Wobé language

Wobé
Wobé
Northern Wèè
Native to	Ivory Coast
Native speakers	(160,000 cited 1993)
Language family	Niger–Congo? Atlantic–Congo Kru Western Kru Wee Wobé; ; ; ; ;
Language codes
ISO 639-3	wob
Glottolog	weno1238

Wobé (Ouobe) is a Kru language spoken in Ivory Coast. It is one of several languages in a dialect continuum called Wèè (Wɛɛ).

Tone

Wobé is known for claims that it has the largest number of tones (fourteen) of any language in the world.^[2] However, other researchers has not confirmed this, many of whom believe that some of these will turn out to be sequences of tones or prosodic effects,^[3]^[4]^[5] though the Wèè languages in general do have extraordinarily large tone systems.

The fourteen posited tones are:^[2]

IPA	˥	˦	˧	˨	˧˥	˧˦	˨˥	˨˦	˨˧	˥˩	˦˩	˧˩	˨˩	˨˧˩
B&L tone numbers	1	2	3	4	31	32	41	42	43	15	25	35	45	435
Newman adjustment	0	1	2	3	20	21	30	31	32	04	14	24	34	324

Numerals

Wobe has a quinary, decimal system, and it is one of the only two Kru languages which have adopted the decimal system.^[6]

References

^ Wobé at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
^ ^a ^b Bearth, Thomas; Link, Christa (1980). "The tone puzzle of Wobe". Studies in African Linguistics. 11 (2): 147–207.
^ Singler, John Victor (1984). "On the underlying representation of contour tones in Wobe". Studies in African Linguistics. 15 (1): 59–75.
^ Newman, Paul (1986). "Contour Tones in Grebo". In van der Hulst, Harry; Bogers, Koen; Mous, Marten (eds.). The Phonological Representation of Suprasegmentals. Publications in African Languages and Linguistics (Book 4). De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 190–191 (notes 12 and 14).
^ Newman believes Singler is a valuable counterweight to Bearth & Link, but does not accept all his criticism; he accept the Wobe 43 toneme, for example, but believes it should be analyzed as /32/ (all tones being off by 1 compared to related dialects).
^ Hofer, Verena, Numerals in Wobé language.

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

[Bearth&Link-2] Bearth, Thomas; Link, Christa (1980). "The tone puzzle of Wobe". Studies in African Linguistics. 11 (2): 147–207.

[3] Singler, John Victor (1984). "On the underlying representation of contour tones in Wobe". Studies in African Linguistics. 15 (1): 59–75.

[4] Newman, Paul (1986). "Contour Tones in Grebo". In van der Hulst, Harry; Bogers, Koen; Mous, Marten (eds.). The Phonological Representation of Suprasegmentals. Publications in African Languages and Linguistics (Book 4). De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 190–191 (notes 12 and 14).

[5] Newman believes Singler is a valuable counterweight to Bearth & Link, but does not accept all his criticism; he accept the Wobe 43 toneme, for example, but believes it should be analyzed as /32/ (all tones being off by 1 compared to related dialects).

[mpi-lingweb.shh.mpg.de-6] Hofer, Verena, Numerals in Wobé language.

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