| Language name: | KOTOKO |
| UPSID number: | 4373 |
| Alternate name(s): | |
| Classification: | Afro-Asiatic, Chadic |
| This language has | 36 segments |
| Its Frequency index is | 0.369364375 (average percentage of segments; 0.1: many very rare segments; 0.39: average; 0.7: many common segments) |
| The language has these sounds: | p t k kp ? b d dj g gb c' k' b< d< pf' tD0' f h s S hlF m n r l j w i e E a+ a_ O o o( u |
| Comment: | Mandage or Magalbe dialect. Kotoko is spoken to the south of Lake Chad in the Nigeria-Cameroun-Chad border region. Kotoko is tonal, with 60% of all items low-toned. Extra high tone has limited distribution, a low-falling tone occurs only in final syllables. Bouny's analysis is tentative on several points. Higher mid and lower mid vowels may turn out to be predictable variants. Many consonant clusters including geminate plosives occur medially and are interpreted as heterosyllabic but sonorants can appear long syllable-finally. Bouny treats the voiceless ejective affricates as consonant sequences but they can appear initially and as C2 in -VC1C2V- where they initiate the second syllable. They also complete an ejective series which is otherwise missing labial and coronal terms. On the other hand, prenasalized stops intervocalically are divided VN.CV and so are treated here as sequences even in initial position. |
| Source(s): | Bouny, P. 1977. Inventaire phonetique d'un parler Kotoko: le Mandague de Mara. Etudes Phonologiques Chadiennes, Caprile. |