Planning an onomasiological dictionary for Atchan: an endangered language of the Ivory Coast

Universidade do Minho Instituto de Letras e Ciências Humanas Meyan Djeya Ange Océane Meyan November 2020 Planning an Onomasiological Dictionary for Atchan - An Endangered Language of the Ivory Coast Meyan Djeya Ange Océane Meyan Planning an Onomasiological Dictionary for Atchan - An Endangered Language of the Ivory Coast UMinho|2020 Universidade do Minho Instituto de Letras e Ciências Humanas Meyan Djeya Ange Océane Meyan November 2020 Planning an Onomasiological Dictionary for Atchan - An Endangered Language of the Ivory Coast Supervised by Professora Idalete Maria da Silva Dias Master's Dissertation European Master in Lexicography ii Direitos de Autor e Condições de Utilização do Trabalho por Terceiros Este é um trabalho académico que pode ser utilizado por terceiros desde que respeitadas as regras e boas práticas internacionalmente aceites, no que concerne aos direitos de autor e direitos conexos. Assim, o presente trabalho pode ser utilizado nos termos previstos na licença abaixo indicada. Caso o utilizador necessite de permissão para poder fazer um uso do trabalho em condições não previstas no licenciamento indicado, deverá contactar o autor, através do RepositóriUM da Universidade do Minho. Licença concedida aos utilizadores deste trabalho Atribuição CC BY https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ iii Thanks At the end of the realization of this master thesis, I would like to address special thanks to: Prof. Dr. Idalete Maria da Silva Dias, on the one hand, for her physical, moral and academic support during the whole career as an EMLex student and, on the other hand, for her consistent instructions for the achievement of the thesis; Prof. Dr. María José Domínguez Vázquez, for allowing to anticipate some of the research presented in this work, thanks to the Dictionary Day which took place at USC and during which I could make a presentation about the status of Lexicography in Côte d’Ivoire; Prof. Dr. Alvaro Iriarte Sanromán, for the physical and academic support he gave throughout the career as an EMLex student; My dad, for his support and collaboration during the realization of the work and for distributing the questionnaire. I would also like to thank the EMLex Consortium for the opportunity given to me and for all the benefits associated with it. iv Statement of Integrity I hereby declare having conducted this academic work with integrity. I confirm that I have not used plagiarism or any form of undue use of information or falsification of results along the process leading to its elaboration. I further declare that I have fully acknowledged the Code of Ethical Conduct of the University of Minho. v Planning an Onomasiological Dictionary for Atchan - An Endangered Language of the Ivory Coast Abstract The current thesis consists of an onomasiological dictionary project which should contribute to the preservation of the Atchan language and the culture of the Tchaman people. The project aims at providing a model for the macroand microstructure of the dictionary. Other project goals are the collection of data on the use of the Atchan language (the frequency of use, the domains in which it is used, the interlocutors), the assessment of the threat level of the Atchan language, the description of the current language documentation. To achieve these goals, two tools were used: a questionnaire and UNESCO’s criteria to assess language vitality or endangerment. At the end of the work, it is hoped that the proposed model, the methodology adopted and the research carried out will contribute to the compilation of an onomasiological dictionary in the future and the preservation of Atchan and, consequently, the culture of the Tchaman community. Keywords: Atchan, endangered language, ethnographic product, language revitalization, onomasiological dictionary. vi Planeando um Dicionário Onomasiológico para Atchan - Um Idioma Ameaçado da Costa do Marfim Resumo A presente tese consiste em um projeto de dicionário onomasiológico que tem como objetivo contribuir para a preservação da lingua Atchan e da cultura da comunidade Tchaman. O projeto propõe um modelo para a macro e microestrutura do dicionário. Além disso, existem outros objetivos, nomeadamente a coleta de dados sobre o uso da língua Atchan (inclui a frequência de uso, os domínios em que é utilizada, os interlocutores), a avaliação do nível de ameaça da lingua Atchan e a descrição da documentação atual do idioma. Para atingir esses objetivos, duas ferramentas foram usadas: um questionário e os critérios da UNESCO para avaliar a vitalidade duma lingua. No final do trabalho, espera-se que o desenho proposto, a metodologia adotada e a pesquisa realizada possam contribuir para a compilação de um dicionário onomasiológico e etnográfico no futuro e a preservação de Atchan e, consequentemente, da cultura da comunidade Tchaman. Palavras-chave: Atchan, dicionário onomasiológico, lingua em perigo de extinção, produto etnográfico, revitalização da lingua. vii Table of Contents Direitos de Autor e Condições de Utilizaçãodo do Trabalho por Terceiros ............................ ii Thanks ............................................................................................................................................. iii Statement of Integrity .................................................................................................................... iv Abstract ............................................................................................................................................ v Resumo ............................................................................................................................................ vi INTRODUCTON ............................................................................................................................... 1 0.1 Presentation of the topic ............................................................................................................................................. 1 0.2 Objectives and purposes of the thesis .................................................................................................................... 3 0.3 Methodology ................................................................................................................................................................... 6 0.4 Overview of the thesis structure ................................................................................................................................ 7 CHAPTER I: ATCHAN–ENDANGERED LANGUAGE OF THE IVORY COAST .............................. 8 1.1 Overview of the historical and socio-political situation of the country ................................................. 8 1.1.1 Historical context of Côte d’Ivoire .................................................................................................................. 8 1.1.2 Population and urbanization ........................................................................................................................... 9 1.1.3 Overview of the Ivorian Language distribution ........................................................................................ 11 1.2 Situation of the Atchan language and Tchaman people in Ivory Coast ........................................... 12 1.2.1 The Tchaman speech community in the Ivorian society ..................................................................... 13 1.2.2 A culture threatened by urban development: urbanization of Abidjan ............................................ 14 1.3 The Ivorian language policy and linguistic laws ...................................................................................... 16 1.3.1 The French language and the Ivorian language policy ......................................................................... 16 1.3.2 The Ivorian languages in the linguistic laws ............................................................................................ 17 CHAPTER II: THREAT LEVEL OF THE ATCHAN LANGUAGE ACCORDING TO UNESCO CRITERIA ....................................................................................................................................... 20 2.1 UNESCO’s criteria for assessing Language Vitality and Endangerment ......................................... 20 2.2 Measuring the threat level of the Atchan language using UNESCO’s criteria ............................... 21 2.2.1 About the questionnaire ................................................................................................................................ 21 2.2.2 Assessment of the threat level of the Atchan language ....................................................................... 26 2.2.2.1 UNESCO's Major Evaluative Factors of Language Vitality ................................................................... 26 2.2.2.2 Assessing the attitudes towards the language ........................................................................................ 33 3 endangered languages. General proposals for language revitalization include among others, documentation and preservation, curriculum/resource development, language engineering, teacher training/post-secondary initiatives, policy development and political advocacy, research, language classes, bilingual schooling, immersion practices (cross-generational/community-based), early childhood focused, K-12 immersion (McIvor et al , 2006: 2-5). As emphasized by UNESCO (2003: 6), endangered languages documentation is of importance due to the following reasons: “1) it enriches human intellectual property, 2) it presents a cultural perspective that may be new to our current knowledge and 3) the process of documentation often helps the language speaker re-activate linguistic and cultural knowledge”. The current project will focus primarily on language revitalization through documentation initiatives that include collecting and analysing the resources available for the Atchan language such as vocabularies, ethnographical publications, little terminologies, literacy works and the proposal for the representation of ethnographic data in an onomasiological dictionary. The objectives and purposes of these aims are addressed below. 0.2 Objectives and purposes of the thesis As described in the previous chapter, language revitalization and/or preservation projects include language documentation. The documentation of an endangered language can be managed through dictionary making. A dictionary is a photograph of the language and a guide for speech communities and language learners. Dictionaries have an important role to play in endangered language revitalization through language documentation (Grenoble and Whaley, 2006: 68). The Hawaiian speech community which tried to develop material including dictionaries such as the Hawaiian Dictionary Online (http://www.wehewehe.org) is an example (Galla, 2009: 172). This resource is a bilingual bidirectional online dictionary, available in Hawaiian-English and English-Hawaiian. The dictionary is organized alphabetically. In the Hawaiian-English dictionary, we have the headword in Hawaiian and its translation equivalent(s) and/or meaning(s) in English. Conversely, the English-Hawaiian dictionary lists English words and its translation equivalents and/or meanings in Hawaiian. However, in both dictionaries, the explanation and examples are in English. The microstructure, i.e. the entries in the Hawaiian-English dictionary, includes the following information: a picture illustrating the word, the headword, the part-ofspeech of the headword, the different meanings of the headword, translation equivalent(s), collocations, example sentences, grammatical information. In the English-Hawaiian dictionary, the treatment of the lexical unit combines the headword, the explanation(s), the translation equivalent(s) in Hawaiian, 4 collocations in English and the translation equivalents in Hawaiian. Interesting in this dictionary is also the use of hyperlinks to redirect the user not only to other entries, but also to other resources where he/she can find more information that should be helpful for his/her learning process. There are hyperlinks to grammars, articles, literature, handbooks, in other words, links that redirect the user to references and diversified literature about the Hawaiian language and speech community. Considering the type of data included and the way it is presented, one could say that the Hawaiian dictionary is aimed for a user who is proficient in English and willing to learn Hawaiian. Another lexicographic resource worth mentioning is the Comprehensive Dictionary of KET (CDK), a highly endangered indigenous language spoken in Central Siberia (Kotorova, 2016: 129). The following presentation is an extract of the review on the CDK written by Andrey Filchenko (2016: 178-185). The CDK “is a new account of Ket language”, a language that is the only survivor of the Yeniseian language family and which attracts linguists and anthropologists studying in Siberia. The dictionary was edited by E. G. Kotorova and A. Nefedov, co-authored by a team of experts on Yeniseian languages, with the financial support of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Leipzig) (Filchenko, 2016: 178). The compilation of the CDK is based on prior lexicographic studies, making the dictionary a long-term tradition and a large-scale study of the Ket language. The CDK covers more than 6.100 lexical entries and consists of two volumes. Volume 1 consists of 368 pages and provides a lexicographical treatment of all Ket lexical classes except verbs which are treated in Volume 2. Volume 2, with 270 pages, covers in exhaustive detail the verbs of Ket. The lexical entries contain usage examples, resources of the dictionary, illustrative contexts, explanations, comments, “a combination of the phonological transcription of the headword and the detailed phonetic notation of the examples, allowing for rich insights into the actual phonetic realization of the lexical units running natural speech” (Filchenko, 2016: 182). The general observation after considering the review of the Comprehensive Dictionary of Ket is that CDK is both a resource for people willing to learn Ket and material which should serve as one more asset for the Ket language documentation and revitalization. For these reasons, we take a great interest in the production of a bilingual ethnographic onomasiological dictionary French>Atchan. Below a detailed account of the objectives of the current project: (i) Collection of data on the use of the Atchan language First of all, a survey was conducted to collect information on the use of Atchan: the language skills of the speech community, the frequency and domains of Atchan language usage, the profile of the 5 interlocutors. Besides this, we collected data on the attitude(s) of a sample of the speech community towards the language. In other words, one of our goals is to verify whether the community is aware of the level of endangerment of their language and assess their perceptions of revitalization measures. (ii) Vitality assessment of Atchan Presenting the Atchan language as a threatened language requires empiric research and statements based on the results obtained from this research. Another objective of the current thesis is therefore to provide an analysis of the Atchan language’s threat level. At the end of the analysis, we should be able to assess the degree and aspects of endangerment of the Atchan language. (iii) Collection and description of current Atchan language documentation We also intend to collect the actual resources available for the Atchan language and describe them. The current project is not the first attempt to document the Atchan language. Therefore, it is necessary to present a status of the previous works that have been created. The thesis aims to analyse and describe the resources available in order to identify the needs and the aspects that could possibly be improved. In fact, the analysis should help us to determine the current level of documentation of Atchan. (iv) Proposal of the macroand microstructure of an ethnographic onomasiological dictionary for the Atchan language Our main goal in carrying out this project is to contribute to the documentation status of Atchan and, consequently, to the preservation of the Atchan language. Apart from this, we would like the dictionary to serve as an instrument for acquiring knowledge about the language, by means of a better understanding of the Tchaman culture. That is, it should help the present as well as the future Atchan generations to learn their language and culture. Since the Atchan language is not well documented, our ethnographic onomasiological dictionary proposal with macroand microstructural specificities intends to aid the reactivation of the linguistic and cultural knowledge of the Tchaman speech community. The objectives presented above and the key results will provide us with essential matter for the compilation of the French-Atchan Dictionary that given its ethnographic and onomasiological characteristics will promote language and culture revitalization. The methodology adopted to achieve these goals will be specified in the following chapter. 6 0.3 Methodology With regard to the endangerment situation of the Atchan language and the circumstances related to its extinction, we believe that the dictionary proposal mainly raises the following question: To what extent can an ethnographic onomasiological dictionary contribute to reactivate and promote the revitalization of Atchan? This question generates two others, namely: What topics should be included in the dictionary to fulfil this function? And, regarding the topics selected, what type of data should be introduced and how should this information be organized? The methodological approaches will help us to assess: (i) the level of endangerment of Atchan; (ii) if a bilingual ethnographic onomasiological dictionary can be a suitable and effective instrument to combat language endangerment; (iii) which concepts should be included in such a lexicographic resource. To verify these hypotheses, answer the questions and, thus, achieve the objectives set, we decided to adopt a particular methodology that we tried to adapt to the subject and to the tools at our disposal. This methodology includes: (i) the identification of concepts; (ii) the establishment of the dictionary basis; (iii) the term extraction; (iv) the proposal of the macroand microstructure model. The identification of concepts (step 1) was carried out via three activities: a questionnaire, readings and the concept collection and hierarchy. The questionnaire aims at providing an authentic gathering of relevant Tchaman cultural artefacts. The readings should also help us to identify relevant cultural themes of the Tchaman speech community. In what concerns the concept collection and hierarchy, it consists of drawing up a list of the concepts identified via the questionnaire and the readings, and then modelling a hierarchical tree of these concepts. The establishment of the basis (step 2) is a step towards the compilation of the corpus. The lack of resources makes the finding of texts dealing with the concepts identified difficult i.e. barely achievable. Thus, at this stage of the work, we will manually extract words, expressions and sentences which somehow relate to the concepts collected in the questionnaire. The next activity is the identification of the terms (step 3). The objective here is to draw up a list of potential terms referring to the concepts that we found. After all these steps, we should then be able to propose a design for both the macroand microstructure, which is the fourth and last activity of our methodology. In order to show how all these points were concretely discussed, the structure of the current thesis is presented in the chapter below. 7 0.4 Overview of the thesis structure The dissertation is structured in four chapters which are divided into two parts: the theoretical and the practical sections. The theoretical section includes the first two chapters, Atchan – endangered language of the Côte d’Ivoire and Threat level of the Atchan language according to UNESCO’s criteria . The first chapter deals with the historical, political, socio-linguistic context of Atchan, the language policies and the linguistic laws of the Ivory Coast. That is, the first chapter consists of a brief presentation of the Ivory Coast, an overview of the situation of the Atchan language in the country, and its status in the Ivorian language policy landscape. The second chapter is dedicated to the discussion of the level of endangerment of Atchan with regard to the UNESCO criteria. These criteria helped us to assess the degree of language vitality of Atchan and focus was laid on the documentation of the language. The assessment of the vitality level allowed us to confirm that Atchan is seriously threatened, i.e. endangered. Apart from the level of endangerment, the level of documentation is addressed in the second chapter. The existing material is presented and discussed with special attention to its content and functions. The practical component of the thesis is composed of two main chapters dedicated to the dictionary planning and the dictionary production processes. The success of the dictionary production process depends on the preparatory work carried out in the dictionary planning process. Dictionary planning can actually be seen as the methodology adopted by lexicographers to compile a dictionary. In their article about the treatment of the data in dictionaries with regard to the methodology guided by lexicographic functions, Bergenholtz & Leroyer (2013: 158) argue that lexicographers should compile a typology of potential users, use situations and problems that might arise for each type of user in each type of use situation. The dictionary planning chapter discusses the stages from the profiling of the user to the list of the terms and the microstructure. The profiling of users, the typology of use situations, the genuine purpose of the dictionary, i.e. the lexicographic functions, the choice of the dictionary type, the dictionary basis, the microstructure, the medium of publication and the innovative features are addressed. The chapter on the dictionary production processes addresses the dictionary basis, the use of the corpus on the macro-and microstructural levels, the design of the macroand microstructure of the French » Atchan bilingual ethnographic Dictionary, and presents examples of entries. 8 CHAPTER I: ATCHAN –ENDANGERED LANGUAGE OF THE IVORY COAST The current dictionary project aims to compile a prototype of an onomasiological dictionary for Atchan, a threatened language of the Côte d’Ivoire. Nevertheless, it necessary to introduce the language concerned. The first chapter deals with the presentation of the Atchan language in terms of (i) the historical and socio-political context of the Côte d’Ivoire, (ii) the Atchan language and the Tchaman people past and present, (iii) the Ivorian language policy. 1.1 Overview of the historical and socio-political situation of the country The Tchaman people constitute a speech community located in the Côte d’Ivoire, a West African country. Chapter 1.1 presents not only the country in its historical, sociopolitical, and linguistic context, but also its population and the linguistic group to which the Tchaman speech community belongs to. 1.1.1 Historical context of Côte d’Ivoire Côte d'Ivoire is a West African country whose area is estimated at 322,462 Km2. It forms a republic and is therefore also called Republic of Côte d’Ivoire (République de Côte d'Ivoire). The country has two capitals: Yamoussoukro, the political and administrative capital, and Abidjan, the economic capital. The countries bordering Côte d'Ivoire are Liberia and Guinea in the West, Mali and Burkina in the North and Ghana in the East. In fact, Côte d'Ivoire used to be a French colony before the declaration of its independence on August 7, 1960. Leclerc (2018) gives us an overview of the historical relation between France and Cote d’Ivoire. The Portuguese were the first to have colonized West Africa and even named some Ivorian towns and rivers (Sassandra, San Pedro, Fresco). The French then gradually settled on the coast until being driven by the British in 1870. After the respective zones of influence of Britain and France were determined at the Berlin Congress in 1885, Louis Gustave Binger was referred to as a "French inhabitant of Côte d'Ivoire" and acted as a representative of France in front of local chiefs. After that, contracts were signed in France with Ivorian peoples, the Bettié, Agni and Abron. It was not until March 10, 1893, that the decree was signed, which declared the founding of the French colony Côte d'Ivoire. The 9 administration of the colony as such was not easy. The French had fierce opposition from the inhabitants, and it took more than twenty years for France to really prevail in Ivory Coast. In 1946, Houphouët-Boigny, then Member of the Côte d'Ivoire at the French Assembly, defended the law abolishing forced labour in the French Overseas Territories, a status that Côte d'Ivoire also obtained. Houphouët-Boigny was a close ally of General de Gaulle. On August 7, 1960, he proclaimed Ivorian independence and became president of the country. The two countries, however, maintained close ties, notably through the presence of a large French community in Côte d'Ivoire. Despite the diversity of existing Ivorian languages, the Ivorian politicians of the day decided to adopt the language most directly available and functional: the language of the former colonizer, French. However, the language is not the only heritage from the colonial time. After the colonization, the country underwent some changes which had consequences on various aspects, among others, the population, and its evolution. 1.1.2 Population and urbanization Faster than the average of Sub-Saharan African countries, cities are growing rapidly in Côte d'Ivoire. The rate of urbanization has increased from 17.7% in 1960 to more than 50% in 2018. This makes Côte d'Ivoire the third most urbanized country among the African countries with more than 5 million inhabitants, behind Cameroon and Ghana 1 . For the whole period 1960-2017, there is an annual average of 37.64. The variation between 1960 and 2017 is 185% (185% variation in 57 years). It is in 2017 that the highest value is recorded (50,33) and it is in 1960 that one records the lowest value (17,68). That is, the more years pass, the higher the urban population rate increases. 2 The current population is estimated at 26,434,356 where 51,3% of it is urban 3 . This population is unevenly distributed over the territory. The density and composition of the population vary according to the regions. This is closely related to the economic situation of each region. In fact, the Ivorian territory counts 31 regions and 2 districts (Abidjan and Yamoussoukro, the capital cities) 4 : SAN-PEDRO, NAWA, GBOKLE, INDENIE DJUABLIN, SUD-COMOE, KABADOUGOU, FOLON, GOH, LOH DJIBOUA, BELIER, IFFOU, N'ZI, MORONOU, GRANDS PONTS, AGNEBY TIASSA, LA ME, TONKPI, CAVALLY, GUEMON, 1 La Banque Mondiale. (2019, February 21). Perspectives économiques en Côte d’Ivoire : 8 graphiques pour comprendre les enjeux de l’urbanisation . Available on https://www.banquemondiale.org/fr/country/cotedivoire/publication/cote-divoire-economic-outlookunderstanding-the-challenges-ofurbanization-in-height-charts. 2 Perspective Monde. (2020, June 9). Population urbaine (% de la population totale), Côte d'Ivoire . Available on http://perspective.usherbrooke.ca/bilan/tend/CIV/fr/SP.URB.TOTL.IN.ZS.html. 3 Woldometer. (2020, July 30). Côte d'Ivoire Population (LIVE). Available on https://www.worldometers.info/worldpopulation/cote-d-ivoire-population/. 4 Institut National de la Statistique. (2012). Informations Générales sur la COTE D'IVOIRE. Available on http://www.ins.ci/n/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=19&Itemid=27 10 HAUT SASSANDRA, MARAHOUE, PORO, TCHOLOGO, BAGOUE, GBEKE, HAMBOL, WORODOUGOU, BERE, BAFING, GONTOUGO and BOUNKANI . Lagunes (Abidjan), Haut-Sassandra , Savanes , Vallée du Bandama , Montagnes exceed 73% of the total population, with Lagunes alone accounting for 34% of the population 5 . According to the ranking table of the 10 biggest cities of Ivory Coast, published in February 2018 6 , Abidjan is the only city whose population exceeds 2 million. With 4.707.404 inhabitants, we register in Abidjan 20% of the total population. It is followed by Bouaké with 608.138 inhabitants. The third city, Daloa, counts 319.427 inhabitants. Yamoussoukro, the politic and administrative capital, with 310.056 inhabitants is the fourth biggest Ivorian city. In the north, we have Korhogo which counts 286.071 and is therefore the fifth city of the country. The other five cities are: San Pedro (in the SouthWest) with 243.918 inhabitants, Gagnoa (in the West) with 213.918 inhabitants, Man (in the West) with 188.704 inhabitants, Divo (in the South) with 179.455 inhabitants and Soubré (in the South) with 175.163 inhabitants. The reasons why they belong to the top 10 of the biggest Ivorian cities are multiple: education and professional training institutions, job opportunities and sanitary facilities (Cotten, 1973: 621). The current chapter will briefly present the education and professional facilities. The big cities have several primary schools and frequently a secondary school. There are three Higher Education Institutions in the country, namely in Abidjan, Bouaké and Korhogo. So, education has sociological and geographic consequences. Education and schooling facilities leads to travel and then causes migrations to cities and especially to Abidjan. Another origin of migration to the cities are the employment opportunities they offer. Bouaké’s economy for example constitutes 3% of the Ivorian GDP 7 . Abidjan hosts 80% of the formal works and 90% of the enterprises 8 . San Pedro, the coastal city ranks among the most important agglomerations of the country due to the fact that it houses one of the two autonomous ports that Côte d'Ivoire has 9 and thus, this leads to migration, on national as well as international level. To conclude, 1) the population is not equally distributed; 2) the urbanization rate is linked to the density of the population; 3) the Ivorian urbanization has led to the establishment of new ways of life, new ways of relating to members of other ethnic groups and/or tribes and the dominant use of the French language to the detriment of community languages; 4) urbanization has accelerated in big cities, while 5 Leclerc, Jacques. (2018). Côte d’Ivoire. In : L’aménagement linguistique dans le monde . Available on http://www.axl.cefan.ulaval.ca/afrique/cotiv.htm. 6 Soriano. (2018, February 26). Les 10 plus grandes villes de Côte d’Ivoire. In Ouest In. available on https://ouestin.com/listes/2018/02/26/10-plusgrandes-villes-de-cote-d-ivoire/. The data may undergo changes, especially with the update of the data from the National Statistics Institute. 7 Soriano. (2018, February 26). Les 10 plus grandes villes de Côte d’Ivoire. In Ouest In . available on https://ouestin.com/listes/2018/02/26/10-plusgrandes-villes-de-cote-d-ivoire/. 8 La Banque Mondiale. (2016, September 22). Repenser les villes ivoiriennes . Available on https://www.banquemondiale.org/fr/country/cotedivoire/publication/reimagining-ivoirian-cities. 9 Soriano. (2018, February 26). Les 10 plus grandes villes de Côte d’Ivoire. In Ouest In. available on https://ouestin.com/listes/2018/02/26/10-plusgrandes-villes-de-cote-d-ivoire/. 11 small cities see no investment in basic infrastructures. However, the more a region is affected by contact with members from other linguistic groups, the more the speech community living in this region is likely to lose its own traditions and contacts. In fact, each Ivorian speech community belongs to a specific group with its specific area. How are these groups i.e. languages distributed? The next chapter aims to present Atchan in the Ivorian language distribution. 1.1.3 Overview of the Ivorian Language distribution The approximately 27,000,000 inhabitants of Côte d'Ivoire form an ethnic mosaic that can be divided into four groups. They are called Mandé , Voltaïque , Krou and Akan 10 (see Figure 1). This linguistic diversity is composed of more than 60 languages and, according to the texts of the first European researchers, today's ethnic characteristics are due to migrations at the time of the constitution of the great empires of Ghana, Mali and Songhaï 11 . In the Figure below, the four main groups and their respective regions are labelled with different colours: the Krou in turquoise blue, the Akan in blue, the Voltaïque in yellow and the Mandé in pink. But the map shows only the dominant languages of each group. This subchapter focusses on Akan , the linguistic group of the Atchan language. Figure 1: The four main groups of the Ivorian language distribution 10 Leclerc, Jacques. (2018). Côte d’Ivoire. In : L’aménagement linguistique dans le monde . Available on http://www.axl.cefan.ulaval.ca/afrique/cotiv.htm. 11 Leclerc, Jacques. (2018). Côte d’Ivoire. In : L’aménagement linguistique dans le monde . Available on http://www.axl.cefan.ulaval.ca/afrique/cotiv.htm. 12 The South-East is the area of the largest ethnic group, the Akan . According to the geographical location and customs, the Akan are divided into three groups: the Akan du centre , Akan frontaliers and Akan lagunaires 12 . The Akan du centre are the Baoulé . Baoulé stands for the family of about twenty ethnic groups: Oualébo , Agba , Ngban , Faafwe , Nzikpri , Nanafwè , Akpouè , Satiklan , Gôly , Ayahou , Saha , Gbloh , Ouéllé , Ahitou , Gôdè , Ahaly , Sondo, Faly , Dô’n , Souhamlin , Andô , Elomué , N'guin and Yôwrê 13 . With all its dialects, the Baoulé ethnic group represents 23% of the rural population. This makes it the most important ethnic group of Côte d'Ivoire when it comes to numbers. In addition, Baoulé competes with French in the informal sector and thus in everyday communication. The Akan frontaliers occupy the east of the country. This population is located on both sides of the border between Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire. Among them are the Abron , the Agni and the Nzima 14 . The Agni represent 4.5% of the total population 15 and are among the most spoken local languages. The South-East is the region of the Akan lagunaires . They are called lagunaires, because they inhabit around the huge lagoon, the "lagune Ebrié 16 (Ebrié lagoon)". They form a family of fifteen ethnic groups: Abbey , Abidji , Abouré , Ahizi , Adjoukrou , Alladjan , Attié , Avikam , Ebrié (Atchan), Ega , Ehotilé , Essouma , Krobou , M'batto , and N'zima 17 . These people form the circle of lagoons. Chapter 1.2 addresses the Atchan language and the Tchaman people in a socio-cultural and political context. 1.2 Situation of the Atchan language and Tchaman people in Ivory Coast The following subchapter focusses on the Tchaman society and their culture on the one hand and the current situation of the Atchan language and the Tchaman culture with regard to the urbanization of Abidjan on the other hand. 12 Lecointe, Cathérine. Les ethnies de Côte d’Ivoire . Available on http://lecointe.catherine.free.fr/articles/ethnies.html. 13 Akwaba.fatom. (2017). Le peuple Akan . Available on http://www.fatom.org/akwaba/region1/akans.php. Baoulés (updated on 29th of April 2019 at 15‘16). Retrieved from https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baoulés. 14 Sellier, Jean. (S.d.). Côte-d'Ivoire . Available on http://www.ben-vautier.com/ethnisme/new_cartes_detail.php3?quoi=8. 15 Institut numérique. (2012, September 25). Les groupes ethniques. In Les enjeux de la transition politique et humanitaire : le cas de la crise politicomilitaire et postélectorale en Côte d’Ivoire. Available on https://www.institut-numerique.org/213-les-groupesethniques65-5061bdeb096c3. 16 The lagoon bears the name of the Tchaman people. In fact, the Tchaman are also called Ebrié. Ebrié is both a name for the people and the language they speak. 17 Sellier, Jean. (S.d.). Côte-d'Ivoire. Available on http://www.ben-vautier.com/ethnisme/new_cartes_detail.php3?quoi=8. 19 Parliament with the aim of introducing national languages into official training 49 . The paragraph states that the introduction of local languages in the classroom should be understood as a factor of national unity and the revaluation of Ivorian cultural heritage. For this purpose, the Institute of Applied Linguistics was entrusted with a special task under paragraph 68 of the same Law No. 77-584 50 . The law instructs the Institute to prepare the introduction of local languages in the schools. It is the responsibility of the Institute to engage in the conception of didactic works. And this should be done by describing, codifying, identifying, and recording the grammars and dictionaries of the local languages. The Minister of Education also plays a role in the introduction of local languages in education. While the Institute of Applied Linguistics prepares the introduction of local languages in education through the conception of didactic works, the Ministry of Education is committed to developing teaching programs in local languages. It also needs to take action to verify the application modalities and efficiency of these programs. For this purpose, the ministry should promote the teaching programs in the local languages 51 . The brief description of linguistic laws on the conditions of use and uses of French and local languages suggests that there is a gap between them. The areas of application of French are the cities, the formal communication. The linguistic laws allow the use of local languages in cases where the agents are not sufficiently familiar with French. While some laws extend the space of local languages by imposing their introduction on education, it seems that these texts are only declaratory. The texts and measures for implementing the introduction of local languages have never been put in practice. The lack of space in the school system for local languages is not the responsability of the Institute of Applied Linguistics, but rather the responsibility of politicians who lack the will to change things on the grounds of political and sociocultural issues 52 . The introduction of local languages in education initiatives is not a political priority. Consequently, this has contributed to the endangerment of local languages. The next chapter analyzes the assessment of the threat level of languages using UNESCO’s criteria with particular focus on the Atchan language. 49 Leclerc, Jacques. (2018). Loi du 18 août 1977 n° 77-584, portant réforme de l'enseignement. In Côte d’Ivoire. Available on http://www.axl.cefan.ulaval.ca/afrique/cotiv-lois_div.htm#Loi_du_18_août_1977_n°_77-584,_portant_réforme_de_lenseignement_. 50 Loi du 18 août 1977 n° 77-584, portant réforme de l'enseignement. Available on http://www.axl.cefan.ulaval.ca/afrique/cotiv.htm, 51 Leclerc, Jacques. (2018). Décret n° 2012-625 du 06 juillet 2012 portant attributions des membres du gouvernement. Lois diverses à portée linguistique. Available on http://www.axl.cefan.ulaval.ca/afrique/cotiv-lois_div.htm#Décret_n°_2012 625_du_06_juillet_2012_portant_attributions_des_membres_du_gouvernement. 52 Leclerc, Jacques. (2018). Côte d’Ivoire. In : L’aménagement linguistique dans le monde. Available on http://www.axl.cefan.ulaval.ca/afrique/cotiv.htm. 20 CHAPTER II: THREAT LEVEL OF THE ATCHAN LANGUAGE ACCORDING TO UNESCO CRITERIA This chapter aims to assess the threat level of the Atchan language according to the methodology proposed by UNESCO. In this section, some of the objectives of the thesis described in the introduction will be carried out, namely, the collection of data on the use of the Atchan language, the vitality assessment of Atchan and the description of the current documentation available in Atchan. Chapter 2 is thus subdivided into three sub-chapters: 2.1 which presents the UNESCO’s criteria for assessing Language Vitality and Endangerment, 2.2 which deals with the assessment of the threat level of Atchan and 2.3 which addresses the description of the documents existing in the Atchan language. 2.1 UNESCO’s criteria for assessing Language Vitality and Endangerment The latest version of the UNESCO’s Atlas of the World’s Endangered Languages identified around 2500 endangered languages (UNESCO, 2011: 8). To be able to identify languages in need of preservation in a more efficient and adaptive manner, UNESCO proposes a means of assessing the status of these languages. A methodology to determine the strength level of a language was thus developed in 2002 and 2003 by an international group of linguists at UNESCO’s request, and consists of nine criteria. In the document entitled “Language Vitality and Endangerment”, adopted by the International Expert Meeting on UNESCO Programme Safeguarding of Endangered Languages, the UNESCO Ad Hoc Expert Group on Endangered Languages proposes a classification of these criteria. The classification includes three categories: six factors for the language vitality assessment, two factors for the assessment of attitudes towards the language and one factor to evaluate the need for documentation. The group points out that none of the criteria can be used separately, but taken together, they are “useful for characterizing a language’s overall sociolinguistic situation” (UNESCO, 2003: 7). The factors are as follows (UNESCO, 2003: 17): - Factor 1: Intergenerational Language Transmission - Factor 2: Absolute Number of Speakers 21 - Factor 3: Proportion of Speakers within the Total Population - Factor 4: Shifts in Domains of Language Use - Factor 5: Response to New Domains and Media - Factor 6: Availability of Materials for Language Education and Literacy - Factor 7: Governmental and Institutional Language Attitudes and Policies, including Official Status and Use - Factor 8: Community Members’ Attitudes towards Their Own Language - Factor 9: Type and Quality of Documentation. With the exception of Factor 2, the threat level associated with each factor is assessed using a scale that ranges from safe (grade 5) to extinct (grade 0) (UNESCO, 2003: 17). In the following subchapter, an assessment of the Atchan language using UNESCO’s schema and methodology is addressed. 2.2 Measuring the threat level of the Atchan language using UNESCO’s criteria One of the objectives of the current master’s dissertation consists in analysing Atchan’s level of endangerment based on UNESCO’s criteria for assessing Language Vitality and Endangerment. It is important to emphasize that such an assessment requires gathering information from informants by means of a survey. The questionnaire designed for the survey is described in Chapter 2.2.1, the results of the survey are addressed in Chapter 2.2.2. 2.2.1 About the questionnaire The reasons why the questionnaire was compiled, the distribution process and the results are respectively discussed in sections a), b) and c) below. The questionnaire can be consulted in Annex 1 of 22 the thesis. a) Description of the objectives The questionnaire served as instrument to gather authentic data ensuring a realistic and relevant description of the status of the Atchan language. The goals to be achieved are as follows: (i) Gather information about the language competences in Atchan and French; (ii) Identify the main means of communication between the members of the community; (iii) Compare both competences in Atchan and French; (iv) Ensure a better profiling of the users of the current dictionary proposal; (v) Identify the needs in terms of data to be included in a lexicographic resource; (vi) Gather information about the use of Atchan (frequency of use, interlocutors, domains of use); (vii) Determine whether the participants are familiar with the Atchan cultural and traditional events and to what extent they participate in these events; (viii) Verify whether the participants know of existing material in Atchan and use the available sources; (ix) Determine whether the participants show interest in the preservation of the Atchan language and culture. To achieve the objectives of the questionnaire, we decided on twenty-two questions structured in four sections: general information , language skills in Atchan , language skills in French , use and knowledge of Atchan . The first section (questions 1-3) aims to collect general information regarding the respondents, such as: the Atchan tribe the respondent belongs to; the age bracket; gender. This information is relevant for the project as it will enable us to establish correlations between the variables ‘age’, ‘gender’, ‘frequency of use’, ‘language competencies in Atchan’, ‘use of Atchan’ (home and/or social domains, topics), ‘intergenerational transmission’, and ‘attitudes towards the language’ (defend language preservation) 53 . The second section (questions 4-7) focuses on the level of oral comprehension of Atchan as well as the respondents’ approximate speaking, reading, and writing skills. This information will contribute to bring insight on the respondents’ language competencies and the main means of communication in Atchan. In addition, the data will be relevant to identify what type(s) of materials are most needed to promote language education and literacy. Taking into consideration the dominance of the French language in Ivorian society, it is of interest to 53 The correlations are available in Annexes 2-6 of the thesis. 23 determine the Tchaman speech community’s proficiency in the French language. The responses to questions 8-11 of this section will enable us to compare the competencies of the participants in both Atchan and French. Additionally, it will be possible to compare the means of communication used in both languages. Section four (questions 12-22) addresses the following matters: the frequency with which members of the Tchaman community use the language; the interlocutors, i.e. the persons whom they speak Atchan with; the preferential domain of use; degree of participation and engagement in important cultural activities ( Fatchué , Attiéké cooking process, celebrations, i.e. rejoicing dances, traditional wedding); the use of materials produced in Atchan (grammar books, reading books, orthographies, tales, audio materials, videos, etc.) and in which situations these materials are used. The last question of section four relates to the attitude of the respondents concerning the preservation of Atchan and their willingness to contribute to language revitalization. b) Where was the questionnaire distributed? How? How many responses were obtained? In order to obtain authentic information, not based on a single group or area, we had to work out a distribution plan that considers all these aspects: age group, tribe, i.e. area, gender. In other words, we tried to gather information from the different tribes, age and gender. This information distribution should ensure a relevant analysis, which considers the differences in the Atchan speech community. Thus, the questionnaire was distributed in various communes of Abidjan and around the city, Bingerville and Songon. An effort was made to distribute the questionnaire in the territory of the Tchaman, thus involving people from various tribes. The whole process - from the distribution to the collection of the responses - occurred within approximately one month. The questionnaire was compiled online with the Google Form tool, saved, and sent as a PDF file. This PDF version was then printed and distributed in the Tchaman territory by a family member, age fiftyone, who lives in Adjamé (Abidjan), in collaboration with his friends of approximately the same age. We obtained 150 responses in total. An overview of the impact of the distribution in different areas and to different groups of people is shown using pie charts. c) The distribution of the responses according to age group, tribal affiliation, and gender We will focus here on the answers obtained in the first three questions of the survey on the tribe, the age group, and the gender of the respondents. Grouping these three sociodemographic variables will provide us with relevant data that in conjunction with the other variables of the survey will shed light on the correlation between age group, gender, tribal affiliation and the respondents' relationship to Atchan 24 and the Tchaman culture. (i) Age group Figure 2: Pie chart representing the age groups and the percentage of participants within each group As can be seen from Figure 2, the age brackets are not equally distributed. The three highest percentages are respectively associated to the groups 50-64, 35-49 and 25-34. Divided into two groups, a younger and an older generation, we obtain 52% of respondents for the younger generation (from 5 to 34 years old) and 48% for the older one (35 years old and above). The subdivision into both generations should allow us to establish correlations between the variables ‘age’, ‘language proficiency’, ‘language usage frequency’, ‘interlocutor’, i.e. conversational-partner, ‘knowledge of the Atchan language and ‘Tchaman culture’, ‘participation in cultural activities, ‘willingness to defend the preservation of the Atchan language and culture’. These correlations aim to determine whether: - the younger generation are familiar with and practise the Atchan language; - the young members are familiar with the Tchaman communities' cultural traditions; - the older generation passes the language on to the younger generations; - the use of Atchan is directly related to age; - the willingness to defend the language is linked to the age group. Dividing the respondents into two groups also allows us to focus on the younger generation (the target users of the planned dictionary), identify their needs, establish a use situation typology, determine what the function and content of the current dictionary proposal could be. 25 (ii) Tchaman tribes Figure 3: Pie chart representing the percentage of participants within each Tchaman tribe The Tchaman speech community is composed of ten tribes. All of them are represented in the survey results, with a bigger or smaller number of participants. The highest percentage of responses (29,5%) was obtained from the Bidjan tribe most likely due to the fact that most of the collaborators who distributed the questionnaire live in this area. It was therefore easier to distribute the forms in this area. Although the survey distribution method did not allow for a balanced representation of respondents for each tribe or some of the tribes, an analysis of the survey questions based on responses from all Tchaman tribes is, in our opinion, an added-value of our study. (iii) Gender Figure 4: Pie chart representing the percentage of participants within both genders Following the example of the variable ‘age’, the ‘gender’ variable was correlated with the variables ‘language proficiency’, ‘usage frequency’, ‘conversational-partner’, ‘knowledge of the Atchan language and culture’, ‘participation in cultural activities’, ‘willingness to defend the preservation of the Atchan 26 language and culture’. Our objective here is to determine whether the use (frequency and interlocutor) and knowledge of Atchan is associated to gender. It is also interesting to explore if gender plays an active role in language transmission and participation in cultural activities. Taken with the UNESCO’s criteria for Language Vitality and Endangerment assessment, the answers to the questionnaire based on various profiles should enable us to provide a relevant analysis, i.e. description of the status of the Atchan language. The assessment of Atchan vitality is addressed in the following chapter. 2.2.2 Assessment of the threat level of the Atchan language The factors for assessing the threat level of a language are classified in three groups: six factors for assessing the language vitality, two factors for assessing the attitudes of speech community members towards the language and one factor to evaluate the need for documentation. The assessment of the Atchan language will be addressed following this classification. 2.2.2.1 UNESCO's Major Evaluative Factors of Language Vitality UNESCO has defined six major evaluative factors that serve as guidelines for assessing language vitality. These factors range from intergenerational language transmission to the availability of materials for language transmission. Factor 1: Intergenerational Language Transmission Factor 1 concerns the transfer of language from one generation to another. The table below shows the six degrees of endangerment with regard to the Intergenerational Language Transmission. 27 Degree of endangerment Grade Speaker population safe 5 The language is used by all ages, from children up. unsafe 4 The language is used by some children in all domains; it is used by all children in limited domains. definitely endangered 3 The language is used mostly by the parental generation and up. severely endangered 2 The language is used mostly by the grandparental generation and up. critically endangered 1 The language is used by very few speakers, mostly of great-grandparental generation. extinct 0 There are no speakers. Table 1: Degree of endangerment with the corresponding grade with regard to Factor 1, Intergenerational Language Transmission (UNESCO, 2003: 8) Whether Atchan is being transmitted from one generation to another was verified with the questionnaire. People were asked how often they use Atchan, with whom and in which domain. 55,1% of the participants use Atchan in their family, 30,9% use it with their friends and 14,7% use it with people who are neither their friends nor members of their family. Figure 5: Bar graph representing the interlocutors of Atchan use in percentage 28 That is, more than half of the respondents use the language in the family sphere, which promotes an intergenerational transmission of the language. However, the younger respondents do not always use the language. According to the results of the survey, only 28,2% of the younger generation uses Atchan on a regular basis in their daily life, 23,1% use it frequently. 48,7% use it sometimes, rarely, or never. Figure 6: Pie chart representing the frequency use of Atchan by the younger generation In fact, the transformations that the different Tchaman areas have undergone since the arrival of the French colons have had a negative impact on the transmission of the Atchan language. The introduction of French as official language makes the transmission of Atchan difficult, not only in homes, but also outside, in and around Abidjan, living space of the Tchaman tribes. Thus, the degree of endangerment of Atchan with regard to factor 1 corresponds to Grade 3. Factor 2: Absolute number of speakers Assessing the vitality of a language based on the interpretation of the absolute numbers of speakers would be hard, because it is impossible to establish a hard and fast rule for interpreting absolute numbers. However, the smaller a speech community, the more prone it is to disappear (e.g. due to disease, warfare or natural disaster) and in addition to that, such a speech community is likely to merge with a neighbouring group, losing its own language and culture (UNESCO, 2003: 8-9). That is the case of Atchan. Compared to the other Ivorian ethnic groups, the Atchan speech community with around 150.000 speakers constitutes a small language group. Besides living in a territory where the urban development reduces its space and affects its culture, the speech community is confronted with an invasion of members from other regions. With time, Atchan may merge with one of the neighbouring groups such as Abidji or Adjoukrou, losing its own identity. 35 endangerment with regard to the Governmental and Institutional Language Attitudes and Policies may correspond to Grades 3 and 2 at the same time. According to the UNESCO, in the case of passive assimilation (Grade 3), “ the dominant group’s language is the de facto official language and most nondominant language do not enjoy high prestige ” (UNESCO, 2003: 13). The dominant language in Ivory Coast is French, and Atchan, the non-dominant language, as discussed below, does not enjoy high prestige, and is only used in limited domains. There is a higher degree of endangerment in the case of active assimilation, because the exclusive provision of education in French is a means to encourage the minority groups to feel more comfortable with the dominant language, placing the education in the minority language on a marginal level, as stated in the definition of active assimilation 56 (UNESCO, 2003: 13). Article 29 of Law n°2000-513 of the Ivorian Constitution encourages the promotion of the Ivorian languages, but not explicitly. In other words, this encouragement seems to be only declarative. On closer analysis, it can be stated that the government does not implement concrete initiatives to protect the minority languages. The policy particularly encourages an assimilation to French, which is the only official language. Thus, it can be considered that in the case of Atchan, the assimilation is passive and active at the same time. Factor 8: Community Members’ Attitudes towards Their Own Language As emphasized by UNESCO, national language policy has a direct impact on the attitude of the community itself towards the minority language and the community members’ attitudes may be positively or negatively influenced. They may: - see it as essential to their community and cultural identity and take action to promote it; - use it without promoting it; - be ashamed of it and, therefore, not promote it; - see it as a nuisance and actively avoid using it. (UNESCO, 2003: 13) What is the Tchaman speech community members’ attitudes towards Atchan? 56 Active assimilation (2): The government encourages minority groups to abandon their own languages by providing education for the minority group members in the dominant language. Speaking and/or writing in non-dominant languages is not encouraged (UNESCO, 2003: 13). 36 Grade Community Members’ Attitudes towards Language 5 All members value their language and wish to see it promoted. 4 Most members support language maintenance. 3 Many members support language maintenance; others are indifferent or may even support language loss. 2 Some members support language maintenance; others are indifferent or may even support language loss. 1 Only a few members support language maintenance; others are indifferent or may even support language loss. 0 No one cares if the language is lost; all prefer to use a dominant language. Table 7: Assessing the threat level using Factor 8, Community Members’ Attitudes towards Their Own Language (UNESCO, 2003: 15) As shown in Figure 8, most members of the Tchaman speech community, 98% of the survey respondents, have a positive attitude towards Atchan. Figure 8: Pie chart representing the percentage of the Tchaman speech community members willing to preserve the Atchan language Tchaman community members are in favor of the maintenance of the language and there are even associations which aim to promote the Atchan language and culture. One of these associations is called the VNA. The VNA ( Vision Nouvelle Atchan ), an association of Tchaman people that aim to contribute to the recovery and revitalization of the Tchaman culture and the Atchan language. The VNA’s missions include the teaching of Atchan to children (by creating schools in the villages), the compilation of a book which recounts the Tchaman people’s history from the beginning to the present, the creation of Atchan TV and radio channels and a data base. Recognized by the Ivorian government, the VNA has an official Facebook page and a WhatsApp community which allows it to disseminate activities and reach a larger audience. The Facebook page was created on December 3rd, 2017 and has 8 486 members. On their page as well as in the WhatsApp group, they daily publish resources such as cartoons in Atchan, 37 pictures and videos of Tchaman ceremonies and women and men in Tchaman traditional dresses. They also organize debates in Tchaman, meetings and other events. Apart from VNA, there is also the Communauté Atchan de Facebook (Facebook Atchan Community) composed of a group of Tchaman people committed to promote the Tchaman culture and language. The page has 23 187 members and the publications are aimed to promote Atchan. These are two examples which point out the engagement of the Tchaman people and their will to maintain and revive their culture. In fact, the terms used by the 98% of the participants willing to defend the Atchan culture and language clearly demonstrate their support for the Atchan language preservation initiatives and the strong link between them and their culture and language. For them, Atchan represents their “cultural and ethnic identity”, “ID”, “inheritance”, “patrimony”, “point of reference”, “social organization”. The 2% of participants who responded that they are not willing to preserve the Atchan language state that they do not know how to help and/or they do not feel encouraged to do so. As emphasized in Figure 9, 85,3% of the participants take part in Fatchué , 8,7% take part in Attiéké cooking, which is a Tchaman culinary specialty. That being said, the respondents take a great interest in their culture. Figure 9: Bar graph representing the participation of the respondents in Atchan cultural activities The survey clearly shows that the vast majority of respondents does not want Atchan to disappear, on the contrary, the participants showed a strong desire to see Atchan being practised and transmitted from generation to generation. All these elements indicate that Grade 4 corresponds to Atchan’s situation with regard to Factor 8. 38 2.2.2.3 Evaluating the need for documentation Factor 9: Type and quality of documentation The level of documentation of a language is an important factor not only to assess the vitality of the language but may also help to determine the means and measures needed to maintain and revitalize the language. According to the UNESCO, there are two main criteria for assessing the urgency of the need for documentation, namely the type and the quality of existing materials in the language. In this context, materials are understood as all types of records ranging from written, oral, transcribed, translated to audio-visual records (UNESCO, 2003: 16). A distinction between five types of documentation is made. With regard to the type and quality of the materials available for a language, the documentation of this language can be superlative , good , fair , fragmentary or inadequate . Nature of Documentation Grade Language Documentation Superlative 5 There are comprehensive grammars and dictionaries, extensive texts, and a constant flow of language materials. Abundant annotated highquality audio and video recordings exist. Good 4 There is one good grammar and a number of adequate grammars, dictionaries, texts, literature and occasionally updated everyday media; adequate annotated high-quality audio and video recordings exist. Fair 3 There may be an adequate grammar or sufficient numbers of grammars, dictionaries and texts but no everyday media; audio and video recordings of varying quality or degree of annotation may exist. Fragmentary 2 There are some grammatical sketches, word-lists 39 and texts useful for limited linguistic research but with inadequate coverage. Audio and video recordings of varying quality, with or without any annotation, may exist. Inadequate 1 There are only a few grammatical sketches, short word-lists and fragmentary texts. Audio and video recordings do not exist, are of unusable quality or are completely un-annotated. undocumented 0 No material exists Table 8: Threat level based on Factor 9, Type and quality of documentation (UNESCO, 2003: 16) As will be shown in Chapter 2.3, the type and quality of documentation in Atchan is fragmentary. There are very few grammar books and small vocabularies in the format of magazines, ethnographic publications, and audio-visual recordings available on the internet, mostly musical content, and TV news broadcasts, which are no longer transmitted. A more detailed presentation of the type and quality of documentation of Atchan is addressed in 2.3. The analysis of the information will help us to identify the needs of documentation for the language and which aspects are relevant for the current dictionary proposal. 2.3 Level of Documentation of Atchan In order to determine the level of documentation of Atchan, we set out to search for all types of existing material in Atchan. Since materials in both print and digital format were found, a typology that distinguishes between written and digital documents was adopted for presentation purposes. The following presentation aims to describe the materials with regard to their structure and content. 2.3.1 Print material In spite of the strong oral tradition, the Tchaman community has some written materials at its disposal. These are mainly literacy and ethnographic publications. 40 2.3.1.1 Literacy materials [Guides] Before describing the literacy materials of the Atchan language, it is necessary to address the distinction between didactic and literacy resources, pointing out the reasons why the materials presented here are labelled literacy materials and not didactic ones. To be able to grasp the contexts to which the concept ‘literacy’ may be applied, it seems relevant to consider the definitions of two important international organizations. From the European Literacy Policy Network’s point of view, literacy is defined as “the ability to read and write at a level whereby individuals can effectively understand and use written communication in all media (print or electronic), including digital literacy” (ELINET, 2016: 3). The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development defines literacy as “understanding, evaluating, using and engaging with written text to participate in the society, to achieve one’s goals, and to develop one’s knowledge and potential” (OECD, 2012: 20). That said, literacy refers to the ability of community members to apply reading and writing skills to acquire knowledge, adapt to the environment and participate in community activities. Thus, in the context of the current project, literacy materials are intended to contribute to the preservation of the language by promoting a stronger link between language use in the community and ethnocultural identity. The concept of ‘didactic materials’, on the other hand, is mainly applied in educational settings in which the materials are created and/or adapted by teachers to suit specific learning strategies and goals (Sesma & Léon Fontes, 2016: Vol. 40 No. 3) 57 . Considering the distinction made above between literacy and didactic resources, the materials for Atchan presented in this subchapter can be classified as literacy resources as they were created with the principal objective of promoting the Atchan language and the Tchaman culture within the community. Although some of these resources can serve as language learning tools, they are not integrated in any educational programme. (i) Grammar Books 1. Guide de lecture de l’ébrié (Bôle-Richard, 2017) Guide de lecture de l’ébrié is a reading guide of Tchaman. The first edition of the manual was published in 1986 and the second edition was published in 2017. The manual was compiled by Rémy BôleRichard in collaboration with APPA/CTA, the language science department, EDILIS and UFC University 57 The definition of didactic material varies depending on the authors, but we find similarities in the defining approaches by Tomlinson (1998), Harmer (2005), Ogalde and Bardavid (2003). The three authors agree on the fact that a didactic material consists of anything which is used by teachers or learners as part of language learning. They are learning aids which facilitate the teaching-learning process within a global and systematic educational context. 41 (France), and with the support of the Institute of Applied Linguistics (ILA). Guide de lecture de l’ébrié is written in French and is thus meant for the Tchaman people with French reading and writing skills, who want to read Atchan. Thanks to its correspondence to the official norms of ILA and the approbation of the concerned ministries (National Education, Culture, Rural Development), the orthography presented is the official orthography approved by the government (BolêRichard, 2017: 7). The guide comprises 56 pages and is divided into five chapters. The five chapters are dedicated to the articulation of the consonants and the vowels, the intonation, and verb conjugation. Chapter one deals with the vowels, nasal and oral. Chapter two addresses the intonation and the word music including the acute and grave accent and the circumflex in the subchapters. The consonants are covered in chapter three, with twelve subchapters in which groups of consonants or single consonants are classified according to the manner of articulation. Chapter four, composed of five subchapters, is concerned with the intonation, respectively the low, the falling, the apostrophe, the exclamation mark, and the hidden tone. The last chapter focuses on the conjugation of verbs. The type of information given and the way this information is presented in the book will be applied to one specific chapter: the consonants. The group of consonants ph , th , kh , p , t , k and the group ch and c constitute the first two subchapters. They present the case of words with different consonants and quasi similar pronunciations. The subchapters 3 to 11 deal respectively with the consonants f/s/h/v/z , kp/gb , b/d/j , b/bh/m , l/n , y , w , r and wr . This subdivision of the chapter corresponds to a classification of the consonants with respect to the manner of articulation. The subchapters of this book are organized in the following manner: an introductory description of the grammatical aspect followed by examples of the phenomenon in Atchan and the corresponding French equivalent. The presentation of the examples in tabular form help the user to distinguish between the items and to retrieve the information efficiently. The left column lists the Atchan words which contain the consonant i.e. the sound concerned followed by its French equivalents in the right column. Being aware of the complexity of the consonant sounds in Atchan, the author resorts to didactic elements such as “Attention”, “Read (again) the following words containing the sound x ”, “Learn to distinguish them well” or “Train yourself…” that are interesting elements to be included in a learner’s dictionary. These sentences could correspond to the information boxes existing in dictionaries to attract the users’ attention to a particular use of a word or an expression. Guide de lecture de l’ébrié as reading guide for beginners has strong points that not only ensure an efficient result for those who want to read Atchan, but that could even be included in a dictionary for learners. The use of basic vocabulary in the examples favours the learning process because these are 42 words that the user uses frequently. If the author had used the passive vocabulary, this might slow down the learning process, since the passive vocabulary contains words that the speaker scarcely uses. On the typographical level, there is lack of typographical markers which makes it difficult for users to easily distinguish between different types of content. 2. Introduction à l’écriture et à l’orthographe de l’ébrié 58 The grammar book Introduction à l’écriture et à l’orthographe de l’ébrié was also written by Rémy BôleRichard in collaboration with APPA/CTA, the language science department, EDILIS and UFC University (France), and with the support of the Institute of Applied Linguistics. The first edition was published in 1990 and the second edition in 2017. The target users of this guide are Tchaman people who can read and write French, and who also learned to read Atchan. That is, the use of this manual requires reading competence in Tchaman. For that reason, one should start with the reading guide Guide de lecture de l’ébrié presented above before starting to use this resource. According to the author, the manual can be used as a practice guide for those who want to write (translators, writers, storytellers, etc.) in Atchan (Bolê-Richard, 2017: 7). The book is subdivided into the following eleven chapters: the Atchan alphabet , the consonant clusters , the compounds , the hyphen , the consonants NN and NM , the two-syllable verbs , the object pronouns , the plural forms of nouns , the agreement of the plural adjective , the nasality agreement of the verb with the subject pronoun , and the long vowels . Only three of the eleven chapters are subdivided. The chapter concerning consonant clusters comprises four subchapters which are consonant with “y” , consonant with “w” , consonant with “r” and consonant with “wr” . Chapter six covers the verb combinations verb + noun , verb + verb and the true disyllabic verbs. A detailed analysis of the eighth chapter concerning the plural forms of nouns will provide information on the structural components of the book. In Atchan, there are different ways to form the plural, and the author subdivided the chapter into subchapters, each corresponding to a specific rule: plural with prefix ń - or - n , plural with suffix -mán , plural with suffix -h ɔ n or -mánh ɔ n , plural of agent nouns in -wo and -ya , invariable nouns and irregular plurals . Many nouns that have a prefix á in the singular form their plural with a prefix ń (Bolê-Richard, 2017: 35). These are for example áyá (tree) → ń yá (trees) and ákpró (hut) → ń kpró (huts). Similarly, singular nouns in a- (low pitch) form their plural in n- (low pitch). An example for this category would be agbán (plate) → ngbán (plates). Many singular nouns without prefixes take a prefix ń - in the plural. The 58 Bôle-Richard, Rémy. Introduction à l’écriture et à l’orthographe de l’ébrié . Abidjan: EDILIS 2017. 43 author indicates that this rule applies mostly to animal designations, like g ɔ g ɔ (grasshopper)→ ń g ɔ g ɔ (grasshoppers), lalabhô (duck)→ ń lalabhô (ducks) . Man, woman and person also form their plural in ń - , as follows sɛ (man)→ ń s ɛ (men), bhye (woman) → ń mye (women), lephan (person) → ń nephan (persons). The categories presented above are the categories of the first subchapter, plural with prefix ń - or -n . The chapter is subdivided into subchapters which correspond to rules of plural formation and each subchapter is also subdivided into categories. For each category, the information given is the same: the gloss, the singular and the plural forms. In some cases, the author also provides details in relation to the tone. For the plural with suffix - h ɔ n or -mánh ɔ n , the suffix -h ɔ n raises the tone that precedes it. The author provides the user with information about the gloss (in plural), the pronunciation and the written form. For example, mothers which is pronounced mmânh ɔ n , but is written mmanh ɔ n ; spouses is pronounced nmyâh ɔ n , but is written nmayh ɔ n . Thus, it is of importance that the author provides a note on the tone to point the user’s attention to this particularity. The introductory sentences, the explanations and the notes can be considered as the strong points of the guide Introduction à l’écriture et à l’otrthographe de l’ébrié . Unlike the Guide de lecture de l’ébrié , the author uses typographical markers in this guide. Italics are used to emphasize the content, i.e. verb , gloss , translation , plural , singular , etc. non-typographical markers such as underlining (x), colon (:), equal (=) and plus (+) signs are used too. They ensure a better information retrieval and a better understanding of the content. This guide could serve as an important source of lemmas to be included in a learner's dictionary. And particularly the lists of nouns categorized in Chapter eight where the plural formation is explained by categories are interesting for an onomasiological dictionary. 2.3.1.2 Small vocabularies During our research we did not find a dictionary of Atchan. However, there are small lexicons compiled as small books or vocabulary sections at the end of some works. In what follows, we will provide a brief description of one such small vocabulary book, Expressions Atchan: Parlons couramment Atchan . The book was published in the context of the promotion of the Atchan language. Ahoua Mobio Aristide, the author, is the President of the VNA, presented above in 2.1 (Factor 8: Community members’ attitudes toward their language). Ahoua Aristide has worked in favour of the development of the Tchaman community through the promotion of the language and the consolidation of the Tchaman culture. This purpose has led him to compile a collection of four books to which Expressions Atchan: 44 Parlons couramment Atchan belongs. The book was published in November 2017 in collaboration with Josée Koutouan. The book comprises 37 pages and is mainly a collection of small vocabularies covering the following topics: the days of the week, the months of the year, greetings, the human body, common expressions, the family, fruit, vegetables and ingredients, some Atchan sauces, cooking utensils, animals, numbers and money, verbs, furniture, personal pronouns, colours. The macrostructure is an ordering structure, cf. Wiegand (1989a: 372). Gouws and Prinsloo (2005: 65) claim that the successful retrieval of information in a dictionary often depends on an unimpeded access to the needed lemma-sign. However, the lemmas presented in the book are not ordered. The lemmas are included in the macrostructure of a dictionary as guiding elements of an article (Gouws & Prinsloo, 2005: 135). The author uses a systematic macrostructure, certainly, but there is no order in the list. This characteristic makes it difficult for users to find and retrieve information. Below we provide an extract of the lexicon (Mobio, 2017: 16) of the human body to illustrate this assertion. THE HUMAN BODY FRANCAIS (FRENCH) ATCHAN Nez (nose) N’FONMIN Sein (breast) N’GNIN Oreille (ear) INDJE/N’DJE Pied (foot) INTHA Langue (tongue) ALE Dent (tooth) N’NO Cuisse (thigh) N’TABO The author of Expressions Atchan: Parlons couramment Atchan does well by choosing a thematical approach, but despite that, some of the topics covered by the book don’t contain representative items. In fact, the section Common Expressions lists expressions that would not be used in common daily life. It mainly includes expressions that are used in a very formal context and seem to be the language of a receptionist or the conversation in an office: The line is busy. Would you like to wait? From whom, please? Do you want to make an appointment? Can I take your name and phone number? I will 51 and contains information about diverse facts regarding the Tchaman society. It discusses the origin of the Fatchué , the political and traditional organization of the Tchaman, the preparations for and the procedure involved in the Fatchué . In addition, the Fatchué , the generation ceremony that celebrates the rite of passage from one generation to the next, is closely related to data on the agricultural and ritual calendar, the economic and traditional activities of the Tchaman, ownership, dowry, the tambruya (Tchaman tradition which consists of a special ritual devoted to the wet nurse), the village chief and the spokesperson. 5. Noms Atchan et signification In order to compile this book, the author, Ahoua Mobio Aristide, carried out research in Tchaman villages by interviewing community members about the history of the Tchaman. Noms Atchan et signification was also inspired by Rèmy Bole-Richard’s book "Min can Tchaman Ntchamen rhô”. The information is composed of two data categories: the Atchan name and an explanation. 2.3.3 Online and/or digital resources The digital resources presented in this subchapter are composed of a mobile application and audio recordings. Given the widespread use of digital devices and applications, the creation of digital resources for endangered languages can play an important role in language revitalization initiatives. An interesting aspect to be studied in the future is the influence of digital content published online on the attitude of community members towards the language. (i) Digital and/or mobile Applications ❖ Apprendre l’Atchan Tchaman people have at their disposal a mobile application available on Play Store. This application, Apprendre l’Atchan , is a small bilingual lexicon and has been developed by an Informatician, who has also developed the same application for other local languages such as Baoulé, Lobiri, Camara, Sénoufo and Koulango 59 . The application Apprendre l’Atchan is ordered by topics. It covers twelve topics listed in the navigation 59 The other applications developed by the author are contained in a link, proposed in the application under the category “Autres applications”. 52 menu of the application. These topics are numbers , animals , colours , anatomy , family , feelings , time , food , clothes , pronouns , expressions and sentences . When opening the app, one has access to the list of these twelve topics illustrated by a picture. By clicking on the icon of one topic, we discover the data corresponding to the chosen topic. The microstructure is simple. There are three columns with the following information: 1) a sound file, 2) the lemmas, 3) an illustration. In other words, the application provides a sound file, the French lemma and then its equivalent, followed by a picture illustrating the lemma. Apart from the topic on the numbers , which lists the numbers from one to one hundred, none of the topics list more than forty lemmas. The topic Expressions rather contains verbs like to help, to sit, and daily objects such as spoon, plate, knife and so on. The topic Sentences covers 13 lemmas in total and comprises sentences that are common in daily life ( I don’t know , I don’t understand, … ). Although the application does not cover a wide range of topics nor offers exhaustive vocabulary lists, listing frequently used words can make it very useful for those who want to consolidate basic Atchan vocabulary. (ii) Audio and/or video recordings Our research has shown that most audio and video recordings in Atchan were produced in the context of evangelization initiatives, including basic Christian instruction. The recordings produced by Global Recordings Network (GRN), offers the opportunity to evangelize excluded groups through their biblical audio stories, lessons, study tools, messages, songs, and music. For Atchan, GRN made available an audio Bible and gospel recordings on the website of the Joshua project 60 . Many Christian songs in Atchan are available online. Christianity is the primary religion of the Tchaman people, 95% of the members are Christian 61 . Among the songs in local languages performed in churches, there are many songs in Tchaman. Some of these songs have been collected in books, others are available on scores. Given the above considerations on the assessment of the vitality of the Atchan language and the presentation of the documentation available in Atchan, one can conclude that it is a highly endangered 60 https://joshuaproject.net/about/details https://joshuaproject.net 61 Kyama, Ebrie in Côte d’Ivoire . Available on https://joshuaproject.net/people_groups/12930/IV 53 language. There is an urgent need for preservation. Since documentation in various formats can play an important role in promoting language and culture revitalization, our proposal focuses on the design for the macroand microstructure of an ethnographic onomasiological dictionary of French-Atchan. 54 CHAPTER III: ABOUT THE DICTIONARY PLANNING PROCESS OF THE FRENCH-ATCHAN ETHNOGRAPHIC ONOMASIOLOGICAL DICTIONARY Dictionary planning is a practice that is carried out on a basis of different steps ranging from the profiling of the users to the creation of word lists and the presentation of the data. The production of a dictionary for an endangered language is no exception to the rule. Gouws and Prinsloo take on Tarp’s words from the publication Translation Dictionaries and Bilingual Dictionaries – two different concepts (2002) to argue that the “methodology for planning a dictionary should make a typology of potential users, user situations and problems that might arise for each type of user in each type of user situation” (Gouws & Prinsloo, 2005: 8). In the following chapter, the description of the planning process of the dictionary will be addressed by focussing on the target user profiles, the typology of the use situations, the genuine purpose of the dictionary and the dictionary functions, the dictionary type, the medium of publication and the innovative features. 3.1 Profiling users According to Bergenholtz & Leroyer (2013: 158), before drawing up the types of situations for which the dictionary is designed, it is necessary to profile the user groups. To do this, a set of key parameters must be considered. As listed by Bergenholtz & Leroyer (2013: 159), the following are general questions which lexicographers must answer: “ What is the native language of the users? What is their level of proficiency in the mother tongue? What is their level of proficiency in the foreign language? What is their level of competence in translation between the languages considered? What is their level of general, encyclopaedic, and cultural knowledge? ” The present dictionary project is meant for the Atchan speech community. In order to help us to profile the users authentically, we used the results of the survey presented in Chapter 2. It is necessary to mention that the target users of the dictionary are young people. Thus, although the informants of the survey span various age groups, for the dictionary planning process our analysis of the results focused on young people aged from 15 to 34 years old. Following the key parameters proposed by Bergenholtz & Leroyer above, the survey aims to provide insight into the level of proficiency of the informants with regard to the four language skills, namely listening, speaking, reading, and writing. 55 It is important to emphasize that the total number of informants for the age range 15-34 is 58, subdivided as follows: 15-17 (18), 18-24 (17) and 25-34 (23). In order to be able to establish a comparative view between age groups in terms of competencies, it was necessary to balance the samples by reducing the total number of informants belonging to the older generation from 71 to 58. This was achieved by removing the age group 7180 and reducing the number of informants in the age group 65-70. Before comparing the competencies of both generations, we assumed that (i) the older generation possesses a higher level of competencies in Atchan than the young generation. In what concerns the French language: (ii) the younger generation is more comfortable in French than in Atchan; (iii) the younger generation has a higher level of competence in French than Atchan. Table 9 below provides us with an overview of the informants’ listening skills in Atchan. Skill Age group Atchan Language – Listening/Oral comprehension Competence None Uncomplicated sentences Simple conversations Sophisticated discussions and debates 15 – 34 5,2% 17,2% 63,8% 13,8% 35 – 70 0% 7,8% 14,1% 78,1% Table 9: Listening competencies in Atchan by young and old generations As can be seen from Table 9, the majority of the informants belonging to the younger age group understand simple conversations in Atchan. In what concerns the comprehension of sophisticated discussions and debates, there is a large difference between the age groups: 78,1% of the informants from the age group 35 - 70 against 13,8% for the younger generation. All respondents belonging to the older generation possess some degree of listening skills in Atchan. The same cannot be observed for the younger generation: 5,2% of the younger respondents have no listening skills in Atchan. The same tendency observed for listening skills between the two age groups can be verified in relation to the speaking skills in Atchan. 56 Skill Atchan Language – Speaking Age Group None Simple and short phrases Basic grammatical structure, limited vocabulary Participate in conversational topics Wide range of conversational situations 15 – 34 17,2% 22,4% 32,8% 22,4% 5,2% 35 – 70 1,6% 4,7% 9,4% 25% 59,4% Table 10: Speaking competencies in Atchan by young and old generations As can be seen from Table 10, 59,4% of the older generation can deal with a wide range of conversational topics, against 5,2% for the younger generation. Only 1,6% of respondents from the older generation admit to having no speaking skills in comparison to 17,2% from the younger age group. If the competencies ‘Simple and short phrases’ and ‘basic grammatical structure and limited vocabulary’ are considered, more than half of the younger informants (55,2%) admit to having only basic speaking skills in Atchan in contrast to a much lower percentage for the older informants (14,1%). Does the same tendency apply for reading skills? Skill Atchan Language – Reading None Limited to Conventional Materials Sophisticated Age simple Topics and which materials, Group vocabulary non-technical contain including and subjects idioms and those sentence specialised in proposed structure terminology field of study 15 – 34 72,4% 22,4% 5,2% 0% 0% 35 – 70 23,4% 28,1% 35,9% 3,1% 9,4% Table 11: Reading competencies in Atchan by young and old generations 57 Table 11 confirms the tendency verified in the skills analysed previously. 72,4% of respondents in the younger age group cannot read Atchan, against 23,4% for the older generation. 0% of younger informants have reception competencies related to materials which contain idioms and specialised terminology and advanced materials, including those in proposed field of study, in contrast to 12,5% of older informants. A large difference between the age groups is also noticed when it comes to the items ‘limited to simple vocabulary and sentence structure’ and ‘conventional topics and non-technical subjects’: 27,6% for the age group 15-34 against 64% for the older age group. Table 12 below provides a comparative view of the writing skills of both generations. Skill Atchan Language – Writing Age Group None With some errors in spelling and structure On academic topics with few errors in structure and spelling With idiomatic ease of expression and feeling for the style of the language 15 – 34 82,8% 12,1% 5,2% 0% 35 – 70 50% 25% 18,8% 6,3% Table 12: Writing competencies in Atchan by young and old generations There are 82% of young participants with no writing skills, against 50% by the older Tchaman generation. None of the young Tchaman respondents can write with idiomatic ease of expression and feeling for the style of the Atchan language. A low percentage of older informants (6,3%) admit to having advanced writing skills. Overall, it can be stated that participants from the older generation possess a higher degree of writing competencies. The results of the survey presented in the tables above show that the older generation is more proficient in listening, speaking, reading, and writing in Atchan. What can be said about the French competencies? The following tables present a comparison of the French skills between the younger and older generations. We set out from the hypothesis that the respondents in the age group 15-34 present higher percentages for each one of the items concerning the different skills in French. Let us begin with a comparison of the listening skills: 58 Skill French Language – Listening/Oral comprehension Age Group None Uncomplica ted sentences Simple conversation s Conversations on simple academic topics Sophisticated discussion of academic topics 15 – 34 0% 3,4% 46,6% 37,9% 12,1% 35 – 70 1,6% 15,6% 17,2% 37,5% 28,1% Table 13: Listening competencies in French by young and old generations While all the young respondents possess some level of listening comprehension skills in French, we observe that a very low percentage (1,6%) of the older generation does not understand French. Surprisingly, 46,7%, almost half of the young respondents, can only deal with simple conversations. What can be said about the French speaking skills of both generations? Skill French Language – Speaking Age Group None Simple and short phrases Basic grammatical structure, Participate in conversational topics Wide range of conversat limited vocabulary ional situations 15 – 34 1,7% 22,4% 27,6% 39,7% 8,6% 35 – 70 7,8% 18,8% 7,8% 34,4% 31,3% Table 14: Speaking competencies in French by young and old generations As is the case with French listening skills, the number of members belonging to the older generation who possess no speaking skills in French is substantially higher than the number of young people who do not speak French at all. In the case of competence levels ‘Simple and short phrases’, ‘Basic grammatical structure, limited vocabulary’, and ‘Participate in conversational topics’, we also register higher percentages in the age group 15-34. But in what concerns the last competence level ‘participate 59 in a wide range of conversational situations, the young Atchan people’s skills are remarkably lower than expected. Table 15 below provides a general outline of the informants’ French reading skills: Skill French Language – Reading Age Group None Limited to simple vocabulary and sentence structure Conventional topics and nontechnical subjects Materials which contain idioms and specialised terminology Sophisticated materials, including those in proposed field of study 15 – 34 6,9% 24,1% 43,1% 17,2% 8,6% 35 – 70 12,5% 7,8% 31,3% 23,4% 25% Table 15: Reading competencies in French by young and old generations Here again, we observe that the percentage of older Atchan people with no reading skills in French is expectedly higher (12,5%) than the one representing the young people with no skills (6,9%). The higher percentages by the young generation are also recorded for the three middle levels of competencies taken together ‘Limited to simple vocabulary and sentence structure’, ‘Conventional topics and nontechnical subjects’ and ‘Materials which contain idioms and specialised terminology’. Unexpectedly, the older generation is more competent in dealing with advanced materials, including those in proposed field of study. Table 16 below presents the results of the informants’ French writing skills. 60 Skill French Language – Writing Age Group None With some Errors in spelling and structure On academic topics with few errors in structure and spelling With idiomatic ease of expression and feeling for the style of the language 15 – 34 8,6% 51,7% 34,5% 5,2% 35 – 70 15,6% 25% 31,3% 28,1% Table 16: Writing competencies in French by young and old generations 15,6% of the older respondents cannot write in French. Among the younger informants, 51% can write with some errors in spelling and structure; 34,5% can produce texts on academic topics but with few errors in spelling and in structure. With regard to the idiomatic ease of expression and feeling for the style of the language, the members of the older generation (28,1%) seem to be more competent than the members of the younger age group (5,2%). In general, the results above seem to demonstrate that although the percentage of younger respondents with competencies in French is higher than the percentage of older respondents, the younger respondents present a lower level of advanced French skills. One of the weak points of the survey is that it does not include a question about the scholarly and/or professional status (occupation) of the participants, making it impossible to correlate the variables ‘occupation’ and ‘French skills’. Even though it was not possible to retrieve this information from the questionnaire, these results can be explained by publications and research carried out on the subject of French spoken in Côte d’Ivoire. As a matter of fact, the article by Jérémie Kouadio (2008), Le français en Côte d’Ivoire: de l’imposition à l’appropriation décomplexée d’une langue exogène provides an overview of how the French language underwent changes from “imposed language” to French varieties which the population adopted with ease, which results from the effort to adapt this foreign language to local reality. As mentioned in the abstract of the article, the expansion of French was implemented through the school and was the instrument by which the colonized could reach civilization (Kouadio: 2008: 191). Young people learn French, as did the older generation, but both generations do not speak it the same way. The younger generation mostly speaks Nouchi. “ Nouchi is a slang born in the early 1980s and was created by out-of-school youth who left school with more or less sufficient knowledge of 67 dictionary type for the dictionary project and the potential target users. Considering the type of information we propose to include in the dictionary and the assistance we want to provide to the target users, we decided on an onomasiological dictionary. It is important to emphasize that, according to the dictionary typology proposed by Hausmann (1989, HSK), onomasiological dictionaries belong to specialized dictionaries, specifically, information typeoriented dictionaries. In onomasiological dictionaries, the main stress of the dictionary is on the kind of information about the different lemma. In fact, onomasiological dictionaries are conceptual ordered dictionaries. Onomasiology consists in a semantic approach starting from the idea i.e. the concept to study the different words and expressions used to designate the concept in a given language. Central here is to know how we designate X-concept in a given language. The choice of an onomasiological dictionary was mainly motivated by a discussion of Ulrike Mosel on dictionary making in endangered speech communities. In her article “Dictionary making in endangered speech communities”, the author points out the problems which are characteristic of lexicographic work in short-term language documentation projects. According to Mosel, the alphabetical approach in the compilation of a dictionary for an endangered language is not appropriate. The thematic approach favours the compilation of word lists and the writing of entries. A little dictionary comprising only one subject area or subdomain is more useful than a dictionary comprising words starting with a . One should therefore select subject areas, compile the word lists and write the entries for each subject area. The question is to know which subject the speech community, i.e. the native speakers, think are most important for their culture. These arguments motivated the choice of an onomasiological over an alphabetical dictionary, as the former seems to be a more appropriate solution for the presentation of cultural relevant topics for the preservation of the Atchan language. It is our view that the preservation of Atchan, aim of the present dictionary project, can be promoted through the identification, listing and compilation of Tchaman cultural artefacts. In the current project, we are working on a specialized lexicon, i.e. a lexicon of Atchan cultural artefacts. That is why we decided to work on an onomasiological dictionary, organized by themes, concepts. It is true that the typology of Hausmann classifies onomasiological dictionaries into paradigmatic dictionaries such as synonmy/antonomy dictionaries, but the current dictionary proposal is ethnographic i.e. ethnocultural rather than paradigmatic. In fact, the profiling of users, the identification of the use situations, the fact that Atchan is a highly endangered language led to the conclusion that we need a dictionary in which a collection of themes and concepts relevant to the Tchaman speech community can be consulted. Instead of proposing a semasiological dictionary, the onomasiological approach is more suitable for the 68 current dictionary project. Our goal here is to assist the speech community members in finding the Atchan terms to express a relevant cultural concept or artefact. Compiling a semasiological dictionary would require that users already know the word and are looking for its meaning. However, our potential target users will most probably not be acquainted with the term in Atchan. In this case, the user will go from the cultural concept to find the linguistic form, here the Atchan term which designates this concept in the Tchaman speech community. Now that we made clear why we think the onomasiological, yet ethnographic, i.e. ethnocultural dictionary, is the most suitable dictionary type for the documentation, preservation and revitalization of the Tchaman language via its culture, let us present the methodology adopted to achieve this in the current dictionary project. 3.5 Methodology The methodology to carry out the current dictionary project comprises the following four steps: the identification of concepts, the establishment of the dictionary basis, term extraction, and the macroand microstructure design. The following is a discussion of each methodological step. 3.5.1 The identification of concepts The current project’s objective is to propose a model for an onomasiological ethnographic dictionary which mainly aims at contributing to the preservation and promotion of the endangered language Atchan. It is essential to identify linguistic and socio-cultural phenomena relevant to the Tchaman people. Since the immersion in the Tchaman community was not possible, the collection of the concepts to be included in the FR-AT Dictionary were obtained through two different means, namely a questionnaire and readings. 3.5.1.1 The questionnaire Since the Atchan language is not sufficiently documented, interviewing the speech community members, including village chiefs, would have provided us with authentic information about their knowledge in and about Atchan, their attitudes towards the language, their knowledge about the traditions and their behaviour in given social and cultural situations. However, since this data collection 69 Mariage coutumier Cérémonie de dot La sortie de la maternité: tambrôya Cérémonie de libation Intronisation chefferie Assemblée villageoise, danse des guerriers, tambrôya Règlement des conflits villageois Porte-parole Conseil de sage aux affaires villageoises Réunions et conseils du village Conseil aux affaires coutumières La danse des hommes (n'sè mi) La danse des femmes (n'niè mi/amidi Danses traditionnelles cocoma et sidjè method turned out not to be feasible, the questionnaire allowed us nonetheless to gather authentic information concerning the members of the Tchaman speech community. As presented in Chapter 2.1, the questionnaire is composed of twenty questions subdivided into four categories. The fourth and last category, use and knowledge of the Atchan language, encompasses questions concerned with the use of the language and knowledge of Tchaman cultural activities, apart from Fatchué and Attiéké cooking . 46% of the informants were able to list many Atchan cultural and traditional acts, that can be categorized as follows: entertainment / recreation , dances , ceremonies , socio-political organization . Some of the respondents wrote the concepts in French, and others gave both the French equivalent and the Atchan term. Here is an extract of the terms used to designate the concepts: The extract represents a list of the terms that were mentioned with a high frequency by the respondents. Some readings also provided us with more information about the Atchan culture. La danse grolo Les jeux (djomlè, cauris, agbo...) Le conte (alèmô) Atchan goto fe (festival des lagunes) 70 3.5.1.2 Readings The written texts collected and presented in this work in Chapter 2.3 are ethnographic publications, academic works, and small lexica. The two publications that most contributed to the present dictionary project were as previously mentioned Aspects de l’art musical des Tchaman de Côte d’Ivoire and Histoire et Coutumes de la Côte d’Ivoire . The first book mentioned can be considered an academic book which deals with the musical art of the Tchaman people. This book does not give the reader a general overview of the Atchan culture, but focuses on musical instruments, music, dances, events where music is involved. In other words, it deals with topics which are related to music in the Atchan society. The second publication mentioned above was written at a time when the history and customs of the Ivorian peoples had not yet undergone significant transformations. The work reports on the past of the Tchaman population by giving an overview of their customs. It covers the following topics: family, marriage, filiation, tutelage, emancipation, guardianship, property, succession, donations, will, contracts, prescription, and civil liability. The book provides us with information about the way these different notions were culturally perceived and dealt with in the Tchaman society. Although the publication dates back to 1900, it contributed to the identification of the concepts that were important to the Tchaman community in the past and which concepts continue to be essential to the Tchaman community in the 21st Century. Based on the concepts and terms identified in the book, it was possible to search for other publications related to these specific concepts and terms. After identifying the concepts, the next step consisted in collecting them and establishing a hierarchy which would later serve for the concept structure of the dictionary. 3.5.2 Concept collection and hierarchy At this stage of the work, the questionnaire and the readings ensured the identification of some Atchan cultural concepts. The current project being the prototype of an onomasiological dictionary focussing on cultural concepts, the concepts identified were organized into a hierarchy. Depending on the conceptual domain, we organized the terms into different levels. We take the conceptual domain Music 63 as an example of the concept hierarchy used to organize the dictionary: 63 The hierarchy presented here serves as example and should not be considered as the whole concept hierarchy for the conceptual domain Music. 71 Figure 11: Illustration of concept hierarchy using the concept Music and the subconcept musical instruments As can be seen from Figure 11, the concept system is composed of a hierarchy of superordinate, subordinate and coordinate concepts. The coordinate concepts share common properties on the one hand and possess distinguishing characteristics on the other. When compiling an onomasiological dictionary, it is important that the lexicographer be familiar with the relations between the concepts in a concept system. This knowledge will greatly help the lexicographer to model the macrostructure of the dictionary, but also the user who will then be able to identify the different sections of the dictionary corresponding to the main concepts of the Tchaman culture and the respective terms used to designate those concepts. The term selection process is discussed in the subchapter below. 3.5.3 The term selection process The term selection is the establishment of the list of terms to be treated in the dictionary. Elizaveta Kotorova, in her article Dictionary making for a minority language: the Case of Ket (2016), points out that linguists experienced in compiling dictionaries of minority languages suggest three term selection methods which are (p. 131): “(i) the translation of the list of the most frequent words from a European Music Musical instruments Idiophones Membranophones Crashed idiophones Rattles Ankle bells Frame drum Hourglassshaped armpit drum Shaking idiophones Crashing idiophones 72 language (very often English), (ii) the extraction of the word list from a corpus of texts of the described language, (iii) the thematic elicitation from native speakers to find words for narrowly defined subject areas (for example, colour terms, housekeeping, etc.)”. As referred by Kotorova, although method (i) does not require a corpus in the researched language, it is not an adequate method if a project intends to cover cultural phenomena and the respective concepts and terms of the minority language. Method (ii) is only efficient when there is a large and representative corpus, which is not the case of Atchan. In the case of method (iii), although Kotorova states that it should be used as a complement to other methods as the results obtained are fragmentary, this is the method that most suits the purposes and the setting of the current lexicographic project. Even though a closer collaboration with the speech community members was not possible, the survey that was implemented and the ethnographic resources that were analysed provided us with information on relevant thematic concepts for the Tchaman. The word list of the dictionary was extracted from the dictionary basis discussed and described in 3.6. Once the concepts to be included in the dictionary had been identified and the hierarchy and semantic relations between them had been established, the corresponding terms were easily selected. For each concept, we went through the dictionary basis and extracted the term(s) which designate the concept. The term extraction was done manually. Considering that we do not have a huge corpus at our disposal and since space won’t be a problem, the term selection was not based on criteria such as frequency counts. We rather focused on the criterion proposed by Ulrike Mosel (2013: 2) regarding the choice of the subject areas: “Which subject areas do the native speakers think are most important for their culture?”. In fact, if we want the data to fulfil the genuine purpose of the dictionary, we have to select terms which are the most important to the speech community’s culture. We did not have the possibility to interact i.e. collaborate directly with the community, but informants’ responses to the questionnaire guided us in obtaining a clear idea of the elements present and alive in their culture and which traditions are important to them. By following this methodology, the FR-AT Dictionary fulfils one of its purposes, namely the improvement of the documentation status of Atchan. The chapter below deals with the presentation of the sources which constitute our dictionary basis. 3.6 The basis of the FR-AT Ethnographic Onomasiological Dictionary According to Gouws and Prinsloo (2005: 15-16), the general preparation phase of a dictionary 73 comprises four main components: ‘lemmatisation process’, ‘microstructural programme’, ‘frame structure’ and ‘dictionary basis’ 64 . In the dictionary preparation phase, it is thus important to identify and describe the nature and extent of the source materials that will serve as a basis for the dictionary. Our dictionary basis is made up of sources written mainly in French that include phrase or sentence equivalents in Atchan. These resources that are mostly in print form belong to various text types, namely ethnographic publications and existing terminologies and vocabularies, and address a particular aspect of the Atchan language or the Tchaman culture. Below a list of these resources: - The questionnaire (Annex 1, pp. 124-128) - Aspects de l’art musical des Tchaman de Côte d’Ivoire (Konin, 2010) Aspects of the musical art of the Tchaman of the Ivory Coast - Introduction à l’écriture et à l’orthographe de l’ébrié (Bôle-Richard, 2017) Introduction to Atchan writing and spelling - Guide de lecture de l’ébrié (Bôle-Richard, 2017) Reading guide of Atchan - Histoire et coutumes de la Côte d’Ivoire. Tome I, Le cercles des lagunes : les ébriés (Direction des Archives nationales, 1900) History and customs of the Ivory Coast. Volume I, the circles of the lagoons - Apprendre l’Atchan Learn Atchan - Expressions Atchan. Parlons couramment Atchan. Tome 1 (Ahoua, 2017) Atchan expressions. Let us speak Atchan fluently - Origine et migrations. L’histoire du peuple Tchaman (Ahoua, 2017) Origin and migrations. The history of the Tchaman - L’alphabet Atchan The Atchan alphabet - Fête de génération (Mobio, 2017) Initiation ceremony - Noms Atchan et significations (Mobio, 2019) Atchan names and meanings Our corpus focuses specifically on the extraction of the parts of the publications that contain bilingual 64 Lemmatisation can be understood as “an over-simplified way as the selection of a specific form from a given paradigm to be used in a dictionary as the starting point for information retrieval” (Gouws & Prinsloo, 2005: 67). The frame structure is known as a type of dictionary structure including the outer texts namely the front and back matter texts of a given dictionary (Gouws & Prinsloo, 2005: 57). With regard to the general preparation phase, in the current thesis, we are not including the discussion of the lemmatisation process and the frame structure. The discussion of the microstructural programme is addressed in Chapter 3.5.7. 74 French-Atchan words, phrases and/or sentences. This will allow the creation of a parallel corpus that can be further processed electronically. Ideal here is to convert the resources in electronic form, use optical character recognition programs which should then ensure the tokenization of the corpus. Let us consider the following example sentences and phrases taken from the ethnographic source text Aspects de l’art musical des Tchaman de Côte d’Ivoire (Aka, 2010: 47-48) 65 : (1) AT: Bertin houanmié ninsi éba FR : Les filles de Bertin avancent (EN: Bertin’s daughters are moving forward) (2) AT : Hogbo ogbréi wéba FR : Dans leur état de pauvreté (EN: In their poverty condition) (3) AT : Dévaluation hinon wétè FR: Ce sont des choses de dévaluation que nous faisons (EN: We are performing devaluating things) (4) AT : Kassé epô èba wouhooo FR : Si ça te plaît tu viens voir (EN: If you like it, come and see) 66 In the case of the lexicographic resource Expressions Atchan. Parlons couramment Atchan. Tome 1 (Ahoua, 2017: 7), that has an onomasiological structure, it is easier to identify and extract the French words and the Atchan equivalents to be added to the parallel corpus automatically: FRANCAIS (FRENCH) ATCHAN Nez (nose) N’FONMIN 65 It is an extract of the song that women sing during the Fatchué . Sentences translated into English by author. 66 From Konin Aka, Aspects de l’art musical des Tchaman de Côte d’Ivoire . 75 Sein (breast) N’GNIN Oreille (ear) INDJE/N’DJE Pied (foot) INTHA Langue (tongue) ALE Dent (tooth) N’NO Cuisse (thigh) N’TABO As can be deduced from the concepts found in this resource, it aims to be an introduction to Atchan. The division by concepts: the days of the week, the months of the year, greetings, the human body, common expressions, the family, food, cooking utensils, animals, numbers and money, common verbs, furniture, personal pronouns, colours, including the parallel alignment of the French word and Atchan equivalent, aids the language learning process and facilitates, as mentioned above, the electronic processing of the material. Improving the documentation status of Atchan via this dictionary requires terms from specific subject areas but also a specific entry structure for each of the term. The chapter below focuses on the information that can be extracted from the dictionary basis for the term entries. 3.7 Preparing the microstructure of the dictionary proposal As was the case for the term selection process, the dictionary basis also played an important role in the preparation of the microstructure of the FR-AT Ethnographic Onomasiological Dictionary. The categories we decided to include in the term entry of our ethnographical dictionary are: Headword , Grammar , Semantics and Description . In the category Headword , we have the term in French, the translation equivalent in Atchan (written with the Atchan orthography, not the French alphabet), an illustration (picture or video). Grammar includes the phonetic transcription, the pronunciation (as audio file), the 76 part of speech of the term (PoS), collocations and example sentences 67 . Concerning Semantics , we have the context of use of the term, the meaning/definition of the term, and the related terms. The last category, Description , aims to provide the user with information about the physical features or sequence i.e. phases of events, cultural elements and historical facts associated with the term. In other words, we aim at providing components which refer to linguistic, cultural-specific, and encyclopaedic data. The extraction of such information for all the terms was relatively difficult. It is true that one of the sources, the academic work on the Tchaman musical art, provides information on the physical description of the instruments, the way there are played, on which occasion they are played, and in some cases, the author even provides information on the creator, the origin and the term designating the person who plays such an instrument. In addition to this kind of data found in this publication, we also found it relevant to collect other types of information such as grammatical information (plural form, part of speech of the term, valency, collocations), phonetic and spelling information. Since the dictionary basis used does not, in some cases, contain sufficient grammatical information and, as mentioned above, the collaboration with native speakers with solid knowledge of Atchan was not possible, the microstructure of the entries may differ depending on the information that was possible to collect for each term. After the collection of the data categories, we drew up a tree diagram to model the microstructure of the entries. This diagram is explained in more detail in Chapter 4.2.2 on the dictionary production process. The encoding i.e. the writing of entries requires a specific data organization. However, the data organization depends on the medium of publication. Chapter 3.8 below will focus on this aspect of the dictionary planning process. 3.8 Medium of publication The onomasiological dictionary French-Atchan is meant to be an ethnocultural product. The target users are Atchan young people aged 15 to 34. We see the Dictionary as a community project, aimed to promote the preservation of Atchan linguistic and Tchaman cultural heritage, that should be widely distributed and freely accessible to its members. Consequently, we are of the opinion that the electronic form is the most suitable means of publication, as our target users are more familiar with the digital world. The electronic and the paper mediums are both efficient means of publication, presenting both strong and weak points. We did not choose to publish the dictionary in paper version for diverse 67 The inclusion of collocations and example sentences depends on the term being treated. For some terms like musical instruments for example, this information might not be applicable. 83 very few on socio-cultural concepts. At the outset of the project, we considered using Natural Language Processing techniques, such as tokenization and automatic extraction of candidate terms to be included in the dictionary. After a thorough analysis of the documentation available and the project objectives, we found that it was necessary to identify concept systems and conceptual relations first and then analyze the linguistic and ethnographic information in the publications found. The term ‘corpus’ as used in this thesis should not be interpreted as a corpus available in machinereadable form. The term ‘corpus’ refers to the material, publications and documents described in Chapter 2.3. Below a discussion of how the corpus was used on both the macroand microstructural levels. 4.1.1 On the macrostructural level The macrostructure is the “selection of lexical items to be included in the dictionary as lemma signs” (Gouws 2005: 63). They become the primary treatment units of the lexicographic process and as such, the selection and inclusion of the lemmata occurs according to well-defined criteria. As emphasized by Gouws and Prinsloo (2005: 30), when compiling a new dictionary, the word-frequency is a tool which assists the lexicographer during the compilation of a lemma list. The Statistics Dictionary STAT TREK defines frequency counts as “a measure of the number of times that an event occurs”. Word-frequency counts consist of word occurrences in a corpus. Working with such a tool ensures that no frequently used word is absent, and that space is not taken up by lemmas less used and not likely to be used. According to the required number of lemmas, the lexicographer can isolate the top from the frequency list and complete the lemma list with the less frequent until the desired number is met. Frequency counts is an important criterion because it allows lexicographers to compile a dictionary with words that are most likely to be looked up. However, in our case, we will not be able to rely on this tool for diverse reasons: - Our corpus is not large enough and consequently, frequency counts will not be representative; - Our corpus is not based on “natural” texts gathered from speech community members’ dialogs. The corpus is mainly composed of fragmentary texts comprising single words or expressions extracted from texts written in French. These single words and/or expressions were used to (i) name a cultural concept described in French, (ii) serve as illustration (in the case of the guides); - The FR-AT Dictionary is not a general language dictionary, but an onomasiological dictionary that is intended to be an ethnographic product focussing on concepts of relevant cultural topics. We are of the opinion that there is no need to base the term selection on frequency counts, but rather on 84 Atchan relevant subject areas, especially those named by the survey respondents. Keeping in mind that the FR-AT Dictionary aims to contribute to the revitalization of the Atchan language through the documentation of Tchaman culture, the entry structure has to include Tchaman cultural relevant information. On the macrostructural level, the corpus of the current dictionary project is going to be used with regard to cultural relevance. By cultural relevance, we mean the link between the concepts and the Tchaman culture. To what extent are these concepts important to the Tchaman speech community? Does integrating information on these concepts arouse interest in the use of the dictionary and improve the knowledge of our users? Can the introduction of these concepts in the dictionary help to preserve the Atchan language? These are our selection criteria. Affirmative answers to these questions mean the concept/term is eligible for selection. The responses of the informants as well as the readings allowed us to identify the candidate concepts to be part of the macrostructure. The collection and hierarchy of the concepts discussed in Chapter 3.5.2 is a means of establishing the macrostructural selection of the dictionary, the conceptual ordering of our onomasiological dictionary. At this point, we analyzed our dictionary sources and selected the Atchan terms which designate the concepts in the Tchaman speech community 68 . In the macrostructural selection process, we did not consider terms which have no relation to Tchaman ethnic and cultural phenomena. The entry structure assigned to each term should contain specific information to ensure the fulfilment of the genuine purpose of our dictionary proposal. The following subchapter addresses the discussion of the use of the corpus on the microstructural level. Focus is laid on the information that can be retrieved from our dictionary sources. 4.1.2 On the microstructural level The microstructure is to be understood as “the selection of data categories given as part of the treatment of the lemma sign. A macrostructural element combined with its microstructural treatment constitute a dictionary article.” (Gouws & Prinsloo 2005: 64). Another definition of the term ‘microstructure’ is given by the same authors, when they define it as a set of “the data categories to be included in the treatment of the lemmata and the typical article slots allocated to these categories”. (Gouws & Prinsloo 2005: 15). Generally, concordance lines, an empirical approach used to analyse naturally occurring language based on corpora, assist lexicographers to implement the microstructural 68 It is important to emphasize that the nature and extent of the dictionary basis did not allow to extract terms for all the concepts that have been identified and collected. For the further production of the dictionary, a collaboration with the Tchaman speech community should compensate for this issue. 85 programme. They are used for (i) sense distinction, (ii) the writing of definitions for each sense, (iii) the selection of appropriate examples (Gouws & Prinsloo: 2005: 149). In our case, working with concordance lines is not feasible due to the fact that the corpus is made up of fragmentary texts collected from mostly print sources. The work involved in the implementation of the microstructural program is for the most part manual. On the microstructural level, we expected in the first instance to extract information such as: translation equivalents, phonetic transcription, definition of the concept, use of term in context, collocations, example sentences, related terms, physical, social i.e. cultural and historical description of cultural phenomena or artefacts. However, the extraction of data from our sources proved to be a difficult task. In fact, the etrieval of these items from the corpus was not consistent. In some cases, it is possible to extract the translation equivalents of the terms in Atchan, the illustration, the context of use, the meaning/definition of the concept, the physical, cultural, and historical description. This is the case for the terms designating concepts from the musical domain and ceremonies i.e. Fatchué . The source text Aspects de l’art musical des Tchaman de Côte d’Ivoire (Aka, 2010) provides a detailed presentation of the musical art of the Tchaman speech community, making the extraction of information on terms related to music an easy task. The retrieval of collocational information and usage and example sentences is a tricky task considering the nature and extent of our dictionary sources. Considering that the dictionary basis of the following proposal is mainly made up of ethnographic publications, the extraction of grammatical information was possible only from the two guides, Guide de lecture de l’ébrié (Bôle-Richard, 2017) and Introduction à l’écriture et à l’orthographe de l’ébrié (Bôle-Richard, 2017). These books address grammatical features of the Atchan language and contain both example sentences and collocations of some words. However, it is important to add that for the retrieval of grammatical information using these sources implies a deductive analysis. For most of the terms, it is not possible to extract collocations and example sentences from there. The extraction of grammatical information, such as phonetic transcription and pronunciation of Atchan words, based on our sources was a difficult task as this information was not readily available. Given this difficulty, in our case, a collaboration with the members of the Tchaman speech community seems to be the adequate alternative. Compiling the dictionary together with the speech community would allow us not only to build an oral corpus but also to gather authentic natural dialogues in the form of audio files. This should then ensure that we include in the dictionary entries authentic information on the use of the Atchan language. By working with the Tchaman speech community, we will be able to provide our 86 users with pronunciation in audio files, and authentic collocational and usage examples. The presentation of the data organization of the dictionary proposal is addressed in the next subchapter. 4.2 Design of the FR-AT Ethnographic Onomasiological Dictionary The current master’s dissertation addresses the planning of an onomasiological dictionary for Atchan, an endangered language. As such, the current work aims at proposing a prototype of a macroand microstructure design for an ethnographic onomasiological dictionary for Atchan. With the following dictionary proposal, we intend to contribute to the documentation and preservation i.e. revitalization of the Atchan language via the Tchaman culture. We would like it to represent a resource which assists the young members of the Tchaman speech community to acquire knowledge about their language and culture, practice it and thus contribute to the revitalization of the Atchan language. This subchapter presents the design of the macroand microstructure we want to propose for the compilation of the ethnographic onomasiological dictionary of Atchan. Chapter 4.2.1 deals with the presentation of the conceptual structure of the dictionary and Chapter 4.2.2 focusses on the data distribution structure. At the end, Chapter 4.2.3 presents concrete examples of the dictionary entries according to the microstructure design proposed. 4.2.1 Design of the macrostructure of the FR-AT Ethnographic Onomasiological Dictionary This subchapter introduces the prototype of the macrostructure we propose for the French-Atchan Ethnographic Onomasiological Dictionary. It is important to emphasize that the concepts included in the hierarchical tree are cultural themes collected from the informants’ responses to the survey and the readings. The following is a hierarchical tree representing the conceptual ordering which serves as proposal for the macrostructure of the dictionary. The concept “ceremony” is taken as example. 87 Taprognan: Warrior Taprognan bi: Warrior dance Fatchué: Initiation ceremony Sida: N/A (There is no translation equivalent for this typical Atchan term.) N’sè bi: Men dance N’miè mi: Women dance Figure 12: Macrostructure design proposal The design illustrated in Figure 12 is a partial representation of one of the concept systems of the dictionary that suffices to illustrate our macrostructure design proposal. It is important to emphasize that (i) unfortunately the nature and extent of the corpus we had at our disposal did not allow for neither a complete concept hierarchy nor for the extraction of all the terms nor a representative list of terms designating the concepts identified; (ii) the hierarchy proposed is an attempt at approximation, one among other possible ways of representing knowledge. This proposal constitutes our perception of the relation between the concepts based on the material available. On the first level, we have the superordinate concept, followed by the subconcepts on the second level. The subdivision of each subconcept is a subclassification into different categories, here the different types of tribal rituals we identified. Each category represents Tchaman cultural concepts we collected during our research. On the last level of the hierarchy, we can see terms used to designate and/or refer to the Tchaman concepts classified above. These terms are the lemmas to be included in the macrostructure of the dictionary. They consist of the word i.e. term list of the FR-AT Ethnographic Onomasiological Dictionary. The prototype of the microstructure proposed for the treatment of the terms is presented below. 88 4.2.2 Design of the microstructure of the FR-AT Ethnographic Onomasiological Dictionary The satisfaction of the users’ needs and the fulfilment of the dictionary’s functions can be achieved by way of a well-defined microstructure model. In fact, the article structure and the data distribution determine the types of data categories to be represented, as well as the way they appear in the structure. When all these elements are combined, this leads to systematicity on the part of the user. That is, users can become familiar with the dictionary system and can therefore easily identify the type of information they can find when consulting the dictionary and where to find it. Our microstructure model is solidly grounded in the ethnographic nature of the dictionary that is considered a means of bringing community members closer to the endangered language in question via the Tchaman culture with its customs and habits. The following is a representation of the structure we propose for the data distribution and the writing of entries of French-Atchan Ethnographical Onomasiological Dictionary. Figure 13: Microstructure design proposal As can be seen in Figure 13, for the data category collocations, we have the tag “N/A”. This means that – to our knowledge - there is no collocations applicable for this term. Figure 13 stands for the 89 general prototype of microstructure proposed in the work, and, the following is a presentation of the application of this microstructure applied to concrete term entries. 4.3 Examples of entries This last chapter provides an overview 69 of what the term entries of the dictionary should look like following the microstructure design proposed in the current work. We aim to provide an overview of the specific position of each data type included in the entries. Djidji ayôkwé , attiéké and Fatchué are the terms chosen to illustrate the term entries of the FR-AT Ethnographic Onomasiological Dictionary. These terms stand respectively for a musical instrument, a culinary speciality, and a ceremony. These terms were selected to demonstrate the diversity of the content in term entries designating different concepts. The information presented in the entries 1 and 3 is taken from the ethnographic publication Aspects de l’art musical des Tchaman de Côte d’Ivoire of Konin Aka. 1. 70 Tambour-de-bois: Djidji ayôkwé [ȷiȷi ajɔkwέ] 71 Nom composé masculin [uniquement singulier] Définition : Tambour de bois faisant partie des instruments musicaux de l’art musical des Ebriés, particulièrement de la famille des idiophones […] Contexte : Ce terme est utilisé dans un contexte de guerre. Autrefois, après une victoire, les armes enlevées et les trophées des ennemis tués étaient placés à l’intérieur ou à proximité du hangar qui abritait le tambour. […] Termes associés : djidji bi , donga , banwn , ayokwé-enté 72 Description : (physique) Tambour à fente polychrome (noir, blanc, rouge, pigments naturels) à deux lèvres (bords) d’épaisseur inégale. […] Les lèvres s’étendent sur des longueurs d’arc inégales de part et 69 The examples presented here are not complete entries. The examples contain the main data categories. 70 Aka, Konin. (2010). Aspects de l’art musical des Tchaman de Côte d’Ivoire . pp. 15-18. 71 This icon stands for the audio file of the pronunciation. 72 The italic type and different coloured writing indicate that the term entries can be accessed by clicking on the hyperlink. 90 d’autre de la fente […] (social) Ce tambour était utilisé comme moyen de communication pour la transmission de messages à caractère linguistique grâce aux sons variés qu’il pouvait émettre. C’était un appareil de signalisation destiné à transmettre des indications ou des ordres à caractère politique ou économique. […]Le tambourinaire chargé de le garder et de l’exécuter portait le nom d’ ayokwé-enté . (historique) Pendant la période coloniale, le tambour servait de moyen d’organisation et de résistance aux populations Tchaman. À chaque opération, les Bidjan (les originaires d’Abidjan) informés et unis sous un seul commandement pour défendre le village attaqué, tenaient tête aux troupes de répression coloniale. 2. Attiéké : áyi [ayi] Nom commun [uniquement singulier] Collocations : 1) áyi + ph έ l ί (vendre de l’attiéké), m ɛ n ph έ áyi l ί (je vends de l’attiéké) 2) áyi ph έ (acheter de l’attiéké), m ɛ n ph έ áyi (j’achète de l’attiéké) 3) áyi l ί (manger de l’attiéké), m ɛ n l ί áyi (je mange de l’attiéké) Définition : Spécialité culinaire des Ebriés, ainsi que d’autres ethnies du cercle lagunaire Contexte : Ce terme est utilisé non seulement par la population Ivoirienne, mais aussi par des personnes provenant de divers pays de la sous-région ou du monde, dans un contexte culinaire, gastronomique. Termes associés : n’bêdê , áyité , agbodjama Description : (charactères physiques) L’attiéké est réalisée avec le manioc. Le manioc est mis à fermenter dans l'eau pendant des jours, séché au soleil, broyé, 91 essoré, séché et vanné puis mis à cuire à la vapeur. […] Il a une texture plus légère que le couscous de blé et un goût très légèrement acide. (éléments culturels) L’attiéké est un plat qui fait de plus en plus partie des habitudes alimentaires des populations de l'Afrique occidentale et centrale. Il remplace avantageusement le riz et les pâtes. Il se mange traditionnellement en accompagnement de viande ou de poisson, souvent avec une sauce (claire ou graine) dans la partie sud de la Côte d'ivoire. (faits historiques) A l'origine (et parfois encore aujourd'hui), les femmes Ébriés ne confectionnent pas de la même manière l'attiéké qu'elles vendent avec celui qui est consommé par leur propre ménage. […] Ce sont ensuite les transporteurs bambaras qui ont propagé ce mot le faisant passer à 'atchèkè', puis le colons (certainement pour motif d'esthétisme à l'écriture) écrivit 'attiéké'. […] Au fil du temps, ce sont développés plusieurs variantes d'attiéké: l' abgodjama , l'attiéké petit grain ( áyité ), l'attiéké de garba. 3. 73 Fête de génération : Fatchué , ou Afatchué [fatchué] Nom commun masculin (uniquement singulier) Définition : Cérémonie initiatique qui marque le passage d’une étape à une autre dans la vie des jeunes filles et garçons des classes d’âge qui composent une génération. […] Contexte : Réalisée une fois par an, elle s’inscrit dans un cadre socio-politique dans la société Tchaman. […] Termes associés : taprognan , Blessoué , Gnando , Dougbo , Tchagba Description : (déroulement) Elle se fait en trois étapes : les préparatifs, la sortie des guerriers, le lendemain de la fête. Pendant les préparatifs, […] (culturelle) Fatchué représente la préparation à la vie et à l’organisation politique dans un village donné. […] C’est aussi une cérémonie qui attire beaucoup de monde, au sein, tout comme hors de la communauté linguistique Tchaman […] (faits historiques) Vieille de plus de trois cent ans, de façon traditionnelle, cette cérémonie relate la 73 Aka, Konin. (2010). Aspects de l’art musical des Tchaman de Côte d’Ivoire . pp. 42-46. Ahoua, Mobio Aristide. (2017). Fête de génération. 92 commémoration des guerres du pays Atchan contre leurs ennemis, […] Lors de la migration, […] As can be seen from the above entries, the microstructure of the FR-AT Dictionary entries is modelled to include the French term and the respective Atchan equivalent, followed by the phonetic transcription and the audio file containing the pronunciation. Information on gender and number is also provided. In some cases, collocational information will also be included. A careful analysis of the collocations section of the entry Attieké provides the user with valuable information on morpho-syntactic features of Atchan. Illustrations are very useful as a means of complementing the definition of the concept, a technique also used in some learner dictionaries. Given that the FR-AT Dictionary is an online lexicographic resource, the entries for Attieké and Fatchué should be enriched with videos on how to prepare this culinary speciality and on the preparation for and the actual initiation ritual respectively. Users can access entries of related terms that designate concepts in the same concept system. The ethnographic information is contained in the data category ‘Description’. Depending on the concept in question, this section includes detailed information regarding physical description, preparation, phases, cultural and historical facts, etc. 99 l’imposition à l’appropriation décomplexée d’une langue exogène. In OpenEdition , Documents pour l’histoire du français langue étrangère ou seconde . N°40/41 | 2008, pp. 179-197. Available on https://journals.openedition.org/dhfles/125. La Banque Mondiale. (2016, September 22). Repenser les villes ivoiriennes . Available on https://www.banquemondiale.org/fr/country/cotedivoire/publication/reimaginingivoirian-cities. La Banque Mondiale. (2019, February 21). Perspectives économiques en Côte d’Ivoire : 8 graphiques pour comprendre les enjeux de l’urbanisation . Available on https://www.banquemondiale.org/fr/country/cotedivoire/publication/cote-divoireeconomic-outlookunderstanding-the-challenges-of-urbanization-in-height-charts. La Constitution en Afrique. (2008, July 14). Constitution de la République de Côte d'Ivoire du 1er août 2000 . Available on http://la-constitution-en-afrique.over-blog.com/article21220503.html Leclerc, Jacques. (2018). Côte d’Ivoire. In : L’aménagement linguistique dans le monde . Available on http://www.axl.cefan.ulaval.ca/afrique/cotiv.htm. Leclerc, Jacques. (2018). Décret n° 2012-625 du 06 juillet 2012 portant attributions des membres du gouvernement. Lois diverses à portée linguistique . 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Doi: https://doi.org/10.3406/cea.1979.2868. Available on www.persee.fr/doc/cea_0008-0055_1979_num_19_73_2868. General in f o r mation 115 Language proficiency in Atchan Haw wauld yau assess yaur Atchan language s kill s? 4. Oral comprehension * Une seu/e réponse possib/e. O Nane O Uncamplicated sentences O Simple conversations O Simple academ i c topics 5. Speaking ability • Une seu/e réponse possible. O N ane O Simple , shar t phrases O Basic grammt i cal structure,limited vocabulary O Participate in conversationa l topics O Wide range of conversatianal s i tuat i ons 6. Reading Ability • Une seu/e réponse possible. O Nane O Lim i t ed to s i mp l e vocabulary and sentence str ucture O Understand co n ventiona l t opics and non-technica lsub j ec ts O U nderstand materiais wh i ch contain i dioms and specialised term in o lo gy O Understand sophisticated ma t eriais . i nduding those in proposed field of study 7. Writing ability • Une seu/e réponse possible. O N one O With some errors in spelling < nd st r u cture O Write on academic topies with few errors in structure and spe llin g O Write with i diomatic ease of expression and feeling for the style of the l ang ua ge Language proficiency in French Haw wou l d you assess you r French l anguage ski ll s? 8. Oral Comprehension • Une seu/e réponse possible. O Nane O Uncomplicated sentences O Understand si mp l e conversations O Understand conversations on simp l e academic topics O Understand sophisticated discussion of academ i c topies htts:/ 1 doGS. go ogle.oomlformsid/1X E GOz 5u5hjB RDXCQdDE8-ufWNr2POigiVInxV J n y j CSw/edil?no_red i rec = l lrue 215 General in f o r mation 116 9. Speaking ability • Une seu/e réponse possible. O N ane O Able to comp l ete structurally simple.short phrases O Use basic grammatica l str uctur e . spe ak i ng with limtied vocabu l ary O Adequate to part i c i pa t e in conversational topics O Can handle a wide range of co n versa t i onal s i t u ation s 10. Reading Ability • Une seu / e réponse possible. O N ane O Lim i ted to simp l e vocabulary and sentence structure O Understand conventionaltopics and non-technicalsubjects O Understand materiais wh i ch contain idioms and specialised termin o l ogy O Understand sophisticated ma t eriais , i nduding those in proposed field of study 11. Writing Ability * Une seu/e réponse possible. O N one O W r i te simple sentences on conventional t op ics O With some errurs in sell i n g cmd structure U Wr i t e with idoi m a t i c ease of expression and feeling for the style of the l anguage Use and knowledge of Atchan How often and with whom do you speak Atchan? Do you know the Atchan cu l t ura and t rad i t i o n7 12. How often do you use the Atchan l ang u age? • Une seu/e réponse pos sibl e. o N eve r o Rare l y o Som e t i me s o F requ e nt l y o A lw ays 13. With whom? Plusieurs réponses possibles. D Fami l y D Frei nd s O N ei t her family nor f r i end s h tt s :/ 1 dolli. g oogle.oo m lformsid/1XEGO z 5u5h j BR D XCQdDE8 -u fW N r2POigMnxV J n y j CSw/ed i l?no_red i recl = lru e 315 General in f o r mation 117 18 / 1 2120 19 14. In which domain? Plusieurs réponses possib/es. O Governme n t D Public offices D Educ ationa l institutions (School . Un iv er s ity ) D T rad i t i onal celeb ra t ions O Religious celebrations D Commerce {bout;ques. marchés, magasins ) D I n form a l ( Home , neighbo urho od , street ) 15. Do you take part in the following Atchan cultural activities? • Plusieurs réponses possib/es. O Fatchué O Attiéké cooking process O Rejoicing dances D T rad i t i onal we ddin g D Autre : 16. Which other Atchan cultural activity do you know? • 17. Do you use any material (grammar books, reading books, orthography, stories, audio/video files, etc) available in Atchan ? • Une seu/e réponse possible. Q Yes Q N o 18. Can you name some? 19. In which situation do you use them? General in f o r mation 118 20. Are you willing to defend the preservation of the Atchan culture and language? * Une seu/e réponse possible. O Y es Q N o 21. lf yes, why? 22 . lf not, why? Fourni par IJ Googl e Forms 119 Annex 2: Correlation between the variables ‘age group’, ‘gender’ and ‘frequency of use of the Atchan language’ Use frequency of Atchan by the elderly Use frequency of Atchan by the young generation Use frequency of Atchan by masculine members Use frequency of Atchan by feminine members 120 Annex 3: Correlation between the variables ‘age’, ‘gender’ and ‘interlocutors’ Interlocutors of the elderly Interlocutors of the young generation Interlocutors of the masculine members Interlocutors of the feminine members 121 Annex 4: Correlation between the variables ‘age’ and ‘language competencies in Atchan’ Listening skills in Atchan by the elderly Listening skills in Atchan by the age group 15-34 Speaking skills in Atchan by the elderly Speaking skills in Atchan by the age group 15-34 122 Reading skills in Atchan by the elderly Reading skills in Atchan by the age group 15-34 Writing skills in Atchan by the elderly Writing skills in Atchan by the age group 15-34 123 Annex 5: Correlation between the variables ‘age’ and ‘language attitudes towards the Atchan language’ Willing to defend the preservation of the Atchan language and culture by the elderly Willing to defend the preservation of the Atchan language and culture by the young generation 124 Annex 6: Correlation between the variables ‘age’ and ‘knowledge about the Tchaman culture’ Knowledge about other Tchaman cultural activities by the elderly Knowledge about other Tchaman cultural activities by the young generation