Samwe language

Samwe
Samwe
Wara
Region	Burkina Faso
Ethnicity	Samba
Native speakers	(4,500 cited 1993)
Language family	Niger–Congo? Atlantic–Congo? Gur? Wara–Natyoro Samwe; ; ; ;
Language codes
ISO 639-3	wbf
Glottolog	wara1292
ELP	Wara

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

Consonants^[2]
		Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Labial- velar
Plosive	voiceless	p	t	c	k	kp
Plosive	voiced	b
Nasal		m	n
Fricative		f	s
Flap			ɾ
Approximant			l	j		w

/b/ can be lenited to [β̞] between vowels.^[3]
/t/ has a free variant [d] after nasals, vowels, and other consonants.^[3]
/c/ is voiced [ɟ] after nasals and between vowels.^[3]
/k/ is often [g] or [ɰ] between vowels. It tends to stay voiceless at morpheme boundaries.^[4]
/kp/ becomes voiced [gb] between vowels or after nasals. /kp is not allowed before /u/.^[4]
[ʔ], which is not phonemic, occurs intervocalically between the same vowel.^[5]
/f/ is always voiceless.^[6]
/s/ is voiced [z] intervocalically and after nasals, [ʃ] before /ia/ and /ie/, and [s] elsewhere. /s/ can be lenited to [ɹ], which Ouattara represents as [z̞]. As with stops, voicing and lenition are in free variation.^[7]
/ɾ/ can also be realized as [r] or [ɹ].^[8] /ɾ/ is also in free variation with /n/ in some words. Sometimes, /ɾn/ becomes /nn/ or /rr/.^[9]
/l/ and /n/ are contrastive, but roughly 20 words have /l~n/ in free variation.^[9]

Vowels

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

Oral vowels^[10]
	Front		Central		Back
	short	long	short	long	short	long
Close	i	iː			u	uː
Close-mid	e	eː			o	oː
Open-mid	ɛ	ɛː			ɔ	ɔː
Open			a	aː

Nasal vowels^[10]
	Front		Central		Back
	short	long	short	long	short	long
Close	ĩ	ĩː			ũ	ũː
Open			ã	ãː

Samwe has two types of vowel harmony: ATR harmony and front-back harmony. /ɛ, ɔ/ do not occur in stems with /i, e, o, u/.^[11] Front and back vowels (/i, e/ and /u, o) do not co-occur in disyllabic imperative verb stems, but this rule is not followed in other verb forms.^[12] /a/ is neutral in both types.^[13]

Notes

^ Samwe at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
^ Ouattara 2015, p. 96.
^ ^a ^b ^c Ouattara 2015, p. 98.
^ ^a ^b Ouattara 2015, p. 99.
^ Ouattara 2015, p. 100.
^ Ouattara 2015, p. 105.
^ Ouattara 2015, pp. 105–106.
^ Ouattara 2015, p. 110.
^ ^a ^b Ouattara 2015, p. 111.
^ ^a ^b Ouattara 2015, p. 120.
^ Ouattara 2015, p. 155.
^ Ouattara 2015, p. 158.
^ Ouattara 2015, p. 155, 158.

References

Ouattara, Virpi (2015). A phonological and tonal analysis of Samue using Optimality Theory (Thesis). University of Turku. hdl:10024/104773. ISBN 978-951-29-6125-2.

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[e18-1] Samwe at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)

[FOOTNOTEOuattara201596-2] Ouattara 2015, p. 96.

[FOOTNOTEOuattara201598-3] Ouattara 2015, p. 98.

[FOOTNOTEOuattara201599-4] Ouattara 2015, p. 99.

[FOOTNOTEOuattara2015100-5] Ouattara 2015, p. 100.

[FOOTNOTEOuattara2015105-6] Ouattara 2015, p. 105.

[FOOTNOTEOuattara2015105–106-7] Ouattara 2015, pp. 105–106.

[FOOTNOTEOuattara2015110-8] Ouattara 2015, p. 110.

[FOOTNOTEOuattara2015111-9] Ouattara 2015, p. 111.

[FOOTNOTEOuattara2015120-10] Ouattara 2015, p. 120.

[FOOTNOTEOuattara2015155-11] Ouattara 2015, p. 155.

[FOOTNOTEOuattara2015158-12] Ouattara 2015, p. 158.

[FOOTNOTEOuattara2015155,_158-13] Ouattara 2015, p. 155, 158.

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