Kyoli
Cori
Native toJaba LGA, Nigeria
RegionKaduna State
Native speakers
7,000-8,000 (2020)[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3cry
Glottologcori1240
PeopleKwoli
LanguageKyoli

The Kyoli or Cori (Chori) language is a Plateau language spoken in Southern Kaduna State, Nigeria.

Overview

It is spoken in the northeast of Nok in Jaba Local Government Area (LGA), Kaduna State. The speakers prefer to spell the name of their language as Kyoli, which is pronounced [kjoli] or [çjoli]. The ethnic group is referred to as Kwoli.

There are about 7,000-8,000 Kyoli speakers living in the two village clusters of Hal-Kyoli and Bobang. Bobang is the cultural center of the Kyoli-speaking area. Bobang village cluster consists of the five hamlets of Bobang, Fadek, Akoli, Hagong, and Nyamten. Hal-Kyoli village is situated by itself. All of the Kwoli villages surround the foot of Egu-Kyoli Hill, which rises more than 240 meters above the villages.[1]

Tone

Cori is known for having six distinct levels of tone, too many to transcribe using the International Phonetic Alphabet, which allows five. However, there are only three underlying tones: 1 (top), 4 (mid), and 6 (bottom), which are all that need to be written for literacy. Most cases of Tone 2 (high) are a result of tone sandhi, with 4 becoming 2 before 1. Tones 3 (mid-high) and 5 (low) can be analysed as contour tones, with underlying /1͡6/ realised as [3] and /2͡6/ realised as [5].

In order to transcribe the surface tones without numerals (which are ambiguous), an extra diacritic is needed, as is common for four-level languages in Central America:

1 [ő] (top)
2 [ó] (high)
3 [o̍] (mid-high)
4 [ō] (mid)
5 [ò] (low)
6 [ȍ] (bottom)

Numerals

Kyoli numerals in different dialects:[1]

No.EnglishBobang dialectHal-Kyoli dialect
1onezìnízìní
2twofɑ́lìfɑ́lì
3threetɑ́rtɑ́r
4fournɑ̀ŋnɑ̀ŋ
5fiveto
6sixfʷùínfʷùín
7seventofaːltofaːl
8eightnɑ̀naŋnɑ̀naŋ
9ninenbǒmkùpnbǒmkùp
10tensóksɔ́k

References

  1. 1 2 3 Decker, Ken, John Muniru, Julius Dabet, Benard Abraham and Jonah Innocent. 2020. A Sociolinguistic Profile of the Kyoli (Cori) [cry] Language of Kaduna State, Nigeria. SIL Electronic Survey Reports.

Further reading

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