Wapan language

Wapan (Jukun Wapan) or Kororofa,[3] also known as Wukari after the local town of Wukari, is a major Jukunoid language of Nigeria.

Not to be confused with Jukun language.
Wapan
Jukun
Native toNigeria
RegionTaraba State, Plateau State, Nassarawa State
Native speakers
(100,000 cited 1994)[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3juk
Glottologwapa1235
ELPWapan[2]

Varieties

Blench (2019) lists the following varieties as part of the Kororofa (Jukun Wapan) cluster:[3]

  • Abinsi
  • Wapan proper
  • Hõne
  • Dampar (spoken at Dampar, Wukari LGA)

Phonology

Wapan and other Jukunoid languages are interesting in the development of asymmetrical patterns of nasal and oral consonants in West Africa.

One could posit that voiced oral stops become nasal before nasal vowels, sometimes at the expense of having more nasal than oral vowels, which is typologically odd, or that nasal stops denasalise before oral vowels, which is typologically odd as well.

Oral vowels are allowed only in syllables like ba, mba, nasal vowels in bã, mã.

Historically, however, the consonants nasalized: *mb became **mm before nasal vowels and then reduced to *m, leaving the current asymmetric distribution.[4]

allophonic Ṽ next to N   *mã*mãm*mba*mbãm*ba*bãm
*mb → *mm/_Ṽ *mã*mãm*mba*mmãm*ba*bãm
*mm → *m *mã*mãm*mba*mãm*ba*bãm
loss of final C mãmãmbamãbabã

References
  1. Wapan at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
  2. Endangered Languages Project data for Wapan.
  3. Blench, Roger (2019). An Atlas of Nigerian Languages (4th ed.). Cambridge: Kay Williamson Educational Foundation.
  4. Larry Hyman, 1975. "Nasal states and nasal processes." In Nasalfest: Papers from a Symposium on Nasals and Nasalization, pp. 249–264
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