Baazəm language

Baazəm is a Yukubenic language closely related to Beezen, spoken in the village of in the Menchum Department in the Northwest Region of Cameroon. It was completely unknown until 2012 and is documented only in a document containing data collected over the span of a single day.

History

The Baazəm people are called in the Isu language. This name comes from a peace pact sworn between the Baazəm and Isu people, in which the Baazəm submitted themselves to the authority of the Isu. According to the Isu, this came after the Baazəm, who were fleeing from war, were given part of Isu territory to settle in, and were then made to swear on the pact. However, the Baazəm maintain that they were original inhabitants of their territory, and that the Isu invaded the village of , located to the north and west of Munka, in order to take control of Baazəm land. The Baazəm did not resist the Isu invasion, on account of their numerical advantage.

Documentation

Until 2012, the Baazəm language was not even known to exist in the linguistic literature. That year, a document titled "Sparse notes on Baazəm" was released by Jesse Lovegren, containing data collected over a period of only one day. No systematic linguistic investigation of Baazəm has been carried out. Baazəm has also not been registered in major linguistic publications such as the Ethnologue.

Classification

Baazəm is closely related to, though distinct from, Beezen. It is further a member of the Yukubenic language family.

Geographical distribution

Baazəm is surrounded completely by the Isu language.

Vowels

Baazəm phonology has not been properly studied. The close-mid vowels and , which are not well attested, likely contrast with the open-mid vowels and . Vowels and are pronounced with some frication, a realization also found in some nearby languages. In closed, or consonant-final, syllables, it is unlikely that and are contrastive. It is also possible that there are further vowel contrasts which have not been recorded in the data.

Consonants

It is uncertain whether or not the consonants and are distinctive in Baazəm. Obstruent consonants, , , and , ordered by increasing frequency, occur in the coda position, and doubly articulated consonants and , which are extremely rare among the world's languages, can also be found in Baazəm. Heterorganic sequences of nasal-stop consonants are also attested, such as in , though this may be due to transcription errors as well.

Consonants found between vowels can be "softened"; for example, at the end of a word can become in certain instances:

Tone

Tone in Baazəm has only been studied systematically for nouns. It is likely that there are three tone levels in Baazəm, low tone, mid tone, and high tone (designated as L, M, and H respectively), and not two or four levels. The most common tonal melody is mid-mid, incorporating nearly 70% of nouns surveyed.

Noun class

All nouns attested in Baazəm come with a noun class prefix, in the form of , , or , where represents a wildcard symbol for any vowel. The singular and plural prefixes documented for each class are listed in the table below:

It is possible that the number of noun classes is actually lower as certain prefixes may be related due to vowel harmony. Almost all noun class prefixes with a high vowel, either , or , occur with a noun stem that also contains the vowels , , or ; hardly any exceptions exist to this. However, prefixes which do not have high vowels are also found attached to stems with high vowels, which causes complications to the vowel harmony analysis. The noun stem for exhibits vowel mutation with respect to its singular and plural forms, and , respectively. Such mutations are found more commonly in Beezen.

Pronouns

The following pronominal forms have been elicited in Baazəm. The labels associated with each form may not be accurate and were assigned based on translation to English.

Word order

Basic word order in Baazəm for simple declarative clauses is SV for intransitive clauses and SVO for transitive clauses.