A Bafia Sociocultural Dataset

Archive structure

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

A_Bafia_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 (16 groups)
└── A_Bafia_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

The Bafia (self-designation Beu pak) trace their origin to Bakoa (Bokito arrondissement), under the founder Meden à Ngam of the family of Boya Nkono. Their language is found across Cameroon wherever Bafia communities have settled.

Location & Social Organization

Community organization now follows modern administrative principles, with decisions taken by the chief in consultation with community members, both indigenous and non-indigenous. Two distinct cantons — Ngam and Korro — maintain separate governance structures; chieftaincy succession follows lineage boundaries that prevent cross-canton inheritance.

Religious & Symbolic Life

Families pray for the souls of deceased elders; birth is regarded as a divine gift. A child may receive the name of a deceased elder whose physical resemblance they share, reflecting a form of ancestral reincarnation. Some Bafia communities practise Islam. The group is known among Yambassa neighbours as bano kaaka or bokole.

Economic & Cultural Life

Agriculture is the main economic activity for both men and women. Staple foods include couscous with vegetable sauce and tubers. Traditional beverages include ruwat (corn wine) and palm wine. Boys undergo initiation in the sacred forest. Taboos include eating tortoise (regarded as sacred), incest and barring women from the sacred forest. The Dom dance, accompanied by the balafon, is a valued cultural expression. Traditional dress was the Obom (bark cloth), largely supplanted by modern clothing.

Linguistic Note

The interview was conducted with the local expert speaking Bafia. Rubrique 4 of the questionnaire elicited common bilingual expressions (salutations, politeness formulas and everyday phrases); rubrique 5 elicited a numeral system. The tabular data files recording these items are included in this release as 4_Expressions_Usuelles.tsv and 5_Systeme_Numeral.tsv. 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 Bafia 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: BAFI_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 narrative question/answer entries (rubriques 2 and 3.1-3.6); onomastic entries (anthroponyms, ethnonyms, toponyms) in rubrique 3; common bilingual expressions in rubrique 4; numeral system entries in rubrique 5; and a fixed 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 the questionnaire:

• 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):

Toponyms (from 3_Onomastique.tsv):

Ethnonyms (from 3_Onomastique.tsv):

Common expressions (from 4_Expressions_Usuelles.tsv):

Numeral system (from 5_Systeme_Numeral.tsv):