THE CICIPU LANGUAGE
Linguistics and anthropology
Cicipu is a very poorly-studied language. It first came to the attention of British colonial administrators and anthropologists in the 1920s, but no linguistic data was made available until the early 1990s, when missionary linguists Steve and Sonia Dettweiler collected a 228-item wordlist in three of the seven dialects. They used this data to show that Cicipu (which they referred to as Western Acipa - see the separate discussion on the language name) was not closely-related to the Kamuku language Eastern Acipa.More recently Stuart McGill has spent nine months living in Bazama, a Cipu village in the Tirisino dialect area. He carried out a basic phonological and morphological analysis of the language, as well as recording, transcribing, and translating around six hours of audio and video texts. As time permits this material will gradually be made available through from the Language Resources page on this website and other publications.
Finally, Israel Wade also started working on Cicipu in Bazama in January 2008. His initial (and independent) work on the phonological system confirmed the phonemic inventory that McGill had already drawn up. He is now concentrating on language development, in particular mobilising community leaders. However he will continue to devote time to the language's verbal morphology, which will be the subject of his MA thesis. For linguistic publications and unpublished materials on Cicipu and other West Kainji languages, see the linguistics links links section of this site.
Concerning anthropology, Cicipu is crying out for an anthropologist to study the culture and traditional religion. It is, to Western eyes anyway, a beautiful field site relatively untouched by globalisation. Traditional rituals and worship is still being carried out, and there are many fascinating beliefs held about the Acipu king (not just by the Acipu either! - e.g. the ritual blinding myth). Sadly anthropologists have neglected the study of the Acipu, a notable exception being A.B. Mathews, who spent two months living with them in 1926. For more information on this and other anthropological references to the Acipu, see the anthropological links on this site. If you are an anthropologist reading this and are interested, please don't hesitate to contact Stuart McGill if you would like to find out more about the situation.
