Wobé language

Wobé
	Northern Wèè
Native to	Ivory Coast
Native speakers	(160,000 cited 1993)[1]
Language family	Niger–Congo Atlantic–Congo Kru Western Kru Wee Wobé; ; ; ; ;
Language codes
ISO 639-3	wob
Glottolog	weno1238[2]

Wobé (Ouobe) is a Kru language spoken in Ivory Coast. It is one of several languages in a dialect continuum called Wèè (Wɛɛ).

Tone

Wobé is known for claims that it has the largest number of tones (fourteen) of any language in the world.^[3] However, this has not been confirmed by other researchers, many of whom believe that some of these will turn out to be sequences of tones or prosodic effects,^[4]^[5]^[6] though the Wèè languages in general do have extraordinarily large tone systems.

The fourteen posited tones are:^[3]

IPA	˥	˦	˧	˨	˧˥	˧˦	˨˥	˨˦	˨˧	˥˩	˦˩	˧˩	˨˩	˨˧˩
B&L tone numbers	1	2	3	4	31	32	41	42	43	15	25	35	45	435
Newman adjustment	0	1	2	3	20	21	30	31	32	04	14	24	34	324
Asian convention	5	4	3	2	35	34	25	24	23	51	41	31	21	231

References

↑ Wobé at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)
↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "We Northern". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
1 2 Bearth, Thomas; Link, Christa (1980). "The tone puzzle of Wobe". Studies in African Linguistics. 11 (2): 147–207.
↑ Singler, John Victor (1984). "On the underlying representation of contour tones in Wobe". Studies in African Linguistics. 15 (1): 59–75.
↑ Newman, Paul (1986). "Contour Tones in Grebo". In van der Hulst, Harry; Bogers, Koen; Mous, Marten. The Phonological Representation of Suprasegmentals. Publications in African Languages and Linguistics (Book 4). De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 190–191 (notes 12 and 14).
↑ Newman believes Singler is a valuable counterweight to Bearth & Link, but does not accept all his criticism; he accept the Wobe 43 toneme, for example, but believes it should be analyzed as /32/ (all tones being off by 1 compared to related dialects).

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[e18-1] Wobé at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015)

[Glottolog-2] Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "We Northern". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.

[Bearth&Link-3] 1 2 Bearth, Thomas; Link, Christa (1980). "The tone puzzle of Wobe". Studies in African Linguistics. 11 (2): 147–207.

[4] Singler, John Victor (1984). "On the underlying representation of contour tones in Wobe". Studies in African Linguistics. 15 (1): 59–75.

[5] Newman, Paul (1986). "Contour Tones in Grebo". In van der Hulst, Harry; Bogers, Koen; Mous, Marten. The Phonological Representation of Suprasegmentals. Publications in African Languages and Linguistics (Book 4). De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 190–191 (notes 12 and 14).

[6] Newman believes Singler is a valuable counterweight to Bearth & Link, but does not accept all his criticism; he accept the Wobe 43 toneme, for example, but believes it should be analyzed as /32/ (all tones being off by 1 compared to related dialects).