Misplaced Pages

Siamou language

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.
Kru language of southwest Burkina Faso
You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in French. (October 2020) Click for important translation instructions.
  • View a machine-translated version of the French article.
  • Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Misplaced Pages.
  • Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 1,696 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization.
  • Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
  • You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing French Misplaced Pages article at ]; see its history for attribution.
  • You may also add the template {{Translated|fr|Siamou}} to the talk page.
  • For more guidance, see Misplaced Pages:Translation.
‹ The template Infobox language is being considered for merging. ›
Siamou
Sɛmɛ
Native toBurkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Mali
Native speakers(40,000 cited ca. 1999)
Language familyNiger–Congo?
Language codes
ISO 639-3sif
Glottologsiam1242

The Siamou language, also known as Seme (Sɛmɛ), is a language spoken mainly in Burkina Faso. It is part of the Kru languages or unclassified within the proposed Niger–Congo languages. It is also spoken in Ivory Coast and Mali, and could likely be a language isolate.

The speakers call themselves Seme. The Dioula language exonym is Siamou.

Classification

Siamou is traditionally classed as Kru. However, according to Roger Blench (2013) and Pierre Vogler (2015), the language bears little resemblance to Kru. Güldemann (2018) also leaves out Siamou as unrelated to Niger-Congo and considers it a language isolate. Glottolog considers it a language isolate on that basis.

Grammar

Siamou word order is SOV, like the Senufo languages, but unlike the SVO Central Gur languages.

Geographical distribution

In 1999, it was spoken by 20,000 people in western Burkina Faso and another 20,000 in the Ivory Coast and Mali. In Burkina Faso, it is mainly spoken in the province of Kénédougou, around the provincial capital Orodara and the surrounding villages of Bandougou, Didéri, Diéri, Diéridéni, Diossogou, Kotoudéni, Lidara, and Tin. Siamou has one major dialect, Bandougou. In addition, there are minor dialectal differences among the Siamou spoken in Orodara and in surrounding villages. It is also spoken in Toussiana Department of Burkina Faso.

See also

Further reading

  • Prost, André. 1964. Contribution à l’étude des langues voltaiques. Dakar: IFAN.
  • Traoré, Kotalama. 1984. Eléments de phonologie dimensionnelle du Seme. Ouagadougou: Université de Ouagadougou MA thesis.
  • Traoré, Kotalama. 1985. Recherche sur la structure de l’enonce Seme. Nice: Université de Nice MA thesis.
  • Traoré, Kalifa & Nadine Bednarz. 2008. Mathématiques construites en contexte: une analyse du système de numération oral utilisé par les Siamous au Burkina Faso. Nordic Journal of African Studies 17(3). 175–197.
  • Toews, Carmela I. P. 2010. Siamou future expressions. In Melinda Heijl (ed.), Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Canadian Linguistics Association 2010, 1‒12. Montréal: Concordia University.
  • Toews, Carmela I. P. 2015. Topics in Siamou tense and aspect. Vancouver: University of British Columbia dissertation.

Notes

  1. ^ Siamou at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
  2. ^ Vogler, Pierre. 2015. Le sèmè/siamou n’est pas une langue kru.
  3. Blench (2013:50)
  4. ^ Güldemann, Tom (2018). "Historical linguistics and genealogical language classification in Africa". In Güldemann, Tom (ed.). The Languages and Linguistics of Africa. The World of Linguistics series. Vol. 11. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 58–444. doi:10.1515/9783110421668-002. ISBN 978-3-11-042606-9. S2CID 133888593.

References

Languages of Burkina Faso
Official language
Regional languages
Indigenous
languages
Mande
Gur
Senufo
Wara–Natyoro
Other
Immigrant languages
Kru languages
Eastern
Western
Grebo
Wee
Others
Others
Niger–Congo branches
Atlantic–Congo
Savannas
Adamawa
Gur
Ubangian
Volta–Congo
Benue–Congo
Platoid
Cross River
Northern Bantoid
Southern Bantoid
Volta–Niger
West Atlantic
Others (Ghana
and Ivory Coast)
Mande
Southeast
Eastern
Southern
West
Central West
(Manding–Kpelle)
Northwest
(Samogo–Soninke)
Kordofanian
Others
Isolates
Unclassified
Proto-languages
Categories: