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

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

Overview

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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

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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

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Kyoli numerals in different dialects:[1]

No. English Bobang dialect Hal-Kyoli dialect
1 one zìní zìní
2 two fɑ́lì fɑ́lì
3 three tɑ́r tɑ́r
4 four nɑ̀ŋ nɑ̀ŋ
5 five to
6 six fʷùín fʷùín
7 seven tofaːl tofaːl
8 eight nɑ̀naŋ nɑ̀naŋ
9 nine nbǒmkùp nbǒmkùp
10 ten sók sɔ́k

References

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  1. ^ a b c 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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