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WESTAFRIKANISCHE STUDIEN FRANKFURTER BEITRAGE ZUR SPRACH- UND KULTURGESCHICHTE HERAUSGEGEBEN VON Herrmann Jungrajthmayr und Norbert Gyffer : Band22 ' G. Tucker Childs A Dictionary of the Kisi Language with an English-Kisi Index RUDIGER KOPPE VERLAG KOLN • Digitized by the Internet Archive 2014 in https://archive.org/details/dictionaryofkisiOOchil / WESTAFRIKANISCHE STUDIEN FRANKFURTERBEITRAGE ZUR SPRACH- UND KULTURGESCHICHTE Forumdes Sonderforschungsbereichs268: KulturentwicklungundSprachgeschichteimNaturraumWestafrikanische Savanne JohannWolfgangGoethe -Universitat FrankfurtamMain HERAUSGEGEBEN VON HeRRMANN JuNGRAITHMAYR UND NORBERT CyFFER unterMitarbeitvonM. BroB, R. Leger, U. SeibertundK. Winkelmann Band 22 RUDIGER KOPPE VERLAG KOLN 2000 G. Tucker Childs A Dictionary ofthe Kisi Language with an English-Kisi Index RUDIGER KOPPE VERLAG KOLN 2000 DieDeutscheBibliothek - CIP-Einheitsaufnahme Childs, George Tucker: A dictionary of the Kisi language : with an English-Kisi index / G. TuckerChilds. - Koln Koppe, 2000 : (Westafrikanische Studien Bd. 22) ; ISBN3-89645-109-X © 2000 RUDIGERKoPPEVeRLAG Postfach 45 0643 D- 50881 Koln Internet: www.koeppe.de All rights reserved. Production: Druckerei FranzHansen, Bergisch Gladbach/Germany GedrucktmitUnterstiitzung derDeutschenForschungsgemeinschaft GedrucktaufsaurefreiemundalterungsbestandigemPapier. @ Printedonacid-freepaperwhichfallswithintheguidelinesoftheANSI toensurepermanenceanddurability. Dedication and Acknowledgments This book is dedicated to Paramount ChiefTamba Taylor, Tamba Mayson, and the Kisi people in general, as well as to Karen, Jack, and Zuri. It is impossible to thank all who have assisted me in compiling this dictionary. These acknowledgments represent at best a sorely inadequate expression ofmy gratitude. To my wife and children I probably owe the most for their patience and willingness to tolerate my absences and preoccupations. To the Kisi people themselves I am also deeply indebted. At the least I hope that this dictionary may be some recompense for their assistance and inspiration. Among the Kisi people themselves, their leader in Liberia, the venerable and Honorable Paramount Chief Tamba Taylor has been supportive ofmy work among the Kisi for what seems like forever. From the time ofmy work as a Peace Corps volunteer (1970-72) through my doctoral research (1983-84) to the present (June 2000), he has offered his generous support andguidance. Mayhe long continue to leadthe Kisipeople. More directly, Tamba Mayson has been incredibly helpful over the years with his dedication to the Kisi people, his considerable knowledge ofthe Kisi culture, and his abiding intelligence and wit. His knowledge ofKisi is not only deep and sensitive but is also combined with a linguistic understanding that actually made the dictionary possible. Over the years ofour interaction and even through a civil war he managed to transmit answers to the inane questions that only linguists can ask. Three individuals who helped me during my research in West Africa, Paul Fayia B. Tengbeh, Moses Ndorbor, and Fallah Lambert Kamano, all contributed to this book's compilation. The people of Kpelloe, Liberia, among whom I lived during that time, provided me with ^ generoushospitalityandunderstanding. Ofthose involved in Kisi literacy and missionary work, Larry Johnson has perhaps the deepest non-native knowledge ofKisi in terms ofboth linguistics and usage ofanyone I have met. He and his co-workers generously provided me with an electronic copy of the dictionary they compiled against which I was able to check my entries and add wordsthat I didnot have. As this work extended over several academic appointments, I wish to thank members of the Linguistics Departments ofthe University ofthe Witwatersrand, the University of Toronto, and Portland State University, as wellasthe graduate studentswho contributed substantially to the work's compilation, Carolyn Smallwood and Jennifer Van Vorst. In Johannesburg Tony Traill inspired me with his magnum opus, a phonological dictionary of !X66 (Traill 1994), and Lynne Murphy helped out on the basis ofher lexicographic knowledge and her experience working on a Beng dictionary (Gottlieb & Murphy 1995). Peter Reich (a contributor to the Nelson Canadian Dictionary ofthe English Language) and Keren Rice at the University of Toronto were particularly supportive during my time in Canada. At the University ofKankan in Guinea I profited greatly from the suggestions from the fourth-year Kisi students in the Linguistics Department, but particularlyfromthe help ofSaaRobert Millimouno, Grants that helped forward this project were several Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowships (one was known as a "National Resource Grant") from the US Department ofEducation (1981-83), a Humanities Graduate Research Grant from the University of California (1983), a Fulbright Doctoral Dissertation Grant (1983-84), several grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council ofCanada to the Linguistics Department of the University of Toronto (1994-96), a Faculty Development Grant (1997-98) from the College ofLiberal Arts and Sciences at Portland State University, a Fulbright Lecturer/Research Grant (2000), and an award from the Bremer Stiftung fur Kultur- und Sozialanthropologie (1999). The costs of publication are being underwritten by a subvention from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, which help is greatlyappreciated. Table of Contents DedicationandAcknowledgments v Introduction Vii Map 1: TheKisi-speakingarea xi 1.0Agrammatical sketchoftheKisilanguage xiii 1.1 Phonology xiii 1.2 Morphology - xiv 1.3 Syntaxandsemantics xix 2.0Notes applicabletoallwordcategories xix 3.0Notesapplicableto individualwordcategories xx 4.0Alphabetization xxi 5.0Notesonthe English-Kisiindex xxii 6.0 Someterms fromLiberianEnglish xxii 7.0Abbreviations xxiii A Kisi-Englishdictionary 1 English-Kisi index 419 References 523 — Introduction This dictionary representsthecompilation ofsome 6,000 words from the Kisi language translated into English with an accompanying English-Kisi index. Kisi is one ofthe southernmost and most isolated members ofthe Atlantic Group, an early branchingoff oftheNiger-Congo familystock(seeFigure 1). Figure 1:Niger-Congo (Williamson&Blench 2000). (Notall languagesshown.) Proto-Niger-Congo — ^ Kordofanian ., *Proto-Mande-Atlantic-Congo Atlantic Mande *Proto-Ijo-Congo Ijoid L Proto-Dogon-Congo efaka Dogon *Proto-Volta-Congo West Volta-Congo East Volta-Congo = Proto-Benue-Kwa — i 1 1 Kwa WestBenue-Congo EastBenue-Congo Km -A CentralNigerian. ?Pre *Gur-Adamawa ! ?Senufo Bantoid-Cross The Atlantic Group hardly forms a cohesive group, at least on genetic grounds, the usual basis for language classification. Nonetheless, no other proposals have been widely accepted and the membership of Atlantic has not been recently questioned. There has similarly been no major controversy as to the internal classification of Atlantic. Kisi is one of the BuUom (Bulom) languages ("111.6.2." in Figure 2), belongingto the Southern Branch ofthe group. All other(surviving) Bulom languages are spoken onthe(Atlantic) coastsofSierraLeoneand Guinea.