#ekpeye

[arthistoryanimalia]

Happy #WorldPangolinDay! #DYK they're the only mammals covered in scales? 😎 (They're made of keratin, like our own nails and hair.)

Pangolin Headdress, 1925-50 Nigeria, Ekpeye peoples wood/paint/metal/cloth/rope/nail 9 × 41 1/2 × 13 in. (22.8 × 105.4 × 33 cm). The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

[fishstickmonkey]

Crest mask

Maker: Ekpeye artist or Igbo artist Date: Mid-20th century

Medium: Wood, pigment Geography: Nigeria

Smithsonian National Museum of African Art

[fishstickmonkey]

Crest mask

Maker: Ekpeye artist Date: Early to mid-20th century

Medium: Wood, pigment Geography: Nigeria

Smithsonian National Museum of African Art

[kvetch19]

[wodenscildscubby]

Okay so! Uni comes back in 3 weeks now, and I have been doing some prereading with Paul R. Kroeger's "Analysing Grammar, An Introduction", and gods I love some of the exercises! And the reading itself gives some really useful skills! And exercises can combine earlier skills to make exercises like exercises 9A of Ekpeye, where you are given some samples of its verbs and are told to make a position class chart to represent their structure!

I sorta wanna work through it here! Just to walk through the process! So, we are given 11 samples:

edi "he will eat"

edikpo "he will finish eating"

edilɛ "he has eaten"

adikpolɛ "we have finished eating"

edikpohwɔ "he will eventually finish eating"

adigbalɛ "we have eaten again"

emekpohwɔlɛ "he has eventually finished making"

emegba "he will make again"

amekpogbalɛ "we have finished making again"

amegbahwɔ "we will eventually make again"

eme "he will make"

Using recurring partials we can find that:

e- 3sgSUB, a- 1plSUB

di "to eat"/"will eat", me "to make"/"will make"

-kpo COMPLETITIVE, -lɛ PERFECT, -hwɔ "eventually", -gba "again"

We then segment our samples using our analysis

e-di "he will eat"

e-di-kpo "he will finish eating"

e-di-lɛ "he has eaten"

a-di-kpo-lɛ "we have finished eating"

e-di-kpo-hwɔ "he will eventually finish eating"

a-di-gba-lɛ "we have eaten again"

e-me-kpo-hwɔ-lɛ "he has eventually finished making"

e-me-gba "he will make again"

a-me-kpo-gba-lɛ "we have finished making again"

a-me-gba-hwɔ "we will eventually make again"

e-me "he will make"

Now the messy part, putting this into a table, aligning alike morphemes, and those which never occur together:

Because we always see the subject prefix, but the suffixes are optional, and each can occur with the other, we then can say there are 4 optional suffix slots, and 1 obligatory prefix slot, we then become left with this position class table:

And ye :] idk I really like this book, it is great practice, great reading, and has some really juicy exercises!! The second excercise of this chapter, 9B, gives us 28 full sentences, then has us figure out the TAM system for Ngiyambaa! And while I would love to do a full walk through post of it, that just- AAAAAAAAAA a lot bflnkbjnfkjb

[ukpuru]

Ashila [mask] carved by Duke Ewoh of Ogbo, early 1960s, in the Egbukere house at Ogbo. — John Picton. [Ekpeye-Igbo people]

[ukpuru]

Young men at Ogbo displaying Aarungu headdresses, both carved by Duke Ewoh, each 170cm. long. Left, Aarungu No. 1, performed by Joseph Odumi. Right, Ogirigiri, with the inscription “A New Head,” performed by Sunday Mark.

— John Picton (1988). Ekpeye Masks and Masking. African Arts.

[ukpuru]

Igbo Egbukele masquerade headdress, Ekpeye Igbo, mid-20th century. Dallas Museum of Art.