Cori language

Cori
Native to	Nigeria
Region	Kaduna State
Native speakers	1,000 (2004)
Language family	Niger–Congo Atlantic–Congo Benue–Congo Plateau Central ? Hyamic ? Cori
Language codes
ISO 639-3	cry
Glottolog	cori1240

The Cori (Chori) language is a minor Plateau language spoken in a single village in Kaduna State in Nigeria.

Tone

Cori is known for having six distinct levels of tone, too many to transcribe using the International Phonetic Alphabet, which allows five. However, there are only three underlying tones: 1 (top), 4 (mid), and 6 (bottom), which are all that need to be written for literacy. Most cases of Tone 2 (high) are a result of tone sandhi, with 4 becoming 2 before 1. Tones 3 (mid-high) and 5 (low) can be analyzed as contour tones, with underlying /1͡6/ realized as [3] and /2͡6/ realized as [5].

In order to transcribe the surface tones without numerals (which are ambiguous), an extra diacritic is needed, as is common for four-level languages in Central America:

1 [ő] (top)

2 [ó] (high)

3 [o̍] (mid-high)

4 [ō] (mid)

5 [ò] (low)

6 [ȍ] (bottom)

References

• Dihoff, Ivan (1976). Aspects of the tonal structure of Chori. Doctoral dissertation, University of Wisconsin.