Proposal: Ewe Dialect Map (Eʋe Kɔtagbewo ƒe Tata)

 Summary:

We propose to develop an interactive map of the Ewe (western Gbe) dialects of Ghana, Togo and Benin. The map will interface with a detailed database of morphosyntactic information about the Ewe dialects. The map will be freely available on the Internet. 

Proposal:

There is a bewildering array of dialects of Ewe crossing Ghana, Togo and Benin. It is not clear exactly how these dialects are related to one another diachronically or structurally (see Kluge 2000, 2006, 2007, 2011 for a relevant discussion of Gbe more generally). It is not clear how the dialects of Ewe in Ghana relate to those in Togo and Benin. The purpose of this project is to create an online tool that will allow linguists and other interested audiences to investigate the linguistic relations between them.

While the focus of the map will be morphosyntax, some information on phonological and lexical variation will also be included. We estimate that the initial database will have at least 200 features. Furthermore, for each dialect the database will contain roughly 200 sentences illustrating those features. Since we propose to study at least 30 dialects, that makes for at least 6,000 data points, and 6,000 transcribed, glossed and translated example sentences. In addition, each example sentence will be accompanied by a sound file, so there will be at least 6,000 sound files as well. A list of some possible map queries is presented in the next section.

Traditionally linguistic work on Ewe has focused on standard Ewe, for which there are no native speakers. There has been relatively little syntactic work done on particular Ewe dialects. There is almost no work comparing different (non-standard) dialects. The Ewe dialect map will attempt to rectify this situation by providing a powerful incentive to students for doing detailed work on particular Ewe dialects. It will also facilitate that detailed dialect work by providing a checklist of dialect features to start an investigation. 

In the terminology of Kluge 2000, 2006, 2007, 2011, our database will encompass the western Gbe languages. In particular, the map will completely integrate Gen/Mina (Togo), which is largely mutually intelligible with Togolese dialects of Ewe. The map will not include information on the central and eastern Gbe languages (e.g., Aja, Fon, Gun). Intelligibility between Ewe and the central and eastern Gbe languages is negligible.

The Ewe Dialect Map will be of interest to a wide range of linguists, including Ewe linguists, specialists on West African languages more generally, Ewe teachers and students at all levels (both native speakers and second language learners), historical linguists, typologists and syntacticians interested in micro-comparative syntax (see Kayne 2000). The map will also be of use to scholars in other fields interested in the Ewe language, such as anthropologists, sociologists and historians, since the map would offer a way to explore the relationships between various groups using linguistic criteria. The project should also encourage cross-border collaboration of scholars in Ghana, Togo and Benin.

The Map project will also serve as a source of data for computational work on the Ewe language, an important addition to the ongoing efforts of the Ghana Natural Language Processing initiative. The initiative is aimed at creating Natural Language Processing applications including text translation, text-to-speech, and automatic speech recognition, among others, for Ghanaian languages (https://ghananlp.org/).

The interactive map will be modeled on other interactive language and dialect maps that exist on the Internet now: The World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS), The Syntax Atlas of Dutch Dialects (SAND), Scots Syntax Atlas, Yale Grammatical Diversity Project (YGDP), Terraling/SSWL. Since there are currently no such interactive dialect maps of other African languages, this project will serve as a pioneering effort that will trigger other researchers to build similar maps. In this way, the Ewe Dialect Map will be of great interest to Africanists and African linguists more generally. It even has the potential to trigger the development of interactive dialect maps for other smaller languages worldwide.

Dialects of Ewe

Here is a preliminary list of the dialects of interest based on Ameka 1991, Ansre 2000, Afeli 1978, Kluge 2011 and Ethnologue. Further dialects may be added in the course of the research depending on the feedback from the consultants. Also, some of the larger dialects might be divided further (e.g., there may be several Aŋlɔ dialects that need to be represented).

Ghana: 

Adaklu, Aŋfɔe, Aŋlɔ, Avenɔ, Awudome, Fodome, Ho, Hohoe, Kpando, Kpedze, Peki, Tɔŋu

Togo: 

Agu, Avenɔ, Be, Togo, Danyi, Gen/Mina, Kpele, Kpesi, Vo, Waci (Outchi), Wance (Ŋɔtse), Wudu (Hudu), Wundi

Benin: 

Waci

In addition to the above, ‘standard Ewe’ as defined by the school textbooks, will also be added to the database.

 Possible Queries

Some of the queries that could be answered with the Ewe Dialect Map are the following. The results of the queries will be displayed on a map with colored icons (dots, squares, triangles) for the locations of the towns and villages and dialects. We will work with Ewe scholars throughout the world to expand this list, and sharpen the definitions.

Syntactic Queries

Which dialects delete the copula in the progressive?

Which dialects disallow object shift in the progressive?

Which dialects have the verbal suffix [-m] in the progressive?

What is the position of the focus particle with focused progressive verb phrases?

Which dialects show a singular/plural distinction in the possessor particle?

Does a coordinated subject require a plural subject pronoun on the verb?

Do 1st and 2nd person singular possessor pronouns follow inalienable nouns?

Do 1st and 2nd person singular possessor pronouns follow alienable nouns?

Do 1st and 2nd person singular possessor pronouns follow the progressive verb?

Which dialects use the outer relative morpheme (xé)?

Which dialects have a final particle in relative clause constructions?

Is the relative pronoun homophonous with the proximal demonstrative?

Is the sentential focus particle distinct from the identificational focus particle?

Does the form of the nominal copula nyé change if the complement is extracted (nyé   nyɔ́)?

Does the form of the preposition né change if the complement is extracted (né  ná)?

Does the preposition ɖé undergo a change if the complement is extracted (ɖé  ɖá)?

What are the possible orders of the theme and the goal in a double object construction?

What is the position of the object in the ŋlɔ be ‘to forget’ particle construction?

Which dialects have the construction fika Kofi ɖe (where Kofi Q) for ‘Where is Kofi?’?

Which dialects reduplicate the fronted verb in the verb focus construction?

Which dialects reduplicate the fronted verb in the factive construction?

Which dialects have the genitive factive construction?

Which dialects have the particle [o] at the end of wh-questions?

Which dialects have the particle [a] at the end of yes-no questions?

Does the final negation particle [o] delete in yes-no questions?

Which dialects have the future with le dzá + verb (wo le dza dzo)?

Which dialects express deontic modality with ɖola + verb (eɖola wɔɛ)?

How do different dialects express negative polarity items (with -ɖeke or -bu)?

Are some negative polarity items (with -ɖeke or -bu) restricted to negative contexts?

Is future marker repeated in future possibility statement (miateŋu a-wɔɛ)?

Lexical Queries

What is the word for ‘white person’ (yovo, yevu) in different dialects?

What is the word ‘where’ (gane, fika, fine) in different dialects? 

What is the word for ‘how’ (leke, lama, lemɔ) in different dialects?

What is the form of the logophoric pronoun (ye, yi) in different dialects?

What is the form of ‘with’ (kple, ku) in different dialects?

(Is kple the word for ‘with’? Is ku the word for ‘with’?)

What is the form of the possessor particle (ƒe, me, be) in different dialects?

What is the form of the focus particle (ye, nyɔ) in different dialects?

What is the form of the indefinite/definite article in different dialects? 

What is the form of locatives ‘here’/’there’ in different dialects?

What is the form of the demonstratives ‘this’/’that’ in different dialects?

What is the form of the topic particle in different dialects? 

What is the form of the habitual marker in different dialects? 

What is the form of the future marker (a, na) in different dialects?

What is the form of the numeral classifier (om-eve, wam-eve, am-eve) in different dialects?

What is the form of the plural marker (wo, we) in different dialects?

What is the form of the inceptive marker (gbe, ge) in different dialects?

What is the form of the ‘redundant complement’ (e, yi, ɖi) in different dialects?

What is the form of the embedded 3SG subject pronoun (wò, be) in different dialects?

What is the form of the agentive nominalization suffix (-tɔ́,-lá) in different dialects?

Can -tɔ́ be used in agentive nominalizations (nudzratɔ́)?

Can -lá be used in agentive nominalizations (nudzralá)?

What is the form of the possibility modal ‘can’ (teŋu, teŋgbe)?

Feature Operations

For F1 (feature 1) and F2 (feature 2), calculate the intersection, complement and union.

Cross F1 and F2 (tetrachoric table).

Queries for Examples and Paradigms

Show an example sentence with the logophoric pronoun in the Kpele dialect

(clicking on the sentence found will play its sound file).

Show an example sentence with the focus particle in Tɔŋu.

Show an example of the progressive construction in Gen/Mina.

Show the subject pronoun paradigm in the Aŋlɔ dialect of Ewe.

Show the possessor pronoun paradigm in the Kpele dialect of Ewe.

Other Kinds of Queries

Show the villages in Togo where the Kpele dialect is spoken.

What is the full set of feature values for the Kpele dialect?

Which dialects are geographically adjacent to the Kpele dialect?

What feature values are in common for the Kpele dialect and the Tɔŋu dialect?

How many feature values are in common for two specific dialects?

What feature values differentiate the Kpele dialect and Tɔŋu dialect?

How many feature values differentiate two specific dialects?

Which feature values are common to Ghanaian dialects of Ewe?

Which feature values are common to Togolese dialects of Ewe?

What linguistics literature has been written about the Peki dialect of Ewe?

Related Projects:

Ewe Dialect Encyclopedia

The Ewe dialect encyclopedia will be an online collection of short articles (3-7 pages, plus references) describing each of the features that are represented in the Ewe Dialect Map. The articles will be written by different contributors to the Ewe Dialect Map. Each article will explain what is known about the feature and give examples. 

Eʋegbeŋutinunya (Ewe Linguistics) Facebook Group

(https://www.facebook.com/groups/453377302139734)

The Eʋegbeŋutinunya Facebook is an existing group that serves as a forum for discussing the linguistics of Ewe. The group is already active, with many members of the Ewe linguistics community already registered. The group will serve as a forum for announcements about the Ewe Dialect Map. 

Ewe Repository

(https://ordinaryworkinggrammarian.blogspot.com/2019/06/description-of-ewe-repository.html)

The Ewe Repository is an existing collection of written work on Ewe, including books, newspapers, grammars, dictionaries and linguistics papers. These works will be referenced in the Ewe Dialect Map, and where possible, links to the references will be provided. In working on the Ewe Dialect Map, new works will be added to the Ewe Repository regularly.

Ewe Dialect Dictionary

As an independent project, we will use the materials collected for the Ewe Dialect Map to help to create the first version of an Ewe dialect dictionary. Ideally, this dictionary will have 1,000 words, tonally marked, for each of the 30 dialects targeted for the map project. We will encourage graduate students to take up the Ewe Dialect Dictionary as an MA or PhD project.

Budget Justification

Preliminary Workshop:

During the first year of the project, there will be a preliminary workshop held in Ho in Ghana inviting Ewe scholars from all over West Africa and the world (one week long). The purpose of this workshop will be: (a) to officially inaugurate work on the project, (b) to get feedback on the project from Ewe scholars and educators, (c) to identify existing dialect data, (d) to identify project participants, and (e) to fill out and polish the list of features that will be used in the database and (f) to start training the team leaders (see below).

Personnel:

The administrative team will consist of the PI and co-PI. Both of them will work on the project on a part-time basis. 

For each dialect there will be a team leader in charge of the documentation of that dialect. In all cases, the team leader will be a trained linguist. Preferably the team leader will be a native speaker of the dialect. But at the very least the team leader will be a fluent speaker of Ewe from the country where the dialect is spoken. A possible source for team leaders will be linguistics graduate students from the three countries. It will be possible for highly qualified candidates to be the team leader for two or more dialects. If needed, the team leader will be able to choose an assistant, who is also a trained linguist, to help with the linguistic work.

For each dialect, there will be a consultant team of 2 or 3 native speakers of that dialect (men and women) who work with the team leader to document the dialect. The team leader will meet with the team for two weeks to a month to go through the features listed in the database and get example sentences and recordings. Both the team leader and the consultants will be remunerated. The team leader will be responsible for recruiting consultants. They will also be responsible for uploading all their data in a designated place in the cloud for the administrative team to look at.

Lastly, we will hire two IT/computer specialists, one for the database and one for the map interface. The IT people will work on a part time basis for all four years of the grant.

Equipment:

The team leaders will be loaned equipment appropriate to complete the documentation project, including Zoom H4n recorders, hard drives, computers and all necessary cables. Students will be shown how to us the equipment during the preliminary workshop. There will be six sets of equipment so that multiple teams can work at the same time. They will return that equipment after each expedition.

Preliminary Timeline:

Pre-grant: Get research permits. Establish informal connections with national universities. Find out about interested graduate students in Ghana, Togo and Benin. Post proposal on Ewe Linguistics Facebook group for feedback. Send proposal to Ewe scholars for feedback. Develop feature set, add features, start writing articles for encyclopedia.

Year 1: Hold preliminary workshop, form fieldwork teams, start training of teams, distribute equipment, identify and contact communities across three countries, plan detailed schedule for data collection. Develop detailed specifications for database and map with IT specialists, start developing software. Send out first few teams to start to gathering information on dialects from towns and villages. Evaluate initial expeditions, and make modifications to the process as needed.

Year 2: Gather information on dialects from towns and villages, upload data. Continue developing database and map.

Year 3: Gather information on dialects from towns and villages, upload data. Continue developing database and map.

Year 4: Finish all data collection. Launch interactive map on the Internet, test it out, fix bugs. Hold inaugural presentations in Ghana, Togo and Benin, present project at American and European universities.

Post-grant: Encourage Ewe students (including team leaders) to write MA and doctoral theses on dialects of Ewe. Continue to add more dialect data to the database. Help other language-based groups in Africa to develop similar interactive maps.

Selected References

Agbedor, Paul. 1994. Verb Serialization in Ewe. Nordic Journal of African Studies 3, 115-135. 

Agbedor, Paul. 1994. Negation in Ewe. Working Papers of the Linguistic Circle 12, 55-73. Victoria, BC: University of Victoria.

Agbedor, Paul. 1996. The Syntax of Ewe Personal Pronouns. Linguistique Africaine 16, 19-50.

Afeli, Kossi Antoine. 1978. Essai d’une Analyse Phonologique de l’Ewedomegbe (Ewe de l’Interieur) suivi d’une Étude de la Combinaison des Tons dans le Syntagme Nominal. Thèse du doctorat du troisième cycle, Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris III.

Ameka, Felix. 1990. The Grammatical Packaging of Experiencers in Ewe: A Study in the Semantics of Syntax. Australian Journal of Linguistics 10, 139-181.

Ameka, Felix. 1991. Ewe: Its grammatical constructions and illocutionary devices. Doctoral dissertation, Australian National University.

Ameka, Felix. 1996. Body Parts in Ewe Grammar. In Hillary Chappell and William McGregor (eds.), The Grammar of Inalienability, 783-840. De Gruyter Mouton.

Ameka, Felix. 2002. Constituent Order and Grammatical Relations in Ewe Typological Perspective. In Kristin Davidse and Béatrice Lamiroy (eds.), The Nominative and Accustive and their Counterparts, 319-352. John Benjamins.

Ameka, Felix. 2005. Forms of Secondary Predication in Serializing Languages: On Depictives in Ewe. In Nikolaus R. Himmelmann and Eva F. Schultze-Berndt (eds.), Secondary Prediction and Adverbial Modification: The Typology of Depictives. Oxford University Press, Oxford. 

Ameka, Felix. 2006. Ewe Serial Verb Constructions in their Grammatical Context. In Alexandra E. Aikhenvald and R.M.W. Dixon (eds), Serial Verb Constructions: A Cross-Linguistic Survey. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Ameka, Felix and Mary-Esther Kropp Dakubu. 2008. Imperfective Constructions: Progressive and Prospective in Ewe and Dangme. In Felix Ameka and Mary Esther Kropp Dakubu (eds.), Aspect and Modality in Kwa Languages. John Benjamins.

Ansre, Gilbert. 1966. The Verbid: A Caveat to Serial Verbs. Journal of West African Languages 3, 29-32. 

Ansre, Gilbert. 1966. The Grammatical Units of Ewe: A Study of Their Structure, Classes and Systems. Doctoral dissertation, University of London.

Ansre, Gilbert. 2000. The Ewe Language. In Kodzo Gavua (ed.), A Handbook of Eweland vol. 2, The Northern Ewes of Ghana. World Publishing Services, Accra.

Badan, Linda and Leston Buell. 2012. Exploring Expressions of Focus in Ewe. Nordic Journal of African Studies 21, 141-163. 

Bimpeh, Abigail Anne. 2019. Default de se: The Interpretation of the Ewe Logophor. In M. Ryan Bochnak, Miriam Butt, Erlinde Meertens and Mark-Matthias Zymla (eds.), Proceedings of TripleA 5: Fieldwork Perspects on the Semantics of African, Asian and Austronesian Languages. Universitätsbibliothek Tübingen, Publikationssystem

Buell, Leston. 2012. Ewe VP Fronting and Derivation by Phase. Ms., University of Amsterdam. 

Buell, Leston. 2019. Reason Questions in Ewe. In Margit Bowler, Philip T. Duncan, Travis Major and Harold Torrence (eds.), Schuhschrift: Papers in Honor of Russell Schuh. eScholarship Publishing, University of California.

Clements, George Nick. 1975. Analogical Reanalysis in Syntax: The Case of Ewe Tree-Grafting. Linguistic Inquiry 6, 3-51.

Clements, George Nick. 1975. The Logophoric Pronoun in Ewe: Its Role in Discourse. Journal of West African Languages 10, 141-177. 

Clements, George Nick. 1978. Tone and syntax in Ewe. In D. J. Napoli (ed.) Elements of Tone, Stress, and Intonation. Georgetown University Press.

Collins, Chris. 1993. Topics in Ewe Syntax. Doctoral dissertation, MIT.

Collins, Chris. 1994. The Factive Construction in Kwa. Travaux de recherche sur le  créole haïtien 23, 31-65. Université du Québec à Montréal.

Collins, Chris. 1994. Economy of Derivation and the Generalized Proper Binding Condition. Linguistic Inquiry 25, 45-61.

Collins, Chris. 1997. Argument Sharing in Serial Verb Constructions. Linguistic Inquiry 28, 461-497.

Collins, Chris, Paul M. Postal and Elvis Yevudey. 2017. Negative Polarity Items in Ewe. Journal of Linguistics, 1-35.

Dorgbetor, Nathaniel. 2016. A Comparative Investigation into the Syntax of Double Object Constructions in English and Ewe: A Minimalist Approach. Master’s thesis, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim.

Dzameshie, Alex K. 1995. Syntactic Characteristics of Ewe Relative Clause Constructions. Research Review 11, 27-42.

Dzameshie, Alex K. 1998. Structures of Coordination in Ewe. Journal of West African Languages 27, 72-81.

Essegbey, James. 2009. Inherent Complement Verbs and the Basic Double Object Construction in Gbe. In Enoch O. Aboh and James Essegbey (eds.), Topics in Kwa Syntax. Springer.

Fabb, Nigel. 1992. Reduplication and Object Movement in Ewe and Fon. Journal of African Languages and Linguistics 13, 1-39.

Faton, Gabriele R. 2018. Waci Speakers in Togo and Benin. SIL Electronic Survey Report 2018-003.

Fiedler, Ines and Stefanie Jannedy. 2013. Prosody of Focus Marking in Ewe. Journal of African Languages and Linguistics 34, 1-46.

Gotah, Selikem. 2019. Comparative Syntactic Analysis of Predicative Possession and Transitive ‘Need’. MA Thesis, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.

Huttar, George L., Enoch O. Aboh, Felix K. Ameka. 2013. Relative clauses in Suriname creoles and Gbe languages. Lingua 129. 96-123.

Kluge, Angela. 2000. The Gbe Language Varieties of West Africa: A Quantitative Analysis of Lexical and Grammatical Features. MA thesis, College of Cardiff, University of Wales.

Kluge, Angela. 2006. Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis of Grammatical Features Elicited among the Gbe Language Varieties of West Africa. JALL 27, 53-86.

Kluge, Angela. 2007. The Gbe Language Continuum of West Africa: A Synchronic Typological Approach to Prioritizing In-Depth Sociolinguistic Research on Literature Extensibility. Language Documentation and Conservation 1, 182-215.

Kluge, Angela. 2011. A Sociolinguistic Survey of Gbe Language Communities of Benin and Togo: Gbe Language Family Overview. SIL Electronic Survey Report 2011-012.

Kpoglu, Promise Dodzi. 2019. Possessive Constructions in Tongugbe, an Ewe Dialect. Doctoral Dissertation, Leiden University.

Lewis, Marshall. 1985. Relative Clauses in Anlo Ewe. Studies in African Linguistics, Supplement 9.

Rongier, Jacques. 1988. Apprenons L’Ewe: Miasrɔ̃ Eʋegbe, vols. 1-9. Paris: Éditions L’Harmattan. 

Westermann, Diedrich. 1930. A Study of the Ewe Language. London: Oxford University Press.