Nafanan language

Nafaanra, also known as Nafanan or Nafana, is a Senufo language spoken in northwest Ghana, along the border with Ivory Coast, east of Bondoukou. It is spoken by approximately people. Its speakers call themselves Nafana, but others call them Banda or Mfantera. Like other Senufo languages, Nafaanra is a tonal language. It is somewhat of an outlier in the Senufo language group, with the geographically-closest relatives, the Southern Senufo Tagwana–Djimini languages, approximately to the west, on the other side of Comoé National Park.
The basic word order is subject–object–verb, like Latin and Japanese. Like other Niger–Congo languages, it has a noun class system, with nouns classified according to five different classes, which also affects pronouns, adjectives and copulas. The phonology features a distinction between the length of vowels and whether they are oral or nasal. There are also three distinct tones, a feature shared with the other Senufo languages. Nafaanra grammar features both tense and aspect which are marked with particles. Numbers are mainly formed by adding cardinal numbers to the number 5 and by multiplying the numbers 10, 20 and 100.

Geography and demography

Nafaanra is bordered by Kulango languages to the west and southeast, while Deg is found to the north and east. The closest eastern and western neighbour is the Mande language Ligbi. Southeast and south of Nafaanra and Ligbi, the Akan language Abron is spoken.
The Nafana people live in the north-west corner of the Brong-Ahafo Region of Ghana, concentrated mainly in Sampa and Banda. There are two dialectal variants of Nafaanra: Pantera of Banda, and Fantera of Sampa. Bendor-Samuel gives a 79% cognate relationship on the Swadesh list between the two dialects, meaning that they have many basic words in common. The Banda dialect is considered central. The terms "Fantera" and "Pantera" come from other peoples and are considered pejorative by the Nafana.
The Nafana people say that they come from a village called Kakala in Ivory Coast. Their oral history says that some of their people are still there, and if they go back they will not be allowed to leave again. They arrived in the Banda area after the Ligbi people, who came from Begho to the area in the early 17th century.
According to Ethnologue, as of 2005, many Nafana are bilingual in Twi, the regional lingua franca, to some extent. Using the ILR scale, 50% of Nafana have limited working proficiency in Twi, while 20% have general professional proficiency. The remaining 30% have either elementary proficiency or no proficiency at all. 15–25% of the Nafana people are literate in Twi, whereas only 1–5% are literate in Nafaanra.
65 Dompo people living in the close vicinity of Banda have shifted to Nafaanra. Dompo is their first language, thought to be extinct until a fieldwork trip by Blench in 1998 proved the contrary.

Classification

was the first linguist to mention Nafaanra, calling it "a much dispersed Senufo tribe" in 1904. Westermann in his classification of West-African languages, also grouped Nafaanra with Senufo, apparently based on the word list found in Rapp. This classification is confirmed by Bendor-Samuel, who bases his internal Senufo classification on the comparative word lists in Swadesh et al.
It is less clear which particular Senufo branch Nafaanra is most closely related to. Bendor-Samuel gives a 60% cognate relationship based on the Swadesh list with "Tenere", 59% with "Central Senari", and 43% with the non-Senufo languages Mo, Kabre, and Dogon. The relatively low scores of about 60% point to a rather distant relationship. Likewise, Mensah and Tchagbale establish an intercomprehensibility factor of 38% with "Tyebaara", concluding that Nafaanra is only distantly related to this dialect. Nafaanra has been tentatively linked to Palaka by Manessy, whereas Mills suggests a relation with the southern Tagwana–Djimini branch.

Sounds

Vowels

Nafaanra has seven oral and five nasalized vowels. A difference in vowel length can make a difference in meaning, as in ', "to go", vs. ', "fetish" or o, "we" vs. oo, "we will". Similarly, the phonemic contrastiveness of nasalization can be seen in sii, "to be giving birth," vs. , "to build". The vowel system closely resembles that of other Senufo languages. It is like the two Northern Senufo languages Supyire and Mamara in having only five nasal against seven oral vowels.

	Front	Central	Back
Close	•		•
Close-mid
Open-mid	•		•
Open		•

Consonants

Tone

Like the other Senufo languages, Nafaanra has three contrastive tones: High, Mid and Low. Tone is normally not marked in the Nafaanra orthography. Examples are:

kúfɔ̀ "yam"
dama "two pesewas "
màŋà "rope"

The Mid tone sometimes has a rising feature, the High tone sometimes is subject to downstep, and an upstep is also found. The "rising feature" of Mid may be related to the fact that two different Mid tones are found in some other Senufo languages. The High tone downstep occurs in the following context:
It is likely that the tonal lowering seen in this particular example is related to the low tone nasal prefix found in future tense constructions in some other Senufo languages. In fact, Supyire shows a similar phenomenon in future tense constructions with a direct object. In general however, downstep is more widespread than in Supyire; a similar phenomenon is found in Palaka, Tagwana, and Djimini.
An upstep is found in the imperative tense of high tone verbs:

Grammar

The Nafaanra syllable comprises a vowel and a maximum of three consonants. A nasal consonant may occur as a syllable on its own, in which case it is called a syllabic nasal. The basic syllable structure can be rendered as V, with a preference for CV and CVV. Position C₁ may contain any consonant, although word-initial /r/ does not occur. Position C₂ may contain only trills or approximants. Position C₃ may contain only nasals, in which case the syllable as a whole is nasalized.
Senufo languages have a typical Niger–Congo noun class system. Suffixes on nouns mark membership of one of the five noun genders. Pronouns, adjectives and copulas reflect the noun gender of the nominal they refer to. Although none of the sources on Nafaanra provides any details, it can be inferred from a brief word list given by Jordan
The basic word order in Nafaanra is subject–object–verb, as can be seen in the following sentence:

Personal pronouns

Jordan lists the following list of pronouns, commenting, "Although the pronoun system appears quite simple, it becomes complicated because all the tenses are shown by a combination of pronoun plus particle."

Jordan 1980a:6	Singular	Plural
1st person	ni	o
2nd person	mu	e
3rd person	u	pe

Tense and aspect

and aspect in Nafaanra are generally encoded in two places: in preverbal particles and on the verb form. Nafaanra has past, recent past, and future tenses and continuative aspect. In a simple sentence, the order of the various constituents can be rendered as follows: SUBJECT • • • • VERB. When the negative suffix -n is present, no fusing of preverbal particles takes place. Nafaanra additionally expresses some tense/aspect matters by use of certain time adverbs and auxiliary verbs.
Past tense is marked by the preverbal particle ná. Future tense is marked by the particle wè. Simple sentences without a preverbal tense particle are interpreted as recent past. If aspect marking is absent, simple sentences are generally interpreted as completive.
Continuative aspect denotes an action that is ongoing or repetitive. Continuative aspect is usually marked both by a preverbal particle nà and by a change of the verb form. The verb sɛ́, "go" used in the sentences below has the continuative form síé. In sentences where both past tense particle ná and continuative particle nà are present, they combine to give the fused particle náà. In sentences in the recent past tense, the preverbal continuative particle is omitted and continuative aspect is shown only on the verb.
Two classes of verbs can be differentiated on the basis of their behaviour in aspectually marked sentences.

Questions

s can be formed in several ways in Nafaanra. Basic yes–no questions are constructed by adding a sentence-final question marker rá. Constituent questions are doubly marked. They contain a sentence-initial question word and are marked with a sentence-final question marker hin.

Numbers

The cardinal numbers without tonal marking are presented below; where possible, the tone pattern is added based on the list in Rapp.

No.	Nafaanra	Supyire	Notes
1	núnu	nìŋkìn
2	shíín	shùùnnì
3	táárɛ̀	tàànrè	Mpre: eta
4	jíjirɛ̀	sìcyɛ̀ɛ̀rè
5	kúnɔ	kaŋkuro
6	kɔ́ɔ̀-ná-nù	baa-nì	5 + 1
7	kɔ́ɔ̀-na-shin	baa-shùùnnì	5 + 2
8	kɔ́ɔ̀-ná-tárɛ̀	baa-tàànrè	5 + 3
9	kɔ́ɔ̀-ná-jirɛ	baa-rìcyɛ̀ɛ̀rè	5 + 4
10	kɛ́	kɛ	-
20	fúlo	benjaaga
30	fúlo na kɛ	benjaaga na kɛ	20 + 10
40	fúloe shiin		20 × 2
50	fúloe shiin na kɛ		20 × 2 + 10, Rapp féleshen-ná-kɛ
60	fuloe taarɛ		20 × 3, however compare Rapp félèko-a-ná-nò
70	fuloe taarɛ na kɛ		20 × 3 + 10, Rapp féleko-náshèn
80	fuloe jijirɛ		20 × 4, Rapp féleko-ná-tàrɛ
90	fuloe jijirɛ na kɛ		20 × 4 + 10, Rapp félèko-ná-nyèrɛ
100	lafaa		Mpre: ke-lafa
200	lafɛɛ shiin
400	lafɛɛ jijirɛ
1000	kagbenge nunu		Rapp láfâ-kɛĭ or káboŋge
\|2000	kagbenge shiin

Rapp compares the Nafaanra numerals for three and hundred with eta and ke-lafa from Mpre, a hitherto unclassified language from Ghana. The Mpre eta is Kwa-like, whereas the Nafaanra form táárɛ is transparently related to the forms found in the other Senufo languages. Nafaanra lafaa "hundred" is a typical Kwa numeral and is most probably borrowed from one of the surrounding Kwa languages. Rapp's implication of affinity between Mpre and Nafaanra seems therefore unwarranted at this level.