ABSTRACT
This work focuses on a description of Kwa', the
Bantu-Grassfield language of Cameroon. This study is intended to contribute to
the preservation of the linguistic and cultural heritage of Kwa', to the
standardization of its writing and to the future development of educational
materials for its teaching. In short, it is a contribution to its promotion, as
advocated by Cameroon's language policy. Our objective here is to see to what
extent we can continue the process of standardization of this language, which
is in great danger of extinction according to Bitjaa Kody (2004), and according
to the criteria of UNESCO (2003). In order to do so, we propose to describe the
morphological structure of the Kwa' language, with the aim of elaborating the
principles of a standard orthography of this language based on the rules that
derive mainly from the description of its phonological and morphological
structure , as well as other sociolinguistic and practical considerations. To
carry out the description of Kwa', we collected data consisting of more than
600 words and expressions adapted from Bouquiaux's questionnaire (1976) and
transcribed into IPA. We used F. de Saussure's structural approach through
Martinet's functionalist branch (1980) and Bloomfield's distributional branch
(1933) to analyze our data. After revisiting the phonological sketch made by
Tientcheu Tchameni in 2008, we discovered that the language has 43 phonemes (27
consonants instead of 29, 16 vowels instead of 17) and 5 tonemes, which form
the basis for the choice of graphemes of the alphabet. We have also relied on
some previous work to highlight the syllabic structure of words, identify the
nominal classes (06) and the agreement morphemes of the dependent nouns, and
describe summarily the verbal system with regard to tenses, aspects and moods
of verbs (05). Concerning the question of standardization of Kwa', we used the
process described by Wiesemann et al. (1983) and Sadembouo (2001) to present
the dialectal situation of that language, its standardizability, vitality and
uniqueness based on intercomprehension between the linguistic varieties of the
geographical area under consideration as opposed to bilingualism between Kwa'
and neighboring languages. Here, the use of the Cog software made it possible
to compare the linguistic varieties and to establish the degree of lexical
similarity between Kwa' and neighboring, distant languages (nda'nda' 41.5%, m d
mbá 40%). It gives scores that make these languages considered as
distinct languages. To conclude this analysis, we developed and proposed a
number of orthography principles based on the conclusions of the descriptive
and sociolinguistic analysis carried out earlier, while following Kay
Williamson (1984) on the qualities of good orthography based on fidelity,
coherence, practicability/convenience, harmonization and familiarity on the one
hand, and on the other hand following the principles of GACL in Tadadjeu and
Sadembouo (1984) for the graphization of sounds, tones and words. These
orthography principles developed and proposed also include the writing of the
nominal / noun prefixes and their themes as a single word, the determinants of
the nominals (possessive, demonstrative, etc...) as separate words. Also,
compound words as a single
word (nda = house + ?gw? ' = termites > nda?gw? ' = termite
mound), reduplicated words as a
single word (n?n?p = among themselves),
morphophonological adoption and integration of borrowed words, the tenses,
aspects and moods markers of verbs as related to the verbal root; i.e. in a
single word, but the marker of negation (ka and ki) is separated from the verb.
However, all these proposals made need to be adopted and practiced by the
speakers of kwa' in order to ensure the viability of the proposed standard
orthography and the adequate and reliable writing system for all.
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