Map 2. The Kulere language area and neighboring languages
Source: Surveyors’ GPS, Ethnologue, Quantum GIS, and Global Administrative Areas www.gadm.org
2.4 Lexical similarity
2.4.1 Wordlists
Wordlists were elicited to compare how similar the lexicons of each speech variety of the area surveyed are to each other. A total of six wordlists of two speech varieties were elicited in six villages—three
villages per speech variety. A wordlist taken in a village was cross-checked in another village of the same linguistic variety. Table 1 provides more explanation.
Table 1. Where wordlists were elicited and checked WordlistDialect
Elicited at Checked at
Toff Tabui
Kwarka Ambul
Tamoso Dashid
Richa Richa
Diggot Kamwai
Kamwai Tukyeh
Marhai-Massenge Marhai
Massenge
2.4.2 Source of the wordlist
The wordlist used was based on: •
Morris Swadesh’s 100 wordlist •
the Survey of Little-known Languages of Ethiopia SLLE •
Steve and Sonia Dettweilers’ Nigeria Wordlist of 228 words Dettweiler and Dettweiler 1993:4 •
Roger Blench’s informal recommendations
2.4.3 Wordlist elicitation
The lists were elicited from three or four residents of each village who were recommended by the chiefs andor the people as having a good knowledge of their language and relatively good knowledge of
English. The primary language assistants were males, between eighteen and eighty years of age language assistants’ initials and ages are listed in the Appendix. In most villages onlookers men and
women, besides the primary language assistants, were present during the elicitation. They helped decide which word was the most appropriate in cases where the gloss we elicited could have been expressed by
more than one word in the local speech variety. In some cases, the primary language assistants was not able to help with the entire wordlist, so a new person was found from the group of people that were
observing.
Wordlists were handwritten on a printed wordlist form, using the International Phonetic Alphabet IPA. We elicited both singular and plural forms where applicable for nouns. Verbs were elicited in
“dictionary form” and 3rd person singular past or perfective tense, for example: ‘eat’ and ‘he ate’. Adjectives were elicited both in isolation and with an example noun e.g. ‘long’ and ‘long road’. For
documentation purposes, audio recordings of all the words elicited were taken using a ZOOM Handy Recorder H2 recording device, recording singular and plural nouns and adjective and verb forms both in
isolation and in a frame.
All phonetic transcriptions tend to be influenced by the phonology of the transcriber’s language. The transcriptions were done by Samuel Ayenajeh Gbagyi, Marcus Hansley American English, Uche
Nweke Igbo and John Muniru Yoruba. The wordlists were checked, usually by a different surveyor than the original elicitor andor transcriber. Each word was re-elicited. Items different from the first
transcriptions were re-transcribed and re-recorded in order to make each list as reliable as possible in the amount of time available for the survey. Most of the wordlists for the five speech varieties of Kulere are
shown in the Appendix.
2.4.4 Wordlist comparison
