Bangime language
Bangime is a language isolate spoken by 3,500 ethnic Dogon in seven villages in southern Mali, who call themselves the bàŋɡá–ndɛ̀. Bangande is the name of the ethnicity of this community and their population grows at a rate of 2.5% per year. The Bangande consider themselves to be Dogon, but other Dogon people insist they are not. Bangime is an endangered language classified as 6a - Vigorous by Ethnologue. Long known to be highly divergent from Dogon languages, it was first proposed as a possible isolate by Blench. Research since then has confirmed that it appears to be unrelated to neighbouring languages. Heath and Hantgan have hypothesized that the cliffs surrounding the Bangande valley provided isolation of the language as well as safety for Bangande people. Even though Bangime is not related to Dogon languages, the Bangande still consider their language to be Dogon. Hantgan and List report that Bangime speakers seem unaware that it is not mutually intelligible with any Dogon language.
Roger Blench, who discovered the language was not a Dogon language, notes,
which he dates to 3,000–4,000 years ago.
Bangime has been characterised as an anti-language, i.e., a language that serves to prevent its speakers from being understood by outsiders, possibly associated with the Bangande villages having been a refuge for escapees from slave caravans.
Blench suggests that Bangime and Dogon languages have a substratum from a "missing" branch of Nilo-Saharan that had split off relatively early from Proto-Nilo-Saharan, and tentatively calls that branch "Plateau".
Locations
Health and Hantgan report that Bangime is spoken in the Bangande valley, which cuts into the western edge of the Dogon high plateau in eastern Mali. Blench reports that Bangime is spoken in 7 villages east of Karge, near Bandiagara, Mopti Region, central Mali. The villages are:- Bara
- Bounou
- Niana
- Die'ni
- Digari
- Doro
- Due
Morphology
Affixation
Bangime has both prefixation and suffixation. The following chart provides examples of affixation.Compounding
Bangime creates some words by compounding two morphemes together. A nasal linker is often inserted between the two morphemes. This linker matches the following consonant's place of articulation, with /m/ used before labials, /n/ before alveolars, and /ŋ/ before velars. Below are examples of compound words in Bangime.tàŋà-m̀-bógó
ear--wide
‘elephant’
náá-ḿ-bíín
bush/outback--goat
'wild goat’
Reduplication (Reduplicative Compounds)
Some compound words in Bangime are formed by full or partial reduplication. The following chart contains some examples. In the chart, v indicates a vowel, C indicates a consonant, and N indicates a nasal phoneme. Subscripts are used to show the reduplication of more than one vowel. The repeated segment is shown in bold. Partial reduplication is also seen alongside a change in vowel quality. The chart also displays a few examples of this.| Reduplication Structure | Reduplication Type | Example | Loose English Translation |
| Cv̀Cv̀-Cv́Cɛ̀ɛ̀ | Partial | dɔ̀rɔ̀-dɔ̀rɛ̀ɛ̀ | 'sand fox' |
| Cv́N-CVɛ̀ɛ̀ | Partial | bóm-bòjɛ̀ɛ̀ | 'frog' |
| Cv́1NCv́1-N-Cv́2NCɛ̀ | Partial | béndé-ḿ-bándɛ̀ɛ̀ | 'vine' |
| Cv̀N-Cv̀ɛ̀ɛ̀ | Partial | pàm-pànɛ̀ɛ̀ | 'stirring stick' |
| Cv̀Cv̀-Cv́Cv́ | Full | jɔ̀rɔ̀-jɔ́rɔ́ | 'herb ' |
| Cv̀1Cv̀1-Cv́2Cv̀2ɛ̀ | Partial | jìgì-jágàjɛ̀ | 'chameleon' |
| Cv̀N-Cv́NCv̄ | Partial | kɔ̀ŋ-kɔ́mbɛ̄ | 'pied crow' |
| Cv́Cv́-NCv́Cv̀ | Partial | tímé-ń-tímɛ́ɛ̀ | 'bush ' |
| Cv́1Cv́1-NCv́2Cv̀2 | Partial | kéré-ŋ́-kɑ́rnà | 'forked stick' |
| Càà-Cɛ́ɛ́ | Partial | sààn-sɛ́ɛ́n | 'Vachellia tortilis' |
| Cìì-Cáá | Partial | ʒììn-ʒáán | 'tree ' |
| Cìì-CáCɛ̀ɛ̀ | Partial | ʒììn-ʒáwnɛ̀ɛ̀ | 'bush ' |
Tone Changes
Another morphological process used in Bangime is tone changes. One example of this is that the tones on vowels denote the tense of the word. For example, keeping the same vowel but changing a high tone to a low tone changes the tense from future to imperfective 1st person singular.| dɛ́ɛ́ cultivate.Fut ‘cultivate ’ | dɛ̀ɛ̀ cultivate.Ipfv1Sg ‘I am cultivating’ |
Low tone is used for the tenses of imperfective 1st person singular, deontic, imperative singular, and perfective 3rd person singular. They are also used for perfective 3rd person singular along with an additional morpheme. High tone is used for the future tense.
Phonology
Vowels
Bangime has 28 vowels. The chart below lists 7 short oral vowels, each of which can be long, nasalized, or both. All these vowel types can occur phonetically, but short nasalized vowels are sometimes allophones of oral vowels. This occurs when they are adjacent to nasalized semivowels or /ɾⁿ/ . Long nasalized vowels are more common as phonemes than short nasalized vowels.Vowels have an ±ATR distinction, which affects neighbouring consonants, but unusually for such systems, there is no ATR vowel harmony in Bangime.
| Front | Central | Back | |
| Close | i | u | |
| Close-mid | e | o | |
| Open-mid | ɛ | ɔ | |
| Open | a |
Consonants
Bangime has 22 consonant phonemes, shown in the chart below. Consonants that appear in brackets are the IPA symbol, when different from the symbol used by A Grammar of Bangime. A superscript "n" indicates a nasalized consonant. Sounds in parentheses are either allophones or limited to use in loanwords, onomatopoeias, etc.Tone
Bangime uses high, mid, and low tone levels as well as contoured tones. There are three tones on moras: high, low and rising. In addition, falling tone may occur on long syllables. Syllables may also have no inherent tone. Each morpheme has a lexical tone melody of /H/, /M/, or /L/ for level tones or /LH/, /HL/, or /ML/ for contoured tones. Nouns, adjectives, and numerals have lexical tone melodies. Terracing can also occur, giving a single level pitch to multiple words. Stem morphemes may contain tonal ablaut/stem-wide tone overlays. For example, in nouns with determiners, the determined form of the noun uses the opposite tone of the first tone in the lexical melody. A few examples of this process are listed in the chart below.| Melody | Undetermined Singular | Determined Plural | Loose English Translation |
| /L/ | bùrⁿà | DET búrⁿá-ndɛ̀ | 'stick' |
| /LH/ | dʒɛ̀ndʒɛ́ | DET dʒɛ́ndʒɛ́-ndɛ̀ | 'crocodile' |
| /M/ | dījà | DET dìjà-ndɛ́ | 'village' |
| /ML/ | dāndì | DET dàndì-ndɛ́ | 'chilli pepper' |
| /H/ | párí | DET pàrì-ndɛ́ | 'arrow' |
| /HL/ | jáámbɛ̀ | DET jàà-ndɛ́ | 'child' |
Phrases and clauses can show tone sandhi.
Syllable Structure
Bangime allows for the syllable types C onset, CC onset, and C code, giving a syllable structure of CV. The only consonants used as codas are the semivowels /w/ and /j/ and their corresponding nasalized phonemes. Usually, only monosyllabic words end in consonants. The following chart displays examples of these syllable types. For words with multiple syllables, syllables are separated by periods and the syllable of interest is bolded.| Syllable Type | Example | Loose English Translation |
| CV | kɛ́ | 'thing' |
| CCV | bɔ̀.mbɔ̀.rɔ̀ | 'hat' |
| CVC | dèj | 'grain' |
Syntax
Basic Word Order
The subject noun phrase is always clause-initial in Bangime, apart from some clause-initial particles. In simple transitive sentences, SOV word order is used for the present tense, imperfective and SVO word order is used for the past tense, perfective.Examples of SOV Word Order
Examples of SVO Word Order
Intransitive Sentences
Word Order in Phrases
Below are some examples of word order in various phrases.DETERMINER + NOUN PHRASE
POSSESSOR + POSSESSEE
NOUN PHRASE + ADPOSITION