A Bum Sociocultural Dataset

Archive structure

This dataset is distributed as a .tar.gz archive (A_Boum_Sociocultural_Dataset.tar.gz) with the following contents:

A_Boum_Sociocultural_Dataset/
├── 1_Metadonnees_Enquete.tsv      — administrative metadata (1 row)
├── 2_Reponses_Ouvertes.tsv        — open-ended narrative Q&A responses
├── 3_Onomastique.tsv              — onomastic entries (anthroponyms, ethnonyms, toponyms)
├── 4_Expressions_Usuelles.tsv     — common bilingual expressions
├── 5_Systeme_Numeral.tsv          — numeral system entries
├── 6_Annexe_Primitifs.tsv         — NSM semantic primitives reference table (65 items)
└── A_Boum_Sociocultural_Dataset.pdf — PDF version of the questionnaire

Note: The fieldwork interview audio recording is not yet included in this release. It will be added in a subsequent update. Recordings were collected on the fieldwork sites and document the interaction between the interviewer and the interviewee.

Community

Recorded under the administrative and self-given name Ngaoundéré (referring to the mountain “with a raised belly and a prominent navel” that overlooks the town), the group is integrated — rather than merely overlapping — with Peul, Kaka, Fulbe, Gbaya, Hausa, Kanuri, Nyangéré, Bamileke and Bassa neighbours. Oral tradition traces an ancient itinerary from Yemen through Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Sudan to Ngaoundéré, and the land is considered sacred through nearly two centuries of Mboum presence reinforced by Islamic land tenure.

Location & Social Organization

The group is patriarchal, organised around a chief (Lamido) and recognised trades, with elders commanding respect and land wealth conferring influence; descent is patrilineal. Marriage follows a religiously framed sequence — hand-request, engagement and an Islamic bridewealth (Sodok) historically reckoned in an old currency unit, the Dihad, symbolising the union of the two families.

Religious & Symbolic Life

Ancestral cults have given way to Islamic religious practice; recognised taboos (largely Islamic in character) include incest, punished traditionally by stoning, and specific mortuary obligations for gravediggers.

Economic & Cultural Life

Livelihoods include crafts, divinatory work, farming and herding for men, and crafts and trade for women; couscous, beef, mutton, foleré (bissap) and baobab are staple foods, with boubous and gandouras as everyday dress. Traditional music includes the Mbolo tam-tam, the Ndja balafon and the initiatory Mbuyé drum dance.

Linguistic Note

The interview was conducted with the local expert speaking Boum. Rubrique 4 of the questionnaire elicited 157 common bilingual expressions (salutations, politeness formulas and everyday phrases), of which 144 have an endogenous-language form recorded to date; rubrique 5 elicited a 107-item numeral system, of which 44 have an endogenous-language form recorded to date. Together with the anthroponyms, ethnonyms and toponyms in rubrique 3, these fields constitute the dataset's linguistic component and are transcribed, where possible, in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA/API), per the questionnaire's instructions; where a fieldworker was not proficient in IPA, a Latin-alphabet approximation was used instead. No audio recordings are included in this release, although the questionnaire's protocol called for the full interview to be captured on dictaphone.

Source

The dataset was collected through a questionnaire designed to gather sociocultural and onomastic information about the Boum community. This was done during the pilot data-collection phase (March-April 2020) of the "Projet de confection d'un didacticiel sur la composition des peuplements au Cameroun," coordinated by Prof. Emmanuel Ngue Um for CERDOTOLA (Centre International des Civilisations Bantu / Institution Inter-Etats de cooperation scientifique pour la preservation, la diffusion et la mise en valeur du patrimoine africain), in partnership with the Ecole normale superieure de Bertoua. Record identifier: BOUM_2020_001.

Domain

The dataset represents a sociocultural and onomastic questionnaire designed to elicit the identity, history, social organisation, religious life, economy and material culture of a named community in Cameroon, together with a structured record of its personal names, ethnic names and place names, common bilingual expressions, and numeral system. The questionnaire was developed for the pilot phase of a project building educational (“didacticiel”) material on the composition of Cameroon's settled peoples; unlike a purely linguistic questionnaire, its entry point and primary unit of documentation is the community, not its language or dialect, although a linguistic component (onomastics, common expressions, numeral system) is elicited throughout in the community's own speech.

Size

The dataset comprises 51 narrative question/answer entries (rubriques 2 and 3.1-3.6); 6 anthroponym entries, 5 ethnonym entries and 5 toponym entries (rubrique 3); 144 of 157 common expressions with an endogenous-language form recorded (rubrique 4); 44 of 107 numeral-system entries with an endogenous-language form recorded (rubrique 5); and a fixed 65-item reference table of NSM semantic primitives (annex).

Structure

This release comprises six related tables, distributed here as separate tab-separated-value (TSV) files (one per original spreadsheet sheet) alongside the PDF version of this submission form:

• 1_Metadonnees_Enquete.tsv: One row of administrative metadata for the questionnaire: record identifier, questionnaire title/version/author, the group's administrative and emic (self-given) names and their meaning, names given by/to neighbouring groups, location, fieldwork date, language(s) used, and consultant information.

• 2_Reponses_Ouvertes.tsv: Question/answer pairs for the open-ended narrative sub-sections of rubriques 2 (sociocultural profile: identity, residence and mobility, social and political organisation and kinship, religious life, socio-economic and sociocultural life) and 3.1.1-3.1.6 (general anthroponymic structure), with the original French question, the free-text answer, and the language(s) in which the answer was given.

• 3_Onomastique.tsv: One row per onomastic entry (anthroponym, ethnonym or toponym): orthographic form, IPA transcription where available, literal meaning/etymology, an associated NSM semantic primitive and grammatical category, and (for anthroponyms) the type of name.

• 4_Expressions_Usuelles.tsv: One row per common bilingual expression (greetings, politeness formulas and everyday phrases): the French prompt, the endogenous-language form where recorded, an IPA transcription where available, and a word-for-word gloss.

• 5_Systeme_Numeral.tsv: One row per numeral (1 upward): the French label, the endogenous-language form where recorded, an IPA transcription where available, and a compositional gloss (e.g. 7 = 6+1).

• 6_Annexe_Primitifs.tsv: The fixed reference table of Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) primitives (Goddard & Wierzbicka) used to tag onomastic entries in sheet 3.

Sample

Anthroponyms (from 3_Onomastique.tsv):

Common expressions (from 4_Expressions_Usuelles.tsv):

Numeral system (from 5_Systeme_Numeral.tsv):