Esquisse contrastive du kagoro (Manding)

Within Mande Kagoro belongs to the western branch of the Manding language group. The Kagoro live in Mali north of the Niger, from Mogola in the east to Séféto in the west. Although about 30,000 people consider themselves as Kagoro, only half of them speak the language. The socio-linguistic situation varies between the seven dialectal zones, but is alltogether precarious, as in many villages Kagoro is on the verge of extinction. Generally only the older generation still retains their command of that language, whereas younger people have at most passive knowledge. The Kagoro are almost exclusively bilingual, with a shift to the closely related Bambara becoming more and more discernable. The author considers his sketch only as a preliminary description of Kagoro. Special emphasis is placed on the analysis of the phonological system, with a separate chapter dedicated to tonology. A short description of the morpho-syntactic characteristics closes the main part of the analysis. The extensive data of the dialectological survey was gathered in the course of 1999. It is presented as a detailed comparative wordlist, in which lexemes from the seven dialects of Kagoro and their correspondences in Bambara and Khassonka are contrasted. The appendix consists of three fairy tales with interlinear and free translations and a Kagoro-French vocabulary.