Cordofan languages
The Cordofan languages form a primary branch of the Niger-Congo languages , consisting of a small group of about 25 languages with a total of 320,000 speakers spoken in the Nuba Mountains area of the Republic of Sudan .
The Cordofan language group
The name "Kordofanisch", introduced by Joseph Greenberg in 1949, is not particularly fortunate, as the Nuba Mountains do not belong to the historical region of Kordofan (Kurdufan), but only border it. The Cordofan language area is an exclave of the otherwise largely contiguous Niger-Congo area, it is surrounded by Nilo-Saharan languages (Nubian, Nyimang, Temein, Daju languages) and Arabic .
The roughly 320,000 speakers of the 25 Cordofan languages were and are severely affected by the civil war and ethnic cleansing in Sudan - like all non-Arab population groups - and it is uncertain how many speakers still live in their ancestral areas. The more important languages are Koalib, Tira, Moro, Dagik-Ngile and Tegali, each with around 30-40,000 speakers. In 2016 the first comprehensive grammatical description of a Kordofan language, the Dagik, appeared. A reconstruction of the Proto-Kordofanischen ( proto-language of kordofanischen languages) was so far only possible approaches.
Kordofan as a subunit of the Niger-Congo
Kordofan was the first group to split off from the Niger-Congo and has only relatively few features in common with other Niger-Congo languages. However, these are sufficient to make belonging to the Niger-Congo family probable based on current knowledge. Greenberg (1963) and Schadeberg (1981) showed that the nominal class affixes of the Kordofan languages can be regularly related to those of the other Niger-Congo languages (the following table gives an impression of this). However, the lexical similarities between Kordofan and the rest of the Niger-Congo are rather small, so that a residual doubt remains as to the classification of the Kordofan languages.
Nominal prefixes of the Kordofan languages in comparison (Schadeberg 1981)
| Language group | Grade 1 man, woman |
Grade 3 tree, wood |
Class 4 plural to 3 |
Class 5 head, name |
Class 6 plural to 5 |
Grade 7 blood, water |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kordofan | gu-, w-, b- | gu-, w-, b- | j-, g- | li-, j- | ŋu-, m- | ŋ- |
| Atlantic | gu- | gu- | ci- | de- | ga- | ma- |
| Gur | -a | -bu | -ki | -de | -a | -ma |
| Kwa | O- | O- | i- | li | a- | n- |
| Benue Congo | u- | u- | ti- | li | a- | ma- |
| Bantu | mu- | mu- | mini | di- | ma- | ma- |
The table below gives some examples of word equations that include Kordofan and the remaining primary branches of Niger-Congo. The sources are Greenberg 1963, Blench 1995 and Williamson 2000.
Word equations Kordofan - Niger-Congo
| group | black | blood | arc | dog | Ear, listen | Leg foot |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kordofan | piim (Lafofa) | nyi (Lafofa) | thai (Tegem) | bwa (Eliri) | geenu (Talodi) | kpaga (koalib) |
| Mande | biine ( Soninke ) | ɲemi (Wan) | sa ( Boko ) | gbɛɛ (tura) | . | keŋ ( Vai ) |
| Atlantic | bir ( Temnish ) | ɲif (Safut) | ta ( Gola ) | o-bol ( Pepel ) | kenu (gola) | ekpa (Gola) |
| Ijoid | bire ( Defaka ) | . | tei (Kolok.) | e-bere (Defaka) | naa ( Ijo ) | . |
| Kru | . | ɲimo ( Kuwaa ) | tâ ( Seme ) | gbe (Guere) | noa (Grebo) | . |
| Gur | biri ( Birifor ) | ɲim (Bieri) | ta-mo ( Dgare ) | baara ( moors ) | nuu (Lobiri) | kparaɤa (Lorhon) |
| Adamawa-Ub. | vir (Pangseng) | ngia ( Gbaya ) | ta (Mumuye) | bwe (Yungur) | t-naa (Zing) | kanga (Mba) |
| Kwa | bile ( agni ) | ŋga (Edile) | to ( Baule ) | gba (ebrie) | nu ( Logba ) | akpa (Logba) |
| Benue Congo | virki ( Dakoid ) | egya ( Nupe ) | o-ta (piti) | ebua ( Efik ) | nu ( Igbo ) | okpa (Igbo) |
| Proto-Bantu | * pi (r) | * ŋinga | * taa | * bua | . | * kono |
Classification of the Cordofan languages
According to Greenberg (1963), Kordofan is divided into five subgroups: Heiban, Talodi, Rashad, Katla and Kadugli-Krongo. The last subgroup Kadugli-Krongo or Kadu is generally regarded as a branch of today Nilo-Saharan classified. Greenberg had at times considered Kordofan to be one of the two main branches of the entire Niger-Congo family - which historically it is. This led to the name Niger-Kordofan , which is now abandoned and is still widely used outside of the specialist literature.
Subgroups
- Classification of the Cordofan languages (after Williamson-Blench 2000)
- Heiban
- Talodi
- Rashad : Tegali (35 thousand), Tagoy (15 thousand), Tingal (10 thousand)
- Katla-Tima : Katla (Kalak) (15 thousand), Tima (Lomorik) (1 thousand)
Linguistic characteristics
The nominal class system of the Niger-Congo languages differs in the Kordofan languages. In some languages of the groups Heiban, Talodi and Rashad there are systems with around 15 classes with different prefixes for singular and plural for countable objects or beings (e.g. in Logol, Nding and Tagoy). Only proper names and kinship terms are not prefixed, the plural formation of kinship terms is done using suffixes . The system of the Logol is typical, in whose classes very heterogeneous things are summarized, so that one can hardly speak of fields of meaning. (This also applies to the other Kordofan class languages in contrast to the Bantu languages , where outlines of fields of meaning of individual classes are still visible. See there.)
Nominal class system of the Logol
| Prefixes sg / pl | used at |
|---|---|
| gw- / l- | Man, woman, tree, neck |
| d- / ɗ- | Hand, heart, mouth, tongue, tail, horn, path, root |
| l- / ŋw- | Foot, knee, head, nose, bone, egg, star |
| ɗ- / j- | Snake |
| g- / j- | Belly, fingernail, skin, ear, feather, louse, stone |
| ŋ- / j- | Eye, chest, liver, human |
| ŋ- / ɲ- | Dog, bird |
| ø- / l- | moon |
| gw- | earth |
| l- | Cloud (noun) |
| j- | Ash, meat, name |
| G- | Night, smoke, rain, bark |
| ŋ- | Blood, fat, hair, fire, sun, water |
In other languages (e.g. the Tegali of the Rashad group) the noun classes are completely absent, the plural is formed by a vowel prefix and / or the suffix -Vn . In Tagoy (also a language of the Rashad group), the plural suffixes -Vn and -Vt are used in addition to the prefixes . An extensive decline in the nominal prefixes can be observed in the Katla (Kalak). The plural is formed by falling off the singular prefix g- , words without a singular prefix add a prefix a- in the plural . The situation is similar in the related Tima.
The prefixing class languages usually also have concordance , i.e. That is, the subject- dependent words of a sentence have formatives that match the subject's class prefixes. The most complete systems of concordance have the central Heiban languages, e.g. B. the Ebang and the Otoro. Here are some examples from the Otoro:
- ŋ-are ŋ-a gw-ele "a child of the chief"> ɲ-are ɲ-a gw-ele "children of the chief"
- ŋ-are ŋ-iɲni "my child"> ɲ-are ɲ-iɲni "my children"
- ŋ-are ŋɨ-ritɔ "the child is dancing"> ɲ-are ɲɨ-ritɔ "the children are dancing"
Similar concordance constructions occur in the otoro with the adjective attribute , demonstrative pronoun , relative clause , interrogative (question pronouns), indefinite (“any child”), numerals (number word) and with the pronominal object . In other Kordofan class languages, the concordance is not as pronounced and occurs e.g. B. only appears in the noun phrase , but not in the subject-predicate relationship.
Verbal extensions are common in all Kordofan languages, but they are usually innovations (new formations that do not come from the Proto-Niger-Congo). The sentence order is SVO ( subject-verb-object ), with the noticeable exception of the tegem (Lafofa), which has the basic position subject-object-verb . Only prepositions (no postpositions ) are used. In the noun phrase , the specific noun is in front (see the examples from the Otoro), its extensions (genitive attribute, adjective attribute, possessive, numerals and demonstrative) follow. An exception is again the tegem, in which the possessive comes before its noun.
See also
literature
- Roger Blench: Does Kordofanian constitute a Group and if not, where does its languages fit into Niger-Congo? Draft circulated for comment, August 25, 2011
- Joseph Greenberg: The Languages of Africa. Mouton, The Hague and Indiana University Center, Bloomington 1963.
- Bernd Heine et al. (Ed.): The languages of Africa. Buske, Hamburg 1981, ISBN 3-87118-433-0 .
- Bernd Heine, Derek Nurse (Ed.): African Languages. An Introduction. Cambridge University Press 2000, ISBN 0-521-66629-5 .
- Thilo C. Schadeberg: Kordofanian. In: John Bendor-Samuel (Ed.): The Niger-Congo Languages: A Classification and Description of Africa's Largest Language Family. University Press of America, Lanham / New York / London 1989, ISBN 0-8191-7376-2 .
- Thilo C. Schadeberg: The Classification of the Kadugli Language Group. Dordrecht 1981.
- Nicolas Quint: The Phonology of Koalib - a Kordofanian Language of the Nuba Mountains (Sudan) , Cologne 2009, ISBN 978-3-89645-552-9 .
- Thilo C. Schadeberg (ed.): Tira and Otoro - Two Kordofanian Grammars by Roland C. Stevenson , Cologne 2009, ISBN 978-3-89645-173-6 .
- John Vanderelst: A Grammar of Dagik - a Kordofanian Language of Sudan . Cologne 2016, ISBN 978-3-89645-566-6 .