Guus, aka Sigidi (Chadic, West-B, South-Bauchi): Grammatical notes and vocabulary

Abstract

Gùùs (called Sigidi in Shimizu 78, from the name of the village where it is mainly spoken) is part of the Zaar dialect cluster spoken in the south of Bauchi State in Nigeria. Apart from the name, no data has been published on it yet, not even a basic Swadesh wordlist. It is linguistically close enough to Zaar to be viewed as a dialect of Zaar, although it is considered by its speakers and their neighbours as a full-fledged language, and their speakers consider themselves as an ethnic unit different from the Zaar. (cf. Caron 2000). We present here a grammatical sketch of zaar followed by a list of fundamental vocabulary : phonology ; verb morphology ; noun morphology ; pronouns ; vocabulary (900 items)