Annotated Swadesh wordlists for the Bantu-A group (Bantu family).

Languages included: Mwetug Akoose [bna-ako], Elung Akoose [bna-elu].

DATA SOURCES

Akoose (Mwetug, Elung)

Hedinger 2008 = Hedinger, Robert. A Grammar of Akɔɔse, a Northwest Bantu Language. SIL International & Arlington: University of Texas. // Detailed grammar of Akɔɔse, accompanied with text examples and Swadesh wordlists for several dialectal varieties of the language, including Mwetug, Mbwogmut, Mwetan, Ninong, Elung, and Bajoh.

Hedinger 1987 = Hedinger, Robert. The Manenguba Languages (Bantu A.15, Mbo cluster) of Cameroon. London: School of Oriental and African studies. // A comparative-historical study of the Manenguba language cluster, with a large comparative wordlist attached.

NOTES

Akoose (Mwetug, Elung).

1. General.

The main sources of information on Akoose (Akɔɔse, Bakossi) are works by Robert Hedinger, particularly the detailed grammar [Hedinger 2008]. Dialectal segmentation of Akoose seems to be rather complicated and not perfectly established: comparative wordlists adduced in the appendix to [Hedinger 2008] show that some of the "dialects" may have up to 7-8% disagreements between themselves on the Swadesh wordlist. We do not find it necessary to reproduce all six wordlists, since the majority of differences concern phonetics rather than lexics, and restrict ourselves to two of the most far removed: Mwetug Akoose (which also forms the basis for the grammatical description in the source) and Elung Akoose, which show 8 direct mismatches between them (of course, the possibility of mistakes caused by semantic inaccuracies cannot be ruled out).

Some data, especially for Elung, are also taken from R. Hedinger's earlier comparative monograph on the Manenguba languages [Hedinger 1987]. As a rule, the two sources agree between themselves when the data overlap, so essentially both sources are quite compatible.

2. Transliteration.

Hedinger's transcription of the wordlists conforms to IPA standards, and only the slightest changes from IPA to UTS are required (e. g. Hedinger's j > UTS y; it should be noted that in the grammatical description in [Hedinger 2008], the symbol y is normally used to denote the palatal glide, whereas j is only employed in the appendix with the wordlists).

Database compiled and annotated by: G. Starostin (last update: June 2015).