The Edoid languages are a few dozen languages spoken in southern Nigeria, southern Benin Republic, Togo, and eastern Ghana. Edoid tribes in Nigeria live in Edo State, Delta State, Ondo State, Bayelsa State, Rivers State and Kwara State. The term "Edoid" for the language group derives from its most widely spoken member, Edo, whose speakers cluster in Edo State and especially Benin City. Edoid languages collectively have over 60 million native and secondary speakers. Historically, all Edoid tribes in Nigeria and West Africa had migrated from Benin Kingdom.
Classification
Elugbe (1989)
The following classification is based on that of Elugbe (1989).
Ihievbe and Aduge are unclassified within their branches.
Lewis (2013)
An alternative classification of the Edoid languages by Lewis (2013:160):
Lewis's study is an improvement on Elugbe's classification, as more languages were identified and classified. However, omitted the Uvbie of the South-Western Edoid branch (cf. Emoefe et al. (2017).)
Names and locations
Below is a list of language names, populations, and locations from Blench (2019).
Comparative vocabulary
Sample basic vocabulary for some northern Edoid languages from Lewis (2013):
Phonology
Proto-Edoid is reconstructed as having a contrast between oral and nasal consonants and oral and nasal vowels typical for the region. However, in some Edoid languages nasal vowels have been reanalyzed as allophones of oral vowels after nasal consonants, and in others nasal consonants have been reanalyzed as allophones of oral consonants before nasal vowels, reducing the number of phonemically nasal consonants. Urhobo retains three nasals, /m, n, ɲ/, and has five oral consonants with nasal allophones, /ɺ, l, ʋ, j, w/; in Edo this is reduced to one phonemic nasal, /m/, but eight additional consonants with nasal allophones, /p, b, t, d, k, ɡ, kp, ɡb/; and in Ukue there are no indisputably phonemic nasals and only two consonants with nasal allophones, /l, β/.
See also
- List of Proto-Edoid reconstructions (Wiktionary)
Notes
References
Bibliography
- Frank Kügler, Caroline Féry, Ruben Van De Vijver (2009) Variation and Gradience in Phonetics and Phonology
- Elugbe, Ben Ohiọmamhẹ. 1989a. "Edoid". In Bendor-Samuel (Ed.), The Niger–Congo Languages. Lanham: The United Press of America. 291-304.
- Elugbe, Ben Ohiọmamhẹ. 1989b. Comparative Edoid: phonology and lexicon. Delta Series No. 6. Port Harcourt: University of Port Harcourt Press.
- Blench, Roger. Delta Edoid wordlists.
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