Samwe language explained

Samwe
Nativename:	Wara
Region:	Burkina Faso
Ethnicity:	Samba
Speakers:	4,500
Date:	1993
Ref:	e18
Familycolor:	Niger-Congo
Fam2:	Atlantic–Congo?
Fam3:	Gur?
Fam4:	Wara–Natyoro
Iso3:	wbf
Glotto:	wara1292
Glottorefname:	Samue

Samwé (samoe), also known as Wara (ouara, ouala), is a Gur language of Burkina. Dialects are Negueni-Klani, Ouatourou-Niasogoni, and Soulani. Niasogoni speakers have difficulty with Negueni, but not vice versa.

Phonology

Consonants

!! Labial !! Alveolar !! Palatal !! Velar !! Labial-
velar

	voiceless	pronounced as /ink/	pronounced as /ink/	pronounced as /ink/	pronounced as /ink/	pronounced as /ink/
	voiced	pronounced as /ink/
Nasal		pronounced as /ink/	pronounced as /ink/
Fricative		pronounced as /ink/	pronounced as /ink/
Flap			pronounced as /ink/
Approximant			pronounced as /ink/	pronounced as /ink/		pronounced as /ink/

• pronounced as /link/ can be lenited to pronounced as /link/ between vowels.
• pronounced as /link/ has a free variant pronounced as /link/ after nasals, vowels, and other consonants.
• pronounced as /link/ is voiced pronounced as /link/ after nasals and between vowels.
• pronounced as /link/ is often pronounced as /link/ or pronounced as /link/ between vowels. It tends to stay voiceless at morpheme boundaries.
• pronounced as /link/ becomes voiced pronounced as /link/ between vowels or after nasals. pronounced as //kp/ is not allowed before pronounced as /link/.
• pronounced as /link/, which is not phonemic, occurs intervocalically between the same vowel.
• pronounced as /link/ is always voiceless.
• pronounced as /link/ is voiced pronounced as /link/ intervocalically and after nasals, pronounced as /link/ before pronounced as //ia// and pronounced as //ie//, and pronounced as /link/ elsewhere. pronounced as //s// can be lenited to pronounced as /link/, which Ouattara represents as pronounced as /[z̞]/. As with stops, voicing and lenition are in free variation.
• pronounced as /link/ can also be realized as pronounced as /link/ or pronounced as /link/. pronounced as //ɾ// is also in free variation with pronounced as //n// in some words. Sometimes, pronounced as //ɾn// becomes pronounced as //nn// or pronounced as //rr//.
• pronounced as /link/ and pronounced as /link/ are contrastive, but roughly 20 words have pronounced as //l~n// in free variation.

Vowels

Samwe has 20 vowels: 7 short oral vowels, 7 long oral vowels, 3 short nasal vowels, and 3 long nasal vowels.

!! colspan=2

Front !			Back
short	long	short	long	short	long
Close	pronounced as /ink/	pronounced as /ink/			pronounced as /ink/	pronounced as /ink/
Close-mid	pronounced as /ink/	pronounced as /ink/			pronounced as /ink/	pronounced as /ink/
Open-mid	pronounced as /ink/	pronounced as /ink/			pronounced as /ink/	pronounced as /ink/
Open			pronounced as /ink/	pronounced as /ink/

!! colspan=2

Front !			Back
short	long	short	long	short	long
Close	pronounced as /ink/	pronounced as /ink/			pronounced as /ink/	pronounced as /ink/
Open			pronounced as /ink/	pronounced as /ink/

Samwe has two types of vowel harmony: ATR harmony and front-back harmony. pronounced as //ɛ, ɔ// do not occur in stems with pronounced as //i, e, o, u//. Front and back vowels (pronounced as //i, e// and pronounced as //u, o/) do not co-occur in disyllabic imperative verb stems, but this rule is not followed in other verb forms. pronounced as //a// is neutral in both types.

References

• Ouattara . Virpi . 2015 . A phonological and tonal analysis of Samue using Optimality Theory . University of Turku . 10024/104773 . 978-951-29-6125-2.