The references cited on this page contain information on the Bole language or contain data of interest for the study of the Bole language. Some of these works (those with highlighted titles) can be downloaded as PDF files, and over time, others will be made available.
See Aliyu (1996) and Ibriszimow (1996) for additional references that are primarily historical or ethnographic.
Bole has been the subject of various studies since the early 20th century. Listed here are most of the works that have concentrated on Bole language and/or have substantial information on the Bole language other than works by Russell Schuh and Alhaji Maina Gimba. Follow the links at the top of the page for works by these two. PDF files of the papers with highlighted links can be downloaded.
Abraham, R.C. 1929. "The Bolanci language and the conclusions to be drawn from it." File No. K.119. Kaduna Archives. [Fairly extensive wordlist, grammatical remarks, and comparative remarks on "the Hausa-Bolanchi-Angass group".]
Aliyu, Musa Masaya. 1996. "An introduction to the history of Fika Emirate--1903-1940." In Ibriszimow, Dymitr (ed.), 1996, pages 169-229.
Awad, Maher. 1996. "On the function of the complementizer na in Bolanci." Linguistique Africaine 17:5-26.
Benton, P.A. 1968 [1912]. "Notes on Bolanchi." In The Languages and Peoples of Bornu, being a collection of the writings of P.A. Benton, with an Introduction by A.H.M. Kirk-Greene, vol. I, Notes on some Languages of the Western Sudan, pp. 1-37. London: Frank Cass.
Heinrich, Jürgen. 1994. "Landscape development and environmental change in northern parts of the Gongola Basin, northeastern Nigeria." In Ibriszimow, Dymitr and Alhaji Maina Gimba (eds.), 1994, pages 49-67.
Ibriszimow, Dymitr and Alhaji Maina Gimba (eds.). 1994. Bole Language and Documentation Unit, BOLDU, Report I. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.
Ibriszimow, Dymitr and Alhaji Maina Gimba. 1994. "Crafts". In Ibriszimow, Dymitr and Alhaji Maina Gimba (eds.), 1994, pages 15-45. [Description of kumba tray, mat plaiting, and calabash decoration.]
Ibriszimow, Dymitr and Alhaji Maina Gimba. 1994. "Toponyms." In Ibriszimow, Dymitr and Alhaji Maina Gimba (eds.), 1994, pages 85-100.
Ibriszimow, Dymitr and Alhaji Maina Gimba. 1994. "Glossary, Bole-English." In Ibriszimow, Dymitr and Alhaji Maina Gimba (eds.), 1994, pages 125-137. [List of Bole terms in Ibriszimow, Dymitr and Alhaji Maina Gimba (eds.). 1994.]
Ibriszimow, Dymitr (ed.). 1996. Bole Language and Documentation Unit, BOLDU, Report II. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag.
Ibriszimow, Dymitr. 1996. "Girgam--the history of the Bole (Fika) People." In Ibriszimow, Dymitr (ed.), 1996, pages 13-154.
Kauka, Rupert. 1994. "A survey on migration from Fika, northeastern Nigeria." In Ibriszimow, Dymitr and Alhaji Maina Gimba (eds.), 1994, pages 69-84.
Koelle, Sigismund W. 1854 [1963]. Polyglotta Africana. London: CMH. Reprinted 1963, Graz, Austria: Akademischen Druk--u. Verlagsanstalt, with a historical introduction by P.E.H. Hair. [Listed as VII.B.1, "Pika".]
Kraft, Charles H. 1981. Chadic Word Lists, Volume 1. Marburger Studien zur Afrika- und Asienkunde, Serie A: Afrika Band 23, vol. 1. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer. [List from the Gombe dialect.]
Lavers, John E. 1992. "R.C. Abraham: the Bolewa and Bolanci." In Philip J. Jaggar (ed.), Papers in Honour of R.C. Abraham (1890-1963), pp. 29-36. African Languages and Cultures, Supplement I. London: SOAS.
Lukas, Johannes. 1966. "Tschadohamitische Sprachproben aus Nordnigerien." Neue Afrikanistische Studien, pp. 173-189. Hamburger Beiträge zur Afrika-Kunde, Band 5. Hamburg: Deutsches Institute für Afrika-Forschung.
Lukas, Johannes. 1969. "Tonpermeable und Tonimpermeable Konsonanten im Bolanci (Nordnigerien)." In Ethnological and Linguistic Studies in Honour of N. J. van Warmelo, Ethnological Publications No. 52, pp. 133-138. Pretoria:Government Printer.
Lukas, Johannes. 1970-72. "Die Personalia und das primäre Verb im Bolanci (Nordnigerien)." Afrika und Übersee 54:237-286, 55:114-139.
Lukas, Johannes. 1971. "Über das erweiterte Verb im Bolanci (Nordnigerien)." Journal of African Languages. 10(1):1-14.
Meek, C.K. 1931. "Some tribes of Bornu Province: The Bolewa of Fika." Tribal Studies in Northern Nigeria, Volume 2, pp.288-310. London: Kegan Paul.
Seidensticker-Brikay, Gisela and Wilhelm Seidensticker. 1994. "Guide to Potiskum museum with catalogue of artefacts." In Ibriszimow, Dymitr and Alhaji Maina Gimba (eds.), 1994, pages 101-124.
The following are works by Alhaji Maina Gimba as sole authors. See also works above co-authored by Ibriszimow and Gimba and below by Schuh and Gimba.
Gimba, Alhaji Maina. undated. "Aspects of brevity in the dialects of Bole." Manuscript, Department of English, University of Maiduguri.
Gimba, Alhaji Maina. 1986. "A contrastive analysis of English and Bole phonology." BA dissertation, Faculty of Arts and Islamic Studies, Bayero University, Kano.
Gimba, Alhaji Maina. 1990. "A study of the Bole dialects." MA thesis, Bayero University, Kano. [The manuscript from which the PDF was made is very light, and the file is hard to read. OCR text recognition was applied but it recognized very little of the text. This might be improvable. If we get enough requests for this work, we may try again.]
Gimba, Alhaji Maina. 1998. "Low Tone Raising in Bole." MA thesis, UCLA Department of Linguistics.
Gimba, Alhaji Maina. 2000. "Bole verb morphology." PhD dissertation, UCLA Department of Linguistcs.
Gimba, Alhaji Maina. 2001. "Verbal pluractionality in Bole." In Harold Torrence (ed.), Papers in African Linguistics 1, pp. 158-171. UCLA Working Papers in Linguistics 6. Los Angeles: UCLA Department of Linguistics.
Russell Schuh began field research on Bole in 1982 and began collaborating with Alhaji Maina Gimba in 1995. See above for work by Gimba as sole author.
Schuh, Russell G. 1983. "The Bolanci verbal system." Manuscript, Ahmadu Bello University and UCLA. [Description of the verbal system of the Gadaka dialect of Bole.]
Schuh, Russell G. undated. "Bolanci genitives with remarks on underlying contour tones and tone sequences." Paper originally written for Current Perfectives in African Linguistics in honour of Professor Ayo Bamgbose, a volume which seems to have not been published and is probably defunct.
Schuh, Russell G. and Alhaji Maina Gimba. 2001. "Substantive and anaphoric 'thing' in Bole, with remarks on Hausa 'abu/abin'." In Harold Torrence (ed.), Papers in African Linguistics 1, pp. 90-122. UCLA Working Papers in Linguistics 6. Los Angeles: UCLA Department of Linguistics.
Schuh, Russell G. 2001. "Sources of gemination and gemination as a morpheme in Bole." Paper presented as a plenary paper at the 32nd Annual Conference on African Linguistics, UC Berkeley, March 2001.
Schuh, Russell G. 2001. "The Metrics of a Bole Song Style, Kona." Ms. UCLA. This is a description of cultural context, performance, and metrics of a traditional song. See pictures and hear a sample.