of the group of participants denoted by the pronoun.

Syntax

CP: clausal syntax

Medumba has a rich inventory of temporal and aspectual auxiliaries, and makes productive use of serial verb constructions.

Tense-marking

Medumba has finely articulated temporal contrasts, with up to 9 distinct past tense auxiliaries, and 5 distinct future tense auxiliaries.

Bracketed clause-typing

Medumba makes use of numerous clause-typing particles that occur at the beginning or end of the sentence: they are used to mark yes/no questions, content questions, relative clauses, as well as embedded clauses. In addition, there are two forms of negation, according to whether negation has scope over VP or CP: VP-scope negation is contrastive ; CP-scope negation denies the truth of a proposition p.

DP: nominal syntax

Associative N of NP construction

Associative noun constructions, which usually translated as 'Noun₁ of Noun₂', as in bǎm ''mɛ́n'', are analyzed with a floating tone interposed between the two nouns. The presence of this floating tone is reflected by the tone melodies borne by the nouns that precede or follow it. This associative tone, first hypothesized by Jan Voorhoeve, may be high or low depending on the class and tone pattern of the preceding noun. The tone may lower the pitch-level of Noun₂ ; or it may combine with the final vowel of Noun₁, resulting in a contour tone.
For example, in, the first line represents the theorized underlying tonal melody of the two nouns, with the L tone associative marker in bold. The second line shows the two tones which are actually pronounced at the surface, with the pitch level shown in brackets. Likewise in, the first line shows the theoretical tonal melody of what at the surface are pronounced as a LH contour on Noun₁ and a down-stepped high tone on Noun₂. Thus, in brackets we see a slash indicating a rise from low to high pitch, and a mid-level line indicating a mid-range pitch.
L- ' -H-) L- -H-
L H LH ↓ H
nzwi mɛn bǎm mɛn
nzwí mɛ́n bàám ↓ mɛ́n
woman of child belly of child
'the woman of the child' 'the belly of the child'

Examples to illustrate the realization of the associative in contexts where Noun₁ is L-tone and Noun₂ is H-tone. Whether or not Noun₁ is theorized to be followed by a floating L or H tone has no effect on the surface form and, and and ). What does have an effect is the tone of the associative marker—in and it is H, while in and it is L, resulting in an LH contour on Noun₁.
The effect that the associative tone has on either of the two nouns may be dependent on which floating tones accompany those nouns, which in turn is decided by their noun class. Examples to illustrate the realization of the associative in contexts where Noun₁ is H-tone and Noun₂ is H-tone. As with to, in examples and we can see that the floating tone following the noun has no effect on the surface form—if the associative marker is H, then the surface form will always be two level H tones, or else an HL contour followed by an H tone, varying by speaker or dialect. In the case of and, the floating tone which follows the noun does have a perceptible effect. In, the surface form is either an H tone followed by an L tone, or else an HL contour followed by a L tone. However, in the only available choice is a H tone followed by down-stepped H, demonstrating that the theorized underlying tones do have an effect on the pitch at which tones are actually pronounced.
Resolution of associative tone: L-tone Noun₁ + H-tone Noun2

L- ' -H- L- -H-
L H L H ↓ H
mfə̀n mɛn bàm mɛn
ᵐfə̀n mɛ́n bàá ↓ mɛ́n
1.chief of child 5.belly of child
'the chief of the child' 'the belly of the child'
L- ' -H- L- ' -H-
L H L H ↓ H
nà mɛn kɔ̀ mɛn
nà mɛ́n kɔ̀O ↓ mɛ́n
3.cow of child 5.spear of child
'the cow of the child' 'the spear of the child'

Resolution of associative tone: H-tone Noun₁ + H-tone Noun₃

H- ' -H- H- ' -H-
H H or H L or
H L H H L L
mɛn mɛn ju mɛn
mɛ́n mɛ́n ʒú mɛ́n
1.child of 1.child 3.thing of 1.child
'the child of the child' 'the thing of the child'
H- ' -H- H- ' -H-
H H H ↓ H
H L H cʉ mɛn
nzwi mɛn tɨ́ ↓ mɛ́n
ⁿʒʷí mɛ́n 3.tree of 1.child
ⁿzʷí mɛ́n 'the tree of the child'
1.woman of 1.child
'the woman of the child'

Post-nominal and pre-nominal demonstratives

Medumba demonstratives include three elements:

a noun ;
a demonstrative, which shows noun class with the noun;
an obligatory "adverbial locative reinforcer"

The normal order or demonstratives is postnominal, yielding . Divergence from this canonical order is possible, so that is also attested, and yields a contrastive focus reading, where the noun is contrasted with other deictic alternatives.

Combining Nouns with Adjectives, Numerals and Demonstratives

Within the DP, there are 8 possible word order variations, taking into account the order of nouns, adjectives, demonstratives, and numerals. These are divided by Kouankem into post-nominal and pre-nominal variations. The possible word orders are:
; Post-nominal word order variation

; Pre-nominal word order variation

AP: adjectival syntax

There are three kinds of adjective classes in Medumba, which differ in their order relative to the noun they modify.

Pure adjectives

There are a limited number of pure adjectives. These are further divided into two classes. Class 1 pure adjectives always appear before their noun. Class 2 pure adjectives typically appear after the noun, but can appear before the noun in a contrastive context.

PP: Prepositional Syntax

Medumba has four locative prepositions: mbàŋ, mʙəә́, ɲàm, and nùm.
While there are several strategies for forming prepositional phrases involving overt prepositions or “locative specifications”, there are no overt locative prefixes which correspond to the Bantu locative classes,, and . However, there is a covert prefix in the form of a floating H tone whose presence may be detected in certain contexts by its effects on the pitch of surrounding tones, which Voorhoeve hypothesizes that it may be the remnant of those locative classes. The interpretation of a noun marked with this tone is variable and context dependent, generally corresponding to prepositions like on, at, or in.

Conventions for presenting Medumba language data

The following conventions are used to present Medumba language data

symbols in square brackets give the IPA form
examples in italic give the Medumba orthography
example sentences used the following format
* line 1: orthography
* line 2: IPA transcription
* line 3: morpheme breakdown
* line 4: translation

Thus, example is presented as follows: