Wapan language explained

Wapan
Nativename:Jukun
States:Nigeria
Region:Taraba State, Plateau State, Nasarawa State
Speakers:100,000
Date:1994
Ref:e18
Dia1:Wukan
Script:Latin
Familycolor:Niger-Congo
Fam2:Atlantic–Congo languages
Fam3:Benue–Congo
Fam4:Jukunoid
Fam5:Central
Fam6:Kororofa
Iso3:juk
Glotto:wapa1235
Glottorefname:Wapan

Wapan (Jukun Wapan) or Kororofa, also known as Wukari after the local town of Wukari, is a major Jukunoid language of Nigeria.

Varieties

Blench (2019) lists the following varieties as part of the Kororofa (Jukun Wapan) cluster:[1]

Phonology

Wapan and other Jukunoid languages are interesting in the development of asymmetrical patterns of nasal and oral consonants in West Africa.

One could posit that voiced oral stops become nasal before nasal vowels, sometimes at the expense of having more nasal than oral vowels, which is typologically odd, or that nasal stops denasalise before oral vowels, which is typologically odd as well.

Oral vowels are allowed only in syllables like ba, mba, nasal vowels in bã, mã.

Historically, however, the consonants nasalized: *mb became **mm before nasal vowels and then reduced to *m, leaving the current asymmetric distribution.[2]

allophonic Ṽ next to N  
  • mãm
  • mba
  • mbãm
  • ba
  • bãm
  • mb → *mm/_Ṽ
  • mãm
  • mba
  • mmãm
  • ba
  • bãm
  • mm → *m
  • mãm
  • mba
  • mãm
  • ba
  • bãm
loss of final Cmbaba

Notes and References

  1. Book: Blench, Roger. An Atlas of Nigerian Languages. Kay Williamson Educational Foundation. 2019. 4th. Cambridge.
  2. Larry Hyman, 1975. "Nasal states and nasal processes." In Nasalfest: Papers from a Symposium on Nasals and Nasalization, pp. 249–264