Documentation of Nkọrọọ [nkx]
| Language | Nkọrọọ |
| Depositor | Bruce Connell |
| Affiliation | Glendon College, York University, Toronto, Canada |
| Location | Nigeria |
| Collection ID | 0285 |
| Grant ID | DK0285 |
| Funding Body | National Science Foundation |
| Collection Status | Collection online |
| Landing Page Handle | http://hdl.handle.net/2196/19ec53e0-8c3b-41e3-805b-3fd425b888c4 |
Summary of the collection
Nkọrọọ is an Eastern Ijoid language spoken in the town of Nkọrọọ in the eastern end of the Niger Delta in Nigeria. The Nkọrọọ documentation includes: phonetic/phonological structures of Nkọrọọ (segmental and tonal contrasts), grammatical paradigms, sentence types, videos of such activities as boat building and music making are included s well as a lexicon of approximately 1700 words. Transcribed texts are annotated and interlinearized.
Group represented
The Nkọrọọ (autonym Kirika) people inhabit Nkọrọọ town, with an estimated population of less than 5,000; there are no other villages or locations where this is the principal language. The Defaka (autonym Afakani) live in one ward of Nkọrọọ town and also speak Nkọrọọ as their principal daily language. The Nkọrọọ town are an eastern Ijoid group, with their language most closely related Kalabari, Iḅani and Kịrịkẹ. Nkọrọọ is threatened by English and Nigerian Pidgin.
Language information
Nkọrọọ is classified as part of Eastern Ijoid (Jenewari, 1989; Williamson & Blench, 2000) alongside the dialect cluster of Kalabari, Ibani and Okrika. It is spoken in Nkọrọ town, in the eastern fringe of the Niger Delta. Population estimates are unreliable but it is unlikely there are more than 5,000 speakers and the tru number ma be considerably fewer. Like other Ijoid languages, its basic word order is SOV.
Collection contents
The documentation comprises text, audio and video files and stills. The text files are of sample phonetic/phonological contrasts with audio recordings and palatograms/linguograms; grammatical paradigms, interrogatives, with interlinearization; transcribed stories and descriptive accounts; video material of daily activities. The following list gives the materials included.
Phonetics/Phonology: annotated Praat files of all consonant, vowel and tone contrasts with descriptive textual material and palatograms and linguograms for segmental contrasts.
Audio recordings of grammatical paradigms and structures with accompanying interlinearized transcriptions. These include tense, aspect, mood, and other verb marking; embedded clause; infinitival clauses; relative clauses; numerals and other NP modifiers; serial verb constructions; questions; sentence connective; gender marking; adverbs; comparatives & superlatives; reciprocal; “adjectives” (predicative & attributive adjectival verbs; quantifiers; indefinite & reflexive pronouns; postpositions & PPs; ideophones; definiteness marking
Free conversations are included in audio, video (ELAN) and as transcribed texts.
Cultural material includes audio video renditions of basket making, musical pot making, and boat building, in ELAN and as transcribed, annotated texts.
Samples of ritual language use (greetings, town crier, women’s choir) are included in audio video formats.
Stories: Folktales (tortoise and odee, tortoise and heron, two friends) are in audio and video format; oral history, the origin of Nkọrọọ is in audio format, recounted by two speakers, with an audio recording of the translation.
Lexicon: the Comparative African Wordlist (1700 words), recorded by three different speakers.
Collection history
Fieldwork associated with this project began in July 2007 with a one month field trip to the Niger Delta by Akinbiyi Akinlabi and Bruce Connell joined by Ebitare Obikudo, Inoma Essien and Ozo-Mekuri Ndimele in Nigeria. Follow up field trips which also included Will Bennett were made in 2008 and 2009. Research and data collection were done on two languages, Nkọrọọ and Defaka. The Nkọrọọ documentation was prepared during the following years and eventually submitted in early 2013.
Other information
Descriptive grammars, one of Nkọrọọ, one of Defaka, were produced by Obikudo and Essien respectively, as PhD dissertations in the Department of Linguistics and Nigerian Languages at the University of Port Harcourt.
Acknowledgement and citation
Funding was provided by the Documenting Endangered Languages (DEL) Program of the National Science Foundation for the project ‘Documenting Defaka [afn] and Nkọrọọ [nkx], awarded to Akinbiyi Akinlabi and Bruce Connell. NSF grant number 05539.
To refer to any data from the collection, please cite as follows:
Akinlabi, Akinbiyi, Bruce Connell, William Bennett, Ebitare Obikudo, Inoma Essien, & Ozo-Mekuri Ndimele. 2013. Documentation of Nkọrọọ [nkx]. Endangered Languages Archive. Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/2196/00-0000-0000-0012-5F52-1. Accessed on [insert date here].
Users of any part of this documentation should acknowledge Akinbiyi Akinlabi and Bruce Connell as co-Principal Investigators, and Akinbiyi Akinlabi, Bruce Connell, William Bennett, Ebitare Obikudo and Inoma Essien as researchers and data collectors. Users should also acknowledge the NSF (DEL) as the funding agency of the project. Individual speakers whose material is used, or any other people whose various contributions are used should be acknowledged by name. All information pertaining to contributors is available in the metadata.
