Ekoid languages

The Ekoid languages are a dialect cluster of Southern Bantoid languages spoken principally in southeastern Nigeria and in adjacent regions of Cameroon. They have long been associated with the Bantu languages, without their status being precisely defined. Crabb (1969)Crabb, D.W. 1969. Ekoid Bantu Languages of Ogoja. Cambridge University Press remains the major monograph on these languages, although regrettably, Part II, which was to contain grammatical analyses, was never published. Crabb also reviews the literature on Ekoid up to the date of publication.

The nearby Mbe language is the closest relative of Ekoid and forms with it the Ekoid–Mbe branch of Southern Bantoid.

Languages Ethnologue lists the following Ekoid varieties with the status of independent languages. Branching is from Watters (1978) and Yoder et al. (2009).

Ekoid Ndoe

Ejagham (Ekoi) Efutop–Ekajuk Efutop Nde-Nsele-Nta Abanyom Nkem-Nkum Ekajuk–Nnam

Names and locations (Nigeria) Below is a list of language names, populations, and locations (in Nigeria only) from Blench (2019).

Language Cluster Dialects Alternate spellings Own name for language Endonym(s) Other names (location-based) Other names for language Exonym(s) Speakers Location(s) Bakor cluster Bakor Abanyom Bakor Abanyom, Abanyum Befun, Bofon, Mbofon 12,500 (1986) Cross River State, Ikom LGA, main village Abangkang Efutop Bakor Ofutop Agbaragba 8,740 (1953), 10,000 (1973 SIL) Cross River State, Ikom LGA Ekajuk Bakor Akajuk more than 10,000 (Crabb 1965);Crabb, D.W. 1965. Ekoid Bantu languages of Ogoja, Eastern Nigeria, Part 1: Introduction, phonology and comparative vocabulary. West African Language Monographs 4. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 30,000 (1986 Asinya) Cross River State, Ogoja LGA, Bansara, Nwang, Ntara 1,2 and 3, and Ebanibim towns Nde–Nsele–Nta cluster Bakor 10,000 (1973 SIL) Cross River State, Ikom LGA Nde Bakor Ekamtulufu, Mbenkpe, Udom, Mbofon, Befon 4,000 (1953); est. 12,000 (Asinya 1987)Asinya, O.E. 1987. A reconstruction of the segmental phonology of Bakor (an Ekoid Bantu language). M.A. Thesis, Department of Linguistics, University of Port Harcourt. Nsele Bakor Nselle 1,000 (1953); est. 3,000 (Asinya 1987) Nta Bakor Atam, Afunatam est. 4,500 (Asinya 1987) Nkem–Nkum cluster Bakor Cross River State, Ogoja LGA Nkem Bakor Nkim, Ogoja, Ishibori, Isibiri, Ogboja Nkim Ogoja Ishibori 11,000 (1953); est 18,000 (Asinya 1987) Nkum Bakor 5,700 (1953); est. 16,500 (Asinya 1987) Nnam Bakor Ndem 1,230 (1953); est. 3,000 (Asinya 1987) Cross River State, Ikom and Ogoja LGAs Ejagham cluster Ejagham 5 dialects in Nigeria, 4 in Cameroon Ekoi (Efik name) 80,000 total: 45,000 in Nigeria, 35,000 in Cameroon (1982 SIL) Cross River State, Akamkpa, Ikom, Odukpani and Calabar LGAs, and in Cameroon Bendeghe Ejagham Bindege, Bindiga, Dindiga Mbuma Cross River State, Ikom LGA Etung North Ejagham Icuatai 13,900 (1963) Cross River State, Ikom LGA Etung South Ejagham 4,200 (1963) Cross River State, Ikom and Akamkpa LGAs Ejagham Ejagham Ekwe, Ejagam, Akamkpa Cross River State, Akamkpa LGA and in Cameroon Ekin Ejagham Qua, Kwa, Aqua Abakpa 900 active adult males (1944–45): bilingual in Efik (Cook 1969b) Cross River State, Odukpani and Calabar LGAs Ndoe cluster Ndoe 3,000 (1953) Cross River State, Ikom LGA Ekparabong Ndoe Akparabong Towns above 2,102 and 310, respectively, (1953) Akparabong Town, Bendeghe Affi Balep Ndoe Anep, Anyeb 619 (1953) Balep and Opu Mbe Idum, Ikumtale, Odaje Mbe M̀ bè Ketuen, Mbube (Western) 9,874 (1963); 14,300 (1973 SIL); 20-30,000 (2008 est.). 7 villages (Bansan, Benkpe, Egbe, Ikumtak, Idibi, Idum, Odajie) Cross River State, Ogoja LGA

Phonology Proto-Ekoid is reconstructed with the following vowels and tones: ; high, low, rising, falling, and downstep. The rising and falling tones, though, might be composite.

It is thought to have the following consonants:

Labial Alveolar Palatal /Postalveolar Velar Labiovelar Nasal ~ Stop /Affricate Fricative Rhotic Approximant

occurs at the beginning of a word, and in the middle or at the end.

Study The first publication of Ekoid material is in Clarke (1848)Clarke, John 1848. Specimens of dialects: short vocabularies of languages: and notes of countries and customs in Africa. Berwick-upon-Tweed: Daniel Cameron where five ‘dialects’ are listed and a short wordlist of each is given. Other major early publications are Koelle (1854),Koelle, S.W. 1854. Polyglotta Africana. London: Church Missionary Society Thomas (1914)Thomas, N.W. 1914. Specimens of languages from Southern Nigeria. London: Harrison & Sons and Johnston (1919–1922).Johnston, H.H. 1919-22. A comparative study of the Bantu and Semi-Bantu languages. (2 vols.) Oxford: Clarendon Press Although Koelle lumped his specimens in the same area, it seems that Cust (1883)Cust, R.N. 1883. The modern languages of Africa. 2 vols. London: Richard Bentley was the first to link them together and place them in a group co-ordinate with Bantu but not within it. Thomas (1927)Thomas, N.W. 1927. The Bantu languages of Nigeria. In: Festschrift Meinhof F. Boas et al. eds. 65-73. Hamburg: Friederichsen & Co. is the first author to make a correct classification of Ekoid Bantu, but oddly the much later Westermann & Bryan (1952)Westermann, Diedrich & Bryan, M.A. (1970 ). The Languages of West Africa. Oxford: International African Institute / Oxford University Press repeats an older, inaccurate classification. This also propagated another old error and included the Nyang languages with Ekoid. Nyang languages have their own quite distinct characteristics and are probably further from Bantu than Ekoid.

Guthrie (1967–1971)Guthrie, Malcolm 1967-71. Comparative Bantu. 4 vols. Farnham: Gregg International Publishers could not accept that Ekoid formed part of Bantu. His first improbable explanation was that its ‘Bantuisms’ resulted from speakers of a Bantu language being ‘absorbed’ by those who spoke a ‘Western Sudanic’ language, in other words, the apparent parallels, were simply a massive block of loanwords. This was later modified into ‘Ekoid languages may to some extent share an origin with some of the A zone languages, but they seem to have undergone considerable perturbations’ (Guthrie 1971, II:15). Williamson (1971)Williamson, K. 1971. The Benue–Congo languages and Ịjọ. Current Trends in Linguistics, 7. ed. T. Sebeok. 245-306. The Hague: Mouton in an influential classification of Benue–Congo assigned Ekoid to ‘Wide Bantu’ or what would now be called Bantoid, a rather untidy mass of languages lying somehow between Bantu and the remainder of Benue–Congo.

All modern classifications of Ekoid are based on Crabb (1969) and when Watters (1981)Watters, John R. 1981. A phonology and morphology of Ejagham, with notes on dialect variation. Ph.D. thesis. University of California at Los Angeles. xviii, 549 p. came to explore the proto-phonology of Ekoid, he used this source, rather than his own field material from the Ejagham dialects in Cameroon. A problematic aspect of Crabb is his notation of Ekoid which does not clearly distinguish phonetic from phonemic transcription. Fresh work on Ejagham by Watters (1980,Watters, John R. 1980. The Ejagam noun class system: Ekoid Bantu revisited. In Larry M. Hyman (ed.), Noun classes in the Grassfields Bantu borderland, 99-137. Southern California Occasional Papers in Linguistics, 8. Los Angeles: University of Southern California 1981) has extended our knowledge of the Cameroonian dialects of Ekoid. However, an important unpublished dissertation by Asinya (1987)Asinya, O.E. 1987. A reconstruction of the Segmental phonology of Bakor (an Ekoid Bantu language). M.A. Linguistics, University of Port Harcourt based in fresh fieldwork in Nigeria made an important claim about Ekoid phonology, namely that most Ekoid languages have long/short distinctions in the vowels. Ekoid has raised particular interest among Bantuists because it has a noun-class system that seems close to Bantu and yet it cannot be said to correspond exactly (Watters 1980).

Ekoid languages

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