SOAS Research Online

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to present a description of the phonology and grammar of the Mbembe language of the Cross River area of Nigeria. Chapter 1 gives a brief general introduction to the Mbembe language and people and outlines the theoretical basis of the description. It includes a summary of the units of the phonological and grammatical hierarchies. The final section highlights some of the distinctive characteristics of the language with some comments on their interpretation. Chapter 2 describes the phonological hierarchy, focussing primarily on the syllable-piece, and discussing congruence between phonological and grammatical units. Chapter 3 describes the lexical and grammatical functions of tone in the language. There are two discrete tone levels with downstep. Chapter 4 is a brief description of patterning above the sentence, intended to provide a setting to illustrate the function of the sentence. Chapters 5-9 describe the sentence, clause, verbal group, nominal phrase and word units of the grammatical hierarchy respectively, presenting classes at each rank in terms of a system network relating the features relevant to that class and statements showing the realization of these features in structure. At clause rank the interrelation of the mood, transitivity and theme components is discussed in more detail. Chapter 9 concludes with a chart summarizing the constituents of the structure of each class and also the functions of each class. The chart also gives cross references to the inventory of closed morpheme classes. Mbembe may be loosely classified as semi-Bantu. Chapter 10 describes the concord-class system of the language. The thesis concludes with some sample texts.