Ijoid languages
The ijoiden languages form a primary branch of the Niger - Congo and are a small family of about 10 languages spoken by approximately 1.7 million people in the Niger Delta in Nigeria.
It consists in part of the Defaka, which has only 200 speakers, on the other hand from the Ijo dialect continuum. This includes besides the actual Ijo ( Ijaw or even Izon ) with one million speakers, the Kalabari and Kirike each with 250,000 speakers and six other small languages.
Classification of Ijoid
Classification of languages according to ijoiden Nurse 2000
- Ijoid Ijo Central: Izon (central -west Ijo ) ( 1 million); Biseni (5 thousand), Okodia (4 thousand), Oruma (5 thousand)
- East Nkoro: Nkoro (5 thousand)
- Kalabari - Okrika: Kalabari (250 thousand), Kirike (250 thousand), Ibani (60 thousand)
- Southeast: Nembe - Akassa (70 thousand)
The ijoiden languages and are closely related and form - apart from Defaka - a dialect continuum.
Linguistic Features
The ijoiden languages clearly distinguished from other Niger - Congo languages by several features. The noun class system is preserved only in remains, for " human beings " created new Klassensuffixe. The pronouns have a gender system (as masculine, feminine, neuter partially ), which is otherwise completely unusual for Niger - Congo languages . The word order is like the Mande languages and the Dogon SOV ( subject-object - verb), whereas elsewhere in the Niger - Congo rather SVO is preferred ( to Claudi 1993).
Further Reading
African Languages
- Joseph Greenberg: The Languages of Africa. Mouton, The Hague and Indiana University Center, Bloomington 1963.
- Bernd Heine and others ( ed.): The languages of Africa. Buske, Hamburg 1981.
- Bernd Heine and Derek Nurse ( eds.): African Languages . An Introduction. Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Especially for Ijoid
- John Bendor - Samuel (ed.): The Niger -Congo Languages : A Classification and Description of Africa 's Largest Language Family. University Press of America, Lanham, New York, London 1989. Therein: Charles E. W. Jenewari: Ijoid.
- Jenewari, Charles EW: Defaka, Ijo 's Closest Relative Linguistic. In: Ivan R. Dihoff (ed.): Current Approaches to African Linguistics. Vol 1, 85-111. , 1983.