Peve language

The Pévé language, sometimes referred to as Lamé, is a member of the Masa branch of the Chadic family that is spoken in parts of Cameroon and the Republic of Chad.

Varieties

The term "Zime" is not used in Cameroon, but it is used by ALCAM to serve as a cover term for the Lame, Peve, and three varieties spoken in Cameroon. There are 5,720 speakers. Zime is spoken in Cameroon in Bénoué department, along the Chadian border. It is also spoken in Chad. The dialects spoken in Cameroon are:

Peve, in the north, straddling Bibemi Arrondissement and Rey-Bouba Arrondissement
Taari, in the central area, in Rey Bouba Arrondissement to the west of Bouba Njida National Park
Lame, in Rey Bouba Arrondissement, but to the east of Bouba Njida National Park, in the Djibao area. It is different from Lame of Nigeria.

Sociolinguistic situation

An Ethnologue survey in 1999 identified about 30,000 speakers of Pévé in the Republic of Chad and 6,000 speakers in the North and Far North regions of Cameroon. Like most speakers of Chadic languages, Pévé speakers tend to be fluent in their language of heritage as well as the vehicular languages of their respective areas. These include the Mundang and Fula languages, both of which are members of the Niger-Congo language family, as well as French, English, and other languages. Unlike many neighboring languages, the number of speakers of Pévé appears to have increased over the past two decades. This is in part due to the Comité pour le Promotion de la Langue et de la Culture Lamé, an organization based in Cameroon and Chad whose goal is to share and preserve cultural customs and traditions, including language use.
The name Lamé is also used for a dialect of the related Ngeté-Herdé language.

Grammar

Like other Chadic languages, Pévé has a rich set of grammatical forms and functions that differ from those of closely related languages, even though the related languages may be spoken just a few kilometers away. For example, Pévé differs from many Chadic languages in having a copula corresponding to ‘to be’. Unlike most languages with an inherent copula, the copula in Pévé can be used in reference to past or future time but not in reference to present time. Another interesting feature of Pévé is the use of pronouns to mark tense, mood, and aspect, along with the grammatical functions of subject and object. These and other unusual form-function relationships make Pévé a likely source for future linguistic studies.

Phonology

Consonants

Contrary to previous assertions, Pévé does not "contrast" voiceless and voiced glottal fricatives. In fact, the "voiced glottal fricative" does not exist in the Pévé language.

Vowels

Peve has 5 vowels: /i/, /e/, /a/, /o/, /u/, plus their nasalized forms. The vowels /ɪ, ɛ, ɔ, ʊ/ occur as lax variations of their tense counterparts in closed syllables and occasionally in open syllables.

Publications

The grammatical and semantic forms and functions of Pévé, along with many cultural features, are described in detail in A Grammar of Pévé, published in January 2020 by Brill Publishers. The volume, based on data gathered from 2012 to present, is written by Erin Shay, professor of linguistics at the University of Colorado, Boulder, in collaboration with Lazare Wambadang, a native speaker of Pévé, professional educator and president of Comité pour le Promotion de la Langue et de la Culture Lamé.