The relationship between Avokaya and Logo .1 Background

16 3.1.2 The relationship between Avokaya and Logo 3.1.2.1 Background The Logo and the Avokaya areas meet northeast of Faradje in Zaïre. Three collectivités in the Faradje Zone are involved: those called Mundu, Lolya, and Ogambi. A few at most 200 Avokayas live west of Misa in the Mundu collectivité northwest of Aba. The vast majority of Zairean Avokayas live in the Ogambi collectivité north of the Aba-Faradje road. The Ogambi dialect of Logo extends northward slightly beyond the Dungu river but not beyond the Faradje-Aba road; the Lolya collectivité , where the Lolya dialect of Logo is spoken, extends north of this road and thus borders the Avokaya-speaking area. See the map of Logo dialects in Appendix 1. The name ‘Ogambi’ bears explanation at this point, although a fuller discussion appears in section 3.2.3.1.1. Apparently Tucker 1967:37-38 the Agambi people group were pushed southeast from Sudan in the late nineteenth century and quickly “attained supremacy over the Logo clans” already there. Presumably their influence over the Logo faded out as the influence of the colonialists grew around 1900. If there was a distinct Agambi speech form, it is apparently no longer used. The descendants of the ruling Agambi still remember their noble heritage and retain their ethnic identity, but linguistically they have merged with surrounding groups, viz. Logo and Avokaya. It is thought that the Moru and the Avokaya once lived south of the Dungu river, later moving northward to Sudan see Appendix 6. If so, it is likely that the pocket of Avokayas now living in Zaïre are the tail of this movement, and that in remaining just 40-60 kilometers north of the Dungu river, they were separated from the other Avokayas by the Mündü and Baka. Linguistically this group appears to be about as close to Logo as to Sudanese Avokaya which they call Ojila. Ethnically they are Avokayas, but they admit various more specific names: Adjigo, Gbalo, and Ogambi. This last group would presumably be descendants of the ruling Agambi who adopted Avokaya rather than Logo. Gbalo is a clan name, and Ajugu or Ojiga is what the Sudanese call all Zairean Avokayas. Apparently some Zaireans speak what they call “pure” Avokaya; according to a Zairean schoolteacher, Adjigo, Avokaya, Gbalo, and Ogambi represent a four-way classification of Avokayas who are not Ojila. At present, there is not sufficient evidence to separate these four as subdialects, and for our purposes, we shall treat them as one dialect. A person called “Ogambi”, then, may be a speaker of Logo or of Avokaya. In addition, the name may be used merely to refer to someone who lives in the Ogambi collectivité . This is a potential source of confusion. The Logo-Doka who claims Logo-Ogambi is very hard to understand may well be referring to an Avokaya speech form. Politically the man spoken to was Logo- Ogambi but linguistically and ethnically he is Avokaya. It might be mentioned here that the Zaïre survey team thought at first that all Zairean Avokayas were called “Northern Ogambi.” This would make sense since Avokayas are found to the north of the Logos, in the northern part of 17 the Ogambi collectivité , but it now appears that this term refers instead to a subdialect of Logo-Ogambi

3.1.2.2 Lexical Similarity

The following matrix is the output of WordSurv, the lexicostatistics program used to analyze the Moru-Madi word list data. The figures represent percentage of similar vocabulary items for each pair of speech forms, out of a sample of approximately 160 lexical items. Actual data are found in Appendix 11. Avokaya of Sudan OJILA 78 Avokaya of Zaïre AJIGU 76 86 Logo five main dialects. 74 86 94 Logo Bari - Kanzako 76 87 95 93 Logo Bari - West 74 73 74 74 77 Bari Logo - Mandramandra The Avokaya and ‘Union’ Logo five main dialects which are 99-100 similar, see section 3.2.3.2 lists are fairly well established: the Sudanese data were reviewed and supplemented by Eileen Kilpatrick, who has been familiar with that dialect for several years, the Zairean Avokaya data are based on three lists gathered in a variety of locations, and the ‘Union’ Logo data are a conflation of the five lists arrived at by a committee of over twenty Logo speakers at least three of each dialect. The three Logo-Bari lists are less sure; without double-checking, we cannot be sure whether there are one or two subdialects of Logo-Bari or whether Bari-Logo is as divergent form the others as it appears. A tree representing lexical closeness not necessarily genetic relationship would look like this: A-Ojila A-Ajigu Logo Logo-Bari Mandramandra 95 87 75 The WordSurv output for phonetic relationships is shown below. Avokaya of Sudan OJILA 13 Avokaya of Zaïre AJIGU 20 18 Logo five main dials. 23 21 11 Logo Bari - Kanzako 21 19 5 8 Logo Bari - West 25 24 25 24 24 Bari Logo - Mandramandra 18 Lower numbers mean a smaller degree of phonetic difference between forms judged similar: zero would mean all similar forms were in fact judged phonologically identical there is no absolute upper limit on the highest possible degree of phonetic difference. Whereas Ajigu is lexically more like Logo than like Ojila, phonetically it is more like Ojila than like Logo. Again, Logo-Bari and Logo are the most alike of the dialects listed, and the Mandramandra list seems to represent a speech form as distinct as Ojila, Ajigu, and the other Logos.

3.1.2.3 Grammatical Similarity

The two dialects of Avokaya Ojila and Ajigu differ grammatically in several areas. When differences occur, Ajigu is much closer to Logo than Ojila is. For this reason, both Avokaya dialects need to be discussed in a comparison with Logo. The discussion in Appendix 10 is based on the limited data afforded by the phrase lists.

3.1.2.4 Intelligibility

As expected, Zairean speakers of Avokaya apparently both the Ogambi and Adjigo sub-dialects and speakers of Logo-Ogambi, groups who have frequent contact, speak their respective languages with each other. One Avokaya-Ogambi claims to comprehend easily and completely the speech of a Logo-Ogambi. Logo-Ogambi, however, is spoken over a broad area. Logos who live near the Avokaya area similarly claim ease of comprehension of Avokaya, while those living further south with less contact must resort to Bangala due to the difficulty of comprehension. Twenty-two Logo language committee men met in Todro, representing five of the six Logo dialects. They were asked: When you speak to a Zairean Avokaya from north of Faradje, what language do you use?” They were offered two choices for response: A I use Logo and he responds in Avokaya resulting in good mutual comprehension. B Bangala or French not just because it is the language to use in the relevant semantic domain but because of inability to understand the other’s language. All three Bhagiras chose A. Four of the six Lolyas and three of the six Ogambis chose A, with the rest choosing B. This indicates that either these dialects are closely related to Avokaya, or that these individuals have heard Avokaya frequently enough that they have learned “to hear it.” It seems odd that only some of the people from dialects which share a border with Avokaya claim to understand it adequately while all the Bhagira speakers, who are from further away, said that comprehension was good. None of the Dokas and none of the Obilebhas chose A. These are the southernmost dialects of Logo and it is likely that they have little contact with Avokaya speakers. It is not clear whether these individuals use Bangala or French with the few Avokayas they do meet or whether they never hear Avokaya at all. Since these five Logo dialects exhibit strong lexical and structural similarity to one another, one cannot conclude on purely linguistic grounds that a Logo from Doka or 19 Obilebha and a Zairean Avokaya are less likely to understand one another than a Logo- Ogambi and a Zairean Avokaya would. In fact, cognate percentages with Avokaya are 86 for all Logo dialects and the ratio of phonetic degrees of difference with Zairean Avokaya may actually be lower for the Logo Dokas and Obilebhas than for Lolya and Ogambi. Observed and reported understanding or lack of understanding of Zairean Avokaya by Logos appeared to be dependent on exposure or lack of exposure alone. A Zairean living at Lema said that he spoke “Adjigo Avokaya” to Logos and they replied in Logo and they understood each other. He said that he understood “Ogambi” speakers and they understood his “Adjigo Avokaya.” Another man living at Djabir said that he and a Logo could understand each other when he spoke Avokaya and the other person Logo. When asked what language he used when he spoke with an Ogambi, he said that Ogambi was Avokaya. Both claimed that Ojila and Logo were about equally difficult or equally easy to understand, though the man in Djabir thought that Logo might be a little easier. The Lema resident said that grandfathers understand more than children do. This would presumably be due to ‘experience’ rather than ‘inherent’ factors. Although oral mutual comprehension appears to be a matter of contact, just how many weeks or months of exposure are required for good comprehension of the neighboring speech variety is not known. See Appendix 4, “On Intelligibility Estimates”. Not enough is known of intelligibility between the forms of Avokaya spoken in Sudan and the forms spoken in Zaïre, nor between Logo and Sudanese Avokaya. For the various Avokaya dialects, testing of oral intelligibility or, better yet, Scripture testing would be required. The two major varieties of Avokaya i.e. those for which we have lists appear to share less than 80 similar vocabulary, and most Avokayas of one dialect are separated by many miles and an international border from speakers of the other dialect. Yet, written materials in Ojila could probably be adapted into a standard Zairean dialect— if one were agreed upon see next section and sections 3.2.1.4 and 3.2.1.6.2.

3.1.2.5 Sociolinguistic dynamics

Since contact between the Avokayas and the Logos is only in Zaïre, the main question here is what Zairean Avokayas think of Logo and what Logos think of Zairean Avokaya. Logo is the dominant language in the Faradje Zone and even in the Ogambi collectivité there are many more Logos than Avokayas. Avokayas seemed reluctant about using any materials to be written in Logo, though they said that they would not want to use Ojila materials either. There was, however, interest in adapting Ojila materials, or, as they put it, “translating them into Avokaya.” There is no evidence that Logo is displacing Avokaya anywhere in Zaïre; the man in Djabir was concerned about the future of his language, but for him the danger was that people would turn to Bangala, and not that Avokaya might give way to Logo. For their part, Logo speakers do not consider that Avokaya has any effect on their language. 20

3.1.2.6 Conclusion

Logo and Avokaya Ojila are distinct languages; Logo is spoken in Zaïre and Ojila in Sudan. It is unlikely that these languages are inherently inter-intelligible, and there is little or no contact between Sudanese Avokayas and Logo-speaking people. Thus it is reasonable to conclude that Ojila speakers and Logos cannot understand one another’s speech. Separate literature is needed for Avokaya and Logo. The Avokaya dialects spoken in Zaïre exhibit similarities to both Ojila and Logo; since they consider themselves to be Avokayas, Ajigu can be considered an Avokaya dialect, but with a marked similarity to Logo as well. This is one example of ‘chaining’ in Moru-Madi. 3.1.3 The relationship between Kaliko and Logo 3.1.3.1 Background