The Karaboro language

a project financed by the German Research Foundation (DFG), July 2006 - June 2008

The Language

Karaboro is the officially used denomination for several varieties, among others Kar, Syer and Tenyer. They constitute the Northeastern brunch of the Senufo language group belonging to the Gur family of the Niger-Congo phylum. In the following diagram showing a tentative of a grouping Karaboro comprises Kar as Eastern Karaboro and Syer and Tenyer as Western Karaboro.

Geographical position and the speakers

Karaboro is spoken around and in the city of Banfora in the Comoé Province situated in the Southwestern part of Burkina Faso. Its position within the Senufo group is special insofar as it forms a Senufo island surrounded by other Gur and Mande languages, for example by Curama (Turka), Cerma (Kirma, Gouin), Win (Tusian), Tyefo, Dyula and Dogoso. The Karaboro region is divided by a strip of land occupied mostly by Cerma speakers, a population known generally as Gouin. Roughly, this division corresponds to the division between Eastern and Western Karaboro areas. The town of Banfora, an immigration centre hosting more than 40 different languages, is situated within this strip of land, too.

The speakers of Karaboro, called by others Karabor, are estimated to be between 55.000 and 70.000 speakers.

Aims

The project intends a description of Karaboro. Research will be done especially in the Western Karaboro area as there is no data available on the varieties it comprises. A description containing both parts, Eastern and Western Karaboro has several aims. First, it is hoped to answer, on linguistic grounds, the puzzling question concerning their interrelation, given that dialect surveys conducted in the 1970ies and in the 1990ies have had different results regarding the mutual intelligibility of their speakers and that speakers of Eastern and Western Karaboro in Banfora were unable to communicate with each other in Karaboro, switching to the lingua franca Dyula. Second, a description of Karaboro will contribute to clarify the position of the Karaboro language within the group of Senufo languages it belongs to. Even if Karaboro as a unity is considered to form the Northeastern brunch of Senufo, some preliminary data gathered with a speaker of Western Karaboro shows that this variety is, in some domains of the language, more related to the Northwestern Senufo languages spoken in Southern Mali than to its closest neighbour Eastern Karaboro. Finally, the results of the project will furnish further keys to resolve the problem of the position of the Senufo languages within the Gur family since the Senufo languages have some features in common with the Mande family, especially the word order in the sentence S(ubject) O(bject) V(erb) in spite of the fact that they belong to the Gur family (the majority of Gur languages having SVO).

Staff

Prof. Dr. Gudrun Miehe (director)
Dr. Klaudia Dombrowsky-Hahn

Interrelation with other projects and scientific partners

The project is part of and continuation of the research focus on Gur languages at the chair of African Linguistics I at the University of Bayreuth. It can be considered as the extension of the sociolinguistic project A1 in the frame of the SFB/FK 560 entitled "The effects of Globalisation Processes on the Vitality of Languages in West African Cities" from March 2001 to June 2006.

Research partners are the department of linguistics at the University of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso and SIL Burkina Faso.

Recent publications

Dombrowsky-Hahn, Klaudia (to appear 2007a). Le kar à Banfora. Miehe, Gudrun, Jonathan Owens, & Manfred von Roncador, eds. Indirect globalisation Münster: Lit.

Dombrowsky-Hahn, Klaudia (to appear 2007b). Kar. In: Noun class systems in Gur languages, Vol. 1. Miehe, Gudrun & Kerstin Winkelmann, eds. Köln: Köppe.

Dombrowsky-Hahn, Klaudia (to appear 2006a). Argument focus in Kar (Senufo). In: Papers on Information Structure in African Languages. Fiedler, Ines & Anne Schwarz, eds. pp. 83-104. Berlin: ZASPIL 46.

Dombrowsky-Hahn, Klaudia (to appear 2006b). Koinéisierung oder Sprachwechsel? Das Kar in Banfora (Burkina Faso). Afrika und Übersee.

Dombrowsky-Hahn, Klaudia. 2006. La négation dans les énoncés simples et complexes en kar (Senufo). Journal of African Languages and Linguistics (JALL), 27: 127-153.

Dombrowsky-Hahn, Klaudia; Slezak, Gabriele. 2004. Local Vitality: On a Complex Linguistic Situation in the West African Town of Banfora (Burkina Faso). In: Between Resistance and Expansion. Explorations of Local Vitality in Africa. Probst, Peter & Gerd Spittler, eds. pp. 49-68. Münster: Lit.