Yeyi language

Yeyi (autoethnonym Shiyɛyi) is a Bantu language spoken by approximately 50,000 Yeyi people along the Okavango River in Namibia and Botswana. Yeyi, influenced by Juu languages, is one of several Bantu languages along the Okavango with clicks. It has the largest known inventory of clicks of any Bantu language, with dental, alveolar, palatal, and lateral articulations. Though most of its older speakers prefer Yeyi in normal conversation, it is being gradually phased out in Botswana by a popular move towards Tswana, with Yeyi only being learned by children in a few villages. Yeyi speakers in the Caprivi Strip of north-eastern Namibia, however, retain Yeyi in villages (including Linyanti), but may also speak the regional lingua franca, Lozi.

The main dialect is called Shirwanga. A slight majority of Botswana Yeyi are monolingual in the national language, Tswana, and the majority of the rest are bilingual.

Classification

Yeyi appears to be a divergent lineage of Bantu. It is usually classified as a member of the R Zone Bantu languages. The language has been phonetically influenced by the Ju languages, though it is no longer in contact with them.

Phonology

Vowels

Yeyi vowelsTemplate:Sfnp

	Front	Central	Back
Close	Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link
Mid	Template:IPA link		Template:IPA link
Open		Template:IPA link

Vowel length is also distinctive.

• Vowel sounds are phonetically noted .
• can also be heard as in word-final position. can also be heard as in prefixes.
• Sounds can be heard as nasalized when preceding nasal consonants. A nasal can also be heard, but only in stem-internal position.
• Sounds can tend to be centralized as following fricative and sibilant sounds.

Consonants

Yeyi consonantsTemplate:Sfnp

		Bilabial	Labio- dental	Alveolar		Palatal	Velar		Glottal
				plain	sibilant		plain	pal.
Plosive/ Affricate	voiceless	Template:IPAlink		Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink	(Template:IPAlink)
	aspirated	Template:IPAlink		Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink
	ejective			Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink
	voiced	Template:IPAlink		Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink
Fricative	voiceless		Template:IPAlink		Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink			Template:IPAlink
	voiced	(Template:IPAlink)	Template:IPAlink		Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink
Nasal		Template:IPAlink		Template:IPAlink		Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink
Liquid	rhotic			Template:IPAlink ~ Template:IPAlink
	lateral			Template:IPAlink
Approximant		Template:IPAlink				Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink

Other palatalized consonant sounds that can occur are .

• A glottal stop sound can also occur, but only between vowels.
• Palatalized-velar stop consonants may often be heard as palatal stop consonants .
• A labial approximant sound can range from an approximant sound to a fricative sound .
• An alveolar rhotic consonant can be heard as a tap or a trill, but can also be heard as a retroflex tap .
• An alveolar lateral consonant can also be heard as a retroflex lateral .Template:Sfnp

Prenasal consonantsTemplate:Sfnp

		Bilabial	Labio- dental	Alveolar	Post- alveolar	Velar		Glottal
						plain	pal.
Plosive	voiceless	Template:IPAlink		Template:IPAlink		Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink
	aspirated	Template:IPAlink		Template:IPAlink		Template:IPAlink
	ejective			Template:IPAlink		Template:IPAlink
	voiced	Template:IPAlink		Template:IPAlink		Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink
Affricate	voiceless			Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink
	aspirated			Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink
	voiced			Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink
	ejective			Template:IPAlink
Fricative	voiceless		Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink
	voiced		Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink

• Prenasal palatalized-velar stop consonants may often be heard as prenasal palatal stop consonants .

Click consonants

Yeyi clicksTemplate:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp

			Dental	Post- alveolar	Palatal	Lateral
Plosive	voiceless	plain	Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink
		aspirated	Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink
		nasalized (asp.)	Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink
	voiced	plain	Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink
		nasalized	Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink
		prenasalized	Template:IPAlink	Template:IPAlink

Lateral sounds only rarely occur.

Clicks

Yeyi may have up to four click types, dental , alveolar , palatal , and lateral . However, the actual number of clicks is disputed, as researchers disagree on how many series of manner and phonation the language contrasts.

The following series of manner and phonation, shown here as the alveolar series, are recognized by different authors:

Click	Sommer & Voßen	Fulop et al.	Miller	Seidel	Description
Template:IPA link	√	√	√	√	aspirated
Template:IPA link	√	√	√	√	tenuis
Template:IPA link	√	√	√	√	voiced
Template:IPA link	√	√	√	–	nasal
Template:IPA link	–	–	–	√	prenasalized aspirated
Template:IPA link	–	–	–	√	prenasalized tenuis
Template:IPA link	√	(cluster)	√	√	prenasalized voiced
Template:IPA link	√	√	√	–	oral ejective
Template:IPA link	√	(cluster)	√	–	nasal glottalized
	√	–	√	–	uvular fricative
Template:IPA link	?	√	√	–	uvular ejective

The contrast between ejective and glottalized nasal clicks is unusual, but also occurs in Gǀwi.

Sommer & Voßen (1992) consider the uvular ejective series uncertain due to infrequency.

Fulop et al. (2002) studied the clicks of a limited vocabulary sample with 13 Yeyi speakers who were not from the core speaking area. There are in addition prenasalized clicks such as and , but Fulop et al. analyze these as consonant clusters, not single sounds. In addition, a reported uvular affricated click appears to actually be velar, with the affrication a variant of aspiration, and so has been included under . There is similar velar affrication with the dental ejective click among some speakers. The ejective clicks are apparently uvular.

Miller (2011), in a comparative study with other languages, interprets the uvular clicks as lingual-pulmonic and lingual–glottalic . Unfortunately, the speakers interviewed were not from the core Yeyi-speaking area, and they often disagreed on which clicks to use. Although the six dental clicks ( etc.) were nearly universal, only one of the lateral clicks was (the voiced click ). The alveolar clicks ( etc.) were universal apart from the ejective, which was only attested from one speaker, but two of the palatal clicks were only used by half the speakers, at least in the sample vocabulary. The missing palatal and lateral clicks were substituted with alveolar or sometimes dental clicks (palatals only), and the missing ejective alveolar was substituted with a glottalized alveolar. Both of these patterns are consistent with studies of click loss, though it is possible that these speakers maintain these clicks in other words. 23 of the 24 possible permutations were attested in the sample vocabulary by at least one speaker, the exception being the ejective lateral click . This research needs to be repeated in an area where the language is still vibrant.

Seidel (2008) says that Yeyi has three click types, dental , alveolar , and, in two words only, lateral . There are three basic series, tenuis, aspirated, and voiced, any of which may be prenasalized.

A Yeyi Talking Dictionary was produced by Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages.

Bibliography

• Template:Cite thesis

External links

• Yeyi Clicks: Acoustic Description and Analysis (2003)