The Kyoli or Cori (Chori) language is a

Plateau language The forty or so Plateau languages are a tentative group of Benue–Congo languages spoken by 15 million people on the Jos Plateau, Southern Kaduna, Nasarawa State and in adjacent areas in central Nigeria. Berom and Eggon have the most speak ...

spoken in

Southern Kaduna Southern Kaduna (formerly Southern Zaria) is an area inhabited by various non-Hausa peoples living south of Zaria Emirate of Kaduna State. It is located in the Middle Belt region of Nigeria. Southern Kaduna consist of 12 local Government out o ...

State,

Nigeria Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf of G ...

Overview

It is spoken in the northeast of Nok in Jaba Local Government Area (LGA),

Kaduna State Kaduna State ( ha, Jihar Kaduna جىِهَر كَدُنا; ff, Leydi Kaduna, script=Latn, ; kcg, Sitet Kaduna) is a state in northern Nigeria. The state capital is its namesake, the city of Kaduna which happened to be the 8th largest city in ...

. The speakers prefer to spell the name of their language as Kyoli, which is pronounced jolior �joli The ethnic group is referred to as Kwoli. There are about 7,000-8,000 Kyoli speakers living in the two village clusters of Hal-Kyoli and Bobang. Bobang is the cultural center of the Kyoli-speaking area. Bobang village cluster consists of the five hamlets of Bobang, Fadek, Akoli, Hagong, and Nyamten. Hal-Kyoli village is situated by itself. All of the Kwoli villages surround the foot of Egu-Kyoli Hill, which rises more than 240 meters above the villages.Decker, Ken, John Muniru, Julius Dabet, Benard Abraham and Jonah Innocent. 2020.
A Sociolinguistic Profile of the Kyoli (Cori) [cry
/nowiki> Language of Kaduna State, Nigeria">ry">A Sociolinguistic Profile of the Kyoli (Cori) [cry
/nowiki> Language of Kaduna State, Nigeria'. SIL Electronic Survey Reports.

Tone

Cori is known for having six distinct levels of tone, too many to transcribe using the International Phonetic Alphabet">tone (linguistics)">tone, too many to transcribe using the International Phonetic Alphabet, which allows five. However, there are only three underlying tones: 1 (), 4 (), and 6 (), which are all that need to be written for literacy. Most cases of Tone 2 () are a result of tone sandhi, with 4 becoming 2 before 1. Tones 3 () and 5 () can be analysed as contour tones, with underlying realised as and realised as . 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 () :2 () :3 () :4 () :5 () :6 ()

Numerals

Kyoli numerals in different dialects:

Overview

Tone

Numerals

References

Further reading