Bàsàá audio-aligned treebank

ISO 639-3 bas · Glottolog basa1284 · Guthrie A43 (group A.40).

▶ Open the Bàsàá treebank in Arborator-Grew arborator.grew.fr — browse & annotate the trees with playable audio

Treebank files (CoNLL-U, SUD)

⬇ basaa_child.sud.conllu (10 child sentences, audio) ⬇ basaa_nws.sud.conllu (11 North Wind & Sun clauses, audio) ⬇ basaa_sample.sud.conllu (5 literature sentences, no audio) ⬇ basaa_sample.ud.conllu (same 5, UD scheme)

Sources & method

🎙 Sound files — origin: Makasso, Emmanuel-Moselly & Seunghun J. Lee (2015). “Basaá.” Journal of the International Phonetic Association 45(1), 71–79 (Illustrations of the IPA). Supplementary audio © IPA / Cambridge University Press, obtained from Cambridge’s static CDN; research use.; Recorded from a male native Basaa speaker on a Marantz PMD661 with a Shure WH-30 head-worn mic. The 10 isolated items are the “syllable structure” utterances; the connected passage is Aesop’s North Wind & the Sun. Original WAVs transcoded to MP3 here.; Per-word time alignment: forced alignment with torchaudio’s MMS multilingual CTC aligner (child sentences word-level; NWS sentence-level reliable, word-level draft).
✍ Transcriptions — origin: Basaa orthographic/IPA forms are taken from the published illustration (Makasso & Lee 2015). The 10 child sentences are well recovered (tones provisional, to verify by ear). The North Wind & Sun word forms are provisional: the PDF’s IPA tier scattered on text extraction, so it should be re-transcribed against the audio (ideally with E.-M. Makasso).
🔖 Glossing — basis: Leipzig Glossing Rules, following Hamlaoui & Makasso’s own conventions — noun-class numbers (1-child, 6-doughnut), 1.AGR for the class-1 subject concord, 8.CONN for the connective, PRS/PST — grounded in Hamlaoui & Makasso (2014), “High tone spreading and Phonological Phrases in Bàsàá.” (Their full abbreviation key — FUT2, GEN, INF, LOC, OBL, PASS… — from the “Pronominal F-markers” paper is to be adopted.) Tense is glossed from meaning; its tonal exponent is left open.
🌍 Translation — basis: English: the free translations published in the IPA illustration (child sentences) and the standard English of Aesop’s passage. French: the conventional French of the passage (La bise et le soleil…) plus direct translations of the child sentences.
🌳 Syntax: Annotated in SUD (Surface-syntactic Universal Dependencies); rationale and open decisions in the project’s treebank/ notes. Subject concord is treated as bound verb morphology (1.AGR-…).

Isolated sentences (clean) — 10

id	Basaa · gloss · English	listen
bas_s01	maange a mporo Basaa 1-child 1.AGR-PRS-speak Basaa The child speaks Basaa.
bas_s02	maange a mbii ngwaa 1-child 1.AGR-take wife The child takes a wife.
bas_s03	maange a nsomb makala 1-child 1.AGR-PST-buy 6-doughnut The child has bought doughnuts.
bas_s04	maange a ndje makala 1-child 1.AGR-PRS-eat 6-doughnut The child eats doughnuts.
bas_s05	maange a nche 1-child 1.AGR-PST-die The child has died.
bas_s06	maange a ngke i bom 1-child 1.AGR-PRS-go LOC market The child is going to market.
bas_s07	maange a ngkor 1-child 1.AGR-PST-dry.up The child has dried up a lot.
bas_s08	maange a nnyo 1-child 1.AGR-PST-drink The child has drunk.
bas_s09	maange a nnyii su 1-child 1.AGR-PST-smile ? The child has smiled.
bas_s10	maange a ngang kaar 1-child 1.AGR-PST-read book The child has read a book.

North Wind & the Sun — 11 clause units (one recording)

Draft: sentence timing is reliable (each clip plays its clause), but the Basaa word forms and parse are provisional — re-transcribe against the audio. Gloss/translation are clean.

id	Basaa · gloss · English	listen (clause span)
bas_nws01	mbebi mabera ni hanga ba ba pehmba wind north with sun 2.AGR-be argue The North Wind and the Sun were arguing.
bas_nws02	kel jada inyu liji nje a gwee nguy lo nunu day one for know who 1.AGR-have strength surpass this.one one day, about which of them was stronger,
bas_nws03	hanyen ngken mur a bitihi a ba heeba kori mbeng then stranger man 1.AGR-arrive he be wear coat rain when a traveler came along wrapped up in an overcoat,
bas_nws04	ba nogla le i a mbong ngken mur le a heja they agree that the.one 1.AGR-make stranger man that he take.off they agreed that the one who could make the traveler take off
bas_nws05	kori jee nyen a gwee nguy lo nunu coat his the.one 1.AGR-have strength surpass this.one his coat would be considered the stronger.
bas_nws06	we mbebi i bihong ni nguy libim i bela then wind 9.AGR-blow with strength quantity 9.AGR-be.able Then the wind blew as hard as he could,
bas_nws07	ndi kii jo i be hongoh jah mur a surge kori jee but as him 9.AGR-be blow also man 1.AGR-tighten coat his but the harder he blew, the tighter the man wrapped his coat;
bas_nws08	ibol le te mbebi i bito i waa hong till that till wind 9.AGR-be.tired 9.AGR-stop blow and at last the wind gave up trying.
bas_nws09	hanga hi boroo baj ni nguy sun 9.AGR-start shine with strength Then the sun began to shine with strength,
bas_nws10	ibol le te ngken mur a heja kori jee till that till stranger man 1.AGR-take.off coat his and right away the traveler took off his coat.
bas_nws11	hanyen mbebi mabera i binea le hanga hi nlel jo nguy then wind north 9.AGR-accept that sun 9.AGR-surpass it strength And so the North Wind had to admit that the Sun was the stronger.

Audio CORS-enabled for arborator.grew.fr. Generated for the Bàsàá treebank project.