Idoma language, Idoma wordlists, Idoma chrestomathy, Idoma proverbs

The Idoma language, Idoma wordlists, Idoma chrestomathy, Idoma proverbs

According to Robert G. Armstrong

The four parts of this volume contain a grammar of Idoma, 45 classified wordlists, a set of texts with translations, and 338 proverbs, with translations and brief explanations...

The wordlists, texts for reading, and proverbs are well chosen and from a most useful adjunct to the grammar. The important part of this book is the grammar-the first really usable grammar of a Nigerian Kwa language. The chapter on “Elision and Linkage” discusses the systematic changes of tone and vowel which occur in the compounding of words and is the key to the whole sound system.

Having solved this problem, Abraham arrives at a substantially phonemic orthography. (He has an unnecessarily bad conscience about omitting the positionally-conditioned “low-mid” tone from his notation.) He is thus enabled to give a quite straightforward presentation of the grammar, and adds to it many illustrative examples. I found the book most useful in the field.