Afenmai
| Yekhee | |
|---|---|
| Afenmai | |
| Etsako | |
| Native to | Nigeria |
| Region | Edo State |
| Ethnicity | Afenmai |
|
Native speakers
|
270,000 (1995) |
|
Niger–Congo
|
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | yekh1238 |
Afenmai (Afemai), or Yekhee, is an Edoid language spoken in Edo State, Nigeria by Afenmai people. Not all speakers recognize the name "Yekhee"; some use the district name Etsako.
Afenmai is unusual in reportedly having a voiceless tapped fricative as the "tense" equivalent of the "lax" voiced tap /ɾ/ (compare [aɾ̞̊u] 'hat' and [aɾu] 'louse'), though is other descriptions it is described simply as a fricative and analyzed as the "lax" equivalent of the "tense" voiceless stop /t/.
Vowels are /i e ɛ a ɔ o u/. Long vowels and the large number of diphthong in the language are derived from sequences of short vowels, often from the optional elision of /l/.
Afenmai has a complex system of morphotonemic alterations based on two phonemic tones, high and low. At the surface level there are five distinctive tones: high, low, falling, rising and mid. Mid tone is the result of downstep of a high tone after a low tone. The contour tones (falling and rising) either occur on long vowels or diphthongs, from a sequence of high+low or low+high, or on short vowels produced from the contraction of such a long vowel or diphthong. Rising tones are rather uncommon, as they tend to be replaced by high, low or mid.
Consonants of the Ekpheli dialect are:
The consonants marked long have been analyzed in various ways, including 'tense' or 'fortis' and paired up with 'lax' or 'lenis' partners, though there is no phonological basis for grouping the supposed 'long' consonants together, or for partnering them with particular 'short' consonants. The clear cases are /k͡pː ɡ͡bː mː/, which are twice as long as /k͡p ɡ͡b m/ but otherwise identical in a spectrogram. /kː ɡː/ are likewise twice as long as /x ɣ/. However, alveolar /t/ is only slightly longer than dental /θ/, and while /v/ is longer than /ʋ/, that's to be expected for a fricative compared to an approximant.
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