| Dida | |
| Region: | Ivory Coast |
| Date: | 1993 |
| Ref: | e18 |
| Familycolor: | Niger-Congo |
| Fam2: | Atlantic–Congo |
| Fam3: | Kru |
| Fam4: | Eastern |
| Lc1: | gud |
| Ld1: | Yocoboué Dida |
| Lc2: | dic |
| Ld2: | Lakota Dida |
| Lc3: | gie |
| Ld3: | Gaɓogbo |
| Glotto: | dida1245 |
| Glottorefname: | Dida |
| Notice: | IPA |
Dida is a dialect cluster of the Kru family spoken in Ivory Coast.
ISO divides Dida into three groups, Yocoboué (Yokubwe) Dida (101,600 speakers in 1993), Lakota Dida (93,800 speakers in 1993), and Gaɓogbo (Guébié/Gebye) which are only marginally mutually intelligible and best considered separate languages. Yocoboué consists of the Lozoua (Lozwa) and Divo dialects (7,100 and 94,500 speakers), and Lakota the Lakota (Lákota), Abou (Abu), and Vata dialects. The prestige dialect is the Lozoua speech of the town of Guitry.
The Dida lects have consonant and vowel inventories typical of the Eastern Kru languages. However, tone varies significantly between dialects, or at least between their descriptions. The following phonology is that of Abu Dida, from Miller (2005), and of Yocoboué Dida, from Masson (1992).
Abu Dida has a ten-vowel system: nine vowels distinguished by "tenseness", likely either pharyngealization or supra-glottal phonation (contraction of the larynx) of the type described as retracted tongue root, plus an uncommon mid-central vowel pronounced as //ə//.
The non-contracted vowels are pronounced as //i e a o u//, and the contracted vowels pronounced as //eˤ ɛˤ ɔˤ oˤ//. (These could be analyzed as pronounced as //iˤ eˤ oˤ uˤ//, but here are transcribed with lower vowels to reflect their phonetic realization. There is no tense contrast with the low vowel.) The formants of the tense vowels show them to be lower than their non-tense counterparts: the formants of the highest tense vowels overlap the formants of the non-tense mid vowels, but there is visible tension in the lips and throat when these are enunciated carefully.
Abu Dida has a number of diphthongs, which have the same number of tonal distinctions as simple vowels. All start with the higher vowels, pronounced as //i eˤ u oˤ//, and except for pronounced as //a//, both elements are either contracted or non-contracted, so the pharyngealization is here transcribed after the second element of the vowel. Examples are pronounced as //ɓue˨teoˤ˥˩// "bottle" (from English), pronounced as //pa˨ɺeaˤ˨˩// "get stuck", and pronounced as //feɔˤ˥˩// "little bone".
Dida also has nasal vowels, but they are not common and it is not clear how many. Examples are pronounced as //fẽˤː˥// "nothing", pronounced as //ɡ͡boũ˧// "chin", pronounced as //pɔõˤ˥˧// "25 cents" (from English "pound"). In diphthongs, nasalization shows up primarily on the second element of the vowel.
Vowel length is not distinctive, apart from phonesthesia (as in pronounced as //fẽˤː˥// "nothing"), morphemic contractions, and shortened grammatical words, such as the modal pronounced as //kă˥// "will" (compare its likely lexical source pronounced as //ka˧// "get").
Yocoboué Dida has a nine vowel system: four vowels being standard, and five vowels being a retracted series, plus a realization.
The four regular vowels are /i e o u/, and the retracted vowels are /ɪ ɛ a ɔ ʊ/. /a/ may also be realized as [ʌ].
All vowels do have nasal realizations, but the nasalization of vowels is not phonemic.
The consonants in Abu Dida are typical for Eastern Kru:
| Labial | Alveolar | Post- alveolar | Velar | Labialized velar | Labial velar | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | |||
| Plosive/affricate | p b | t d | t͡ʃ d͡ʒ | k ɡ | kʷ ɡʷ | k͡p ɡ͡b | |
| Implosive | ɓ | ||||||
| Fricative | f v | s z | ɣ | ||||
| Tap/approximant | ɺ | j | w | ||||
Syllables may be vowel only, consonant-vowel, or consonant-pronounced as //ɺ//-vowel. pronounced as //ɺ// is a lateral approximant pronounced as /link/ initially, a lateral flap pronounced as /link/ between vowels and after most consonants (pronounced as /[ɓɺeˤ˥]/ "country"), but a central tap after alveolars (pronounced as /[dɾu˧]/ "blood"). After a nasal (pronounced as //m/, /ɲ/, /ŋ//), it is itself nasalized, and sounds like a short n. There is a short epenthetic vowel between the initial consonant and the flap, which takes the quality of the syllabic vowel that follows (pronounced as /[ɓᵉɺeˤ˥]/ "country"). Flap clusters occur with all consonants, even the approximants (pronounced as //wɺi˥// "top"), apart from the alveolar sonorants pronounced as //n/, /ɺ// and the marginal consonant pronounced as //ɣ//, which is only attested in the syllable pronounced as //ɣa//.
pronounced as //ɓ// is implosive in the sense that the airstream is powered by the glottis moving downward, but there is no rush of air into the mouth. pronounced as //ɣ// occurs in few words, but one of these, pronounced as //ɣa˧// "appear", occurs in numerous common idioms, so overall it's not an uncommon sound. It is a true fricative and may devoice to pronounced as /link/ word initially. pronounced as //kʷ// and pronounced as //ɡʷ// plus a vowel are distinct from pronounced as //k// or pronounced as //ɡ// plus pronounced as //u// and another vowel. They may also be followed by a flap, as in pronounced as //kʷɺeˤ˥// "face".
When emphasized, zero-onset words may take an initial pronounced as /link/, and initial approximants pronounced as //j/, /w// may become fricated pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/. pronounced as //w// becomes palatalized pronounced as /link/ before high front vowels, or pronounced as /link/ when emphasized.
The following consonants are for Yocoboué Dida:
| Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Labialized velar | Labial velar | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | |||
| Plosive/Affricate | p b | t d | c ɟ | k ɡ | kʷ ɡʷ | k͡p ɡ͡b | |
| Implosive | ɓ | ||||||
| Fricative | f v | s z | ɣ | ||||
| Approximant | l | j | w | ||||
/l/ can be realized as pronounced as /link/ when after alveolar stops, and as pronounced as /link/ when after nasals.
Dida uses tone as a grammatical device. Morpho-tonology plays a greater role in verb and pronominal paradigms than it does in nouns, and perhaps because of this, Dida verbs utilize a simpler tone system than nouns do: Noun roots have four lexically contrastive tones, subject pronouns have three, and verb roots have just two word tones.
There are three level tones in Abou Dida: pronounced as //˥//, pronounced as //˧//, and pronounced as //˨//, with about twice as common as the other two. Speaker intuition hears six contour tones: rising pronounced as //˧˥/, /˨˧// and falling pronounced as //˥˧/, /˥˩/, /˧˩/, /˨˩//. (The falling tones only reach register at the end of a prosodic unit; otherwise the low falling tone pronounced as //˨˩// is realized as a simple low tone.) However, some of these only occur in morphologically complex words, such as perfective verbs.
Monosyllabic nouns contrast four tones: and : pronounced as //dʒeˤ˥// "egg", pronounced as //dʒeˤ˧// "leopard", pronounced as //dʒeˤ˩// "buffalo", pronounced as //dʒeˤ˧˩// "arrow", with and being the most frequent.