The use fele for the presentative isn’t right, I don’t think. Fele is a cognate of filɛ (B/J) and fɛlɛ (M) which is a verb meaning “to look (at something)”.
Based off my research (Creissel, p. 23), I think that the closer equivalent in Mandinka is a structure like this:
Saa le mu
“It is a snake”
Creissels also mentions that le mu can fuse into loŋ. (This is the etymology behind lo and don in Jula and Bambara ).
Interesting, thanks! I didn’t understand the presentative, so you’re right. To say something like 'there is a snake" or “It is a snake” it would definitely be “Saa le mu" / “Saa le” / "A mu saa le ti” - I never heard __ loŋ but maybe I did and just didn’t catch it / understand!
Yeah, “____ fele” is definitey more like “Look, here is ____” or “voici” in French.
Right now in the table for “Manding Non-Verbal Copula Correspondences”, you added this for equatives in Mandinka:
When you listed the grammatical form you listed with with le in parentheses:
This same thing applies in Maninka:
The word le is a topicalization marker that puts emphasis on the item that it follows (at least in Jula and Maninka [in Bambara, the form is de because of the L/D sound change). So it’s optional in Maninka, but it’s so ingrained in speaking that this point that it’s almost marked to not use it when using equatives.
I also remembered one instance of loŋ in Mandinka, sometimes people would casually greet one another with " ñaadi loŋ which I always perceived to be the verb “ka loŋ” (to know), like “How-know”, which doesn’t really make sense. Now I see it’s actually a fusion/contraction of ñaadi le mu, right? Like, ‘how is [it]?’