Ixuɛ̃”. It occurs also in a
reduplicated form: nene [ ˥ ˦ ]
which probably is more em-
phatic, e.g. n-ɔʋ̃a [ ˥ (4-1) ] “the man
(spoken of)”, nen-ɔʋ̃a [ ˥ ˦ (3-1) ] “that
very man”. If a noun is re-
peated with the ne placed be-
tween the two repetitions, the
meaning of the noun is aug-
mented by the notion “big”, or
“real, main, principal”, e.g.
imazɛ y-ɔʋ̃a n-ɔʋ̃a-ɽe, amaw-
uwɛ [ ˥ ˥ ˥ ˩ ˩ ˥ / ˩ ˥ ˩ \ ˩ ] (wɛ [ / ]) I do
not mind a big (i.e. important)
man, how much less you;
inwina n-inwina‿inwina nɛ na
[ ˩ ˩ ˩ \ ˩ ˩ ˥ ˩ ˥ / ˩ ] something like
“this is a good job of work I
did for him”. When preceding
nouns expressing time like ɛdɛ
[ ˩ ˥ ] “day”, ɛɣɛ [ ˩ ˩ ] “time”,
ukpo [ ˩ ˥ ] “year”, it conveys
the idea of “ago”, e.g. n-ɛdɛ
[ \ ˥ ] or [ ˥ ˦ ] “in the old time”,
“in the old days”, as in
ɛkpo n-ɛdɛ ot-uwa na‿iherh-ũkpɔ̃
[ ˥ ˥ ˦ ˧ ˩ ˥ / ˩ ˥ ˥ ˥ ˩ ] “in the old times
your age-group did not yet wear
cloth” (to a young boy); fur-
ther: n-ukpo [ \ ˩ ] “last year”
(cf. ukpo na [ ˩ ˥ ˩ ] or n-ukpo na
“this year”), with the forms
n-ɛkp-ia [ ˥ (4-1) ‿ / ] “two years ago”,
lit. “three-years ago”, as the
current year is included in
the calculation, n-ɛkp-enɛ [ ˥ ˦ ˧ ]
“three (lit. four) years ago”,
n-ɛkp-isɛ̃ [ ˥ ˦ ˧ ] “four (lit. five)
years ago”, etc.; v. n-ɛv- [ ˥ ],
ɛɣɛ [ ˩ ˩ ], ɛdɛ [ ˩ ˥ ], nodɛ [ \ ˩ ].
Finally, ne is often used in front
of the ordinal numbers, e.g. in
n-okao [ ˥ ˩ ] “the first”, n-ogieva
[ ˥ ˩ ˩ ] “the second”, etc. which
can also (without the exception
