Colleen Ahland

Diversity in African Languages contains a selection of revised papers from the 46th Annual Conference on African Linguistics, held at the University of Oregon. Most chapters focus on single languages, addressing diverse aspects of their phonology, morphology, semantics, syntax, information structure, or historical development. These chapters represent nine different genera: Mande, Gur, Kwa, Edoid, Bantu, Nilotic, Gumuzic, Cushitic, and Omotic. Other chapters investigate a mix of languages and families, moving from typological issues to sociolinguistic and inter-ethnic factors that affect language and accent switching. Some chapters are primarily descriptive, while others push forward the theoretical understanding of tone, semantic problems, discourse related structures, and other linguistic systems. The papers on Bantu languages reflect something of the internal richness and continued fascination of the family for linguists, as well as maturation of research on the family. The distr...

Daatsʼíin is a heretofore unknown language spoken in western Ethiopia near the border with the Republic of Sudan. The Daatsʼíin people live in both Ethiopia and the Republic of Sudan but only those in Ethiopia still speak the Daatsʼíin language. The speakers of Daatsʼíin may number around 1,000 but may be as few as 300-500. This paper provides the first-ever overview of basic aspects of Daatsʼíin phonology, morphology and syntax. The overview documents that Daatsʼíin is structurally similar to the nearby Gumuz languages (of possible Nilo-Saharan affiliation) in many respects, including vocabulary, bound pronominals with a distinct tone for S versus A arguments, and incorporated nouns. However, there are a few differences, mainly in structure and certain tense-aspect categories of the verb word.

Daatsʼíin is a heretofore unknown language spoken in western Ethiopia near the border with the Republic of Sudan. The Daatsʼíin people live in both Ethiopia and the Republic of Sudan but only those in Ethiopia still speak the Daatsʼíin language. The speakers of Daatsʼíin may number around 1,000 but may be as few as 300-500. This paper provides the first-ever overview of basic aspects of Daatsʼíin phonology, morphology and syntax. The overview documents that Daatsʼíin is structurally similar to the nearby Gumuz languages (of possible Nilo-Saharan affiliation) in many respects, including vocabulary, bound pronominals with a distinct tone for S versus A arguments, and incorporated nouns. However, there are a few differences, mainly in structure and certain tense-aspect categories of the verb word.

The Gumuz suffix/-(á)ts(a)/ on verbs and the related nominal prefix /tsá-/ can be internally reconstructed as the morpheme *tsa ‘body’ (Ahland 2010:165-66, 2012:251 ).  On verbs, the suffix functions as a verbal classifier, a reflexive, and a marker of certain types of complements, most notably perception-cognition-utterance (PCU) complements.  On nouns, it functions as a class morpheme prefix (Ahland 2012). The verbal suffix /-(á)ts(a)/ occupies the same position on the verb as incorporated nouns yet there exists no known free noun form in any variety of Gumuz. In addition to internal evidence, comparative evidence from the Koman languages suggests a cognate free noun form meaning ‘body’ as the lexical source. 

As noted by Schladt (2000:104), lexical sources for reflexive markers are usually nouns, most commonly body part terms.  These lexical sources are typically transparent in African languages and generally represent a direct object before grammaticalizing.  In addition to reflexives, verbal classifiers also begin their lives as nouns (often body part terms) which may also originally function as direct objects (Mithun 1984).  Both reflexive and verbal classifier constructions maintain a Patient but, with reflexive constructions, the Patient is always the same referent as the subject.  The term ‘body’ in Gumuz participates in both reflexive and verbal classifier constructions (with overlap in category, as verbal classifiers can classify both S and O arguments) - but seemingly only as part of reflexive constructions in the Koman languages. In Gumuz, the verbal classifier, /-(á)ts(a)/ ‘body’ has further grammaticalized as a valence increaser that can add clausal complements.

References
Ahland, Colleen. 2010. Noun incorporation and predicate classifiers in Gumuz. Journal of African Languages and Linguistics 31.159-203.
Ahland, Colleen. 2012. A grammar of Northern and Southern Gumuz. PhD dissertation, University of Oregon.
Mithun, Marianne.1984. The evolution of noun incorporation. Language 60.847-94.
Schladt, Mathias. 2000.  The typology and grammaticalization of reflexives. Reflexives: forms and functions, ed. by Zygmunt Frayzingier, 103-124. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

The Gumuz language(s) of Ethiopia had been considered part of the Nilo-Saharan (NS) family since Greenberg’s 1963 classification. Recently, there is doubt about Gumuz belonging to NS, with some suggesting it may be an isolate.  I present new evidence that Gumuz may be related to Gwama (Koman), rendering it a possible member of the NS family or at least a member of Koman which may or may not be NS. I also present a possible common source for sex-based gender prefixes in Gumuz and some Nilotic languages. This last evidence is suggestive of membership within the broader Nilo-Saharan family.

Gumuz is a Nilo-Saharan dialect cluster spoken in the river valleys of northwestern Ethiopia and the southeastern part of the Republic of the Sudan. There are approximately 200,000 speakers, the majority of which reside in Ethiopia. This study is a phonological and grammatical analysis of two main dialects/languages: Northern Gumuz and Southern Gumuz.
The study provides an overview of the Gumuz people and culture, including historical accounts of the language(s) and migration patterns. Most major aspects of the language are described and analyzed in detail: phonology, nouns, pronouns, demonstratives and other noun phrase constituents, verbs and verbal morphology, noun incorporation, verbal classifiers, noun categorization, basic clauses, and subordinate clauses. Northern and Southern Gumuz varieties are contrasted throughout.
Gumuz tone has two levels, High and Low, with tonal downstep of High. The tonal melody on bound pronominals on verbs indicates transitivity.
    Nouns are divided into two basic types: relational and absolute. Relational nouns have an inherent relationship with another nominal element, either within a noun-noun compound or with a (historical) possessive affix. Two sets of relational nouns —
attributive and relator nouns— obligatorily take an inherent possession suffix if not in a compound.
Gumuz has two noun-noun constructions: the Associative Construction and the Attributive Construction. The first is left-headed with ‘noun of noun’ semantics. The second is right-headed with the initial noun expressing an inherent quality of the second.
    Certain body part terms have grammaticalized as a variety of other morphosyntactic categories, in particular as relator nouns, verbal classifiers, and class morphemes, the final two of which are noun categorization devices. Many of these same body part terms can be incorporated into the verb or form part of lexicalized verb-noun compounds.
      Deverbal nominalizations with /ma-/ are found throughout the language structures. These /ma-/ nominalizations serve as both subject and object complements. They are also commonly found in other subordinate clauses such as relative and adverbial clauses. Purpose clauses are formed with the dative preposition plus a /ma-/ nominalization. Finite purpose clauses take pronominal inflection and have further grammaticalized as future tense main clause verbs in Southern Gumuz.

Gumuz is a Nilo-Saharan language spoken in western Ethiopia and southeastern Sudan. Much dialectal variation exists among the Gumuz but all lects within Ethiopia show evidence of noun incorporation, including that of Gilgel Beles, the focus of this paper. In the past, this noun incorporation in verbs had been overlooked and the verb-noun morpheme pair had been analyzed as one morpheme with infixing inflectional morphology. Thus, verbal ‘roots’ without incorporated nouns had been described as suffixing vs. those with incorporated nouns as infixing verbs (Irwin 1966: 5), or unsplit vs. split (Uzar, Studies in Gumuz: Sese phonology and TMA system, Helmut Buske Verlag, 1989: 371).

Upon further investigation, it has become evident that these putative split or infixing verbs do not comprise merely a single root after all. Rather, these verbs have incorporated nouns which create a complex verbal stem. Such incorporated nouns serve many functions in Gumuz and, in some cases, they have grammaticalized as classifiers similar to the process described by Mithun (The convergence of noun classification systems, John Benjamins, 1986:385).

To date, no system of predicate classifiers has been documented in the languages of Africa, let alone Ethiopia. This paper argues for the existence of such a system in Gumuz and describes the extent to which these classifiers are a productive part of the verbal morphology.

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A handful of Nilo-Saharan (N-S) languages along the Ethio-Sudan border exhibit a construction not common to African languages but fairly common in Indo-European (IE) languages – that of phrasal verbs. Phrasal verbs in IE languages comprise a verb root plus a “particle” which is typically cognate with an adverb. The verb of the construction carries most of the semantic content and the phrasal verb construction as a whole is noncompositional. Examples of these in English are ‘pick up’ or ‘write down’. These complex verbs are unusual in that a direct object can intervene between the verb root and the particle:  'I’ll pick you up at 8:00pm' or 'Write it down'. In the same way, Uduk, Opo, Berta, Gwama, and Komo have phrasal verbs comprised of a verb root
plus a particle which is historically (and synchronically) a noun. All of these languages form part of the Koman language family save Berta which most recently has been classified as an Eastern Sudanic language (Dimmendaal et al 2019). The latter two Koman languages, Gwama and Komo, however, have few known examples of these phrasal verbs (Dimmendaal et al. 2019: 340). Below are examples of these phrasal verb constructions in Uduk (1) and Berta (2). Similar to IE languages, other elements of the phrase can intervene between the verb root and the particle. Note that the particle in each instance is cognate with a body part term.

1) Uduk (Killian 2015)
wàthíʔ ʼcít͟h-íʼd            ā              yíʼd īs
man cross:PFV-3SG CL2.ACC pelt body
‘The man trimmed the animal skin.’ (lit: the man crossed the skin body)

2) Berta (Neudorf 2015)
fámiilí gag-í                gali alú
people chase-PRES dog head
‘The people are chasing the dogs away.’

The B’aga languages of the Ethio-Sudan border area – namely Daats’iin, Southern Gumuz, and Northern Gumuz – have historically incorporated body part terms which resemble these phrasal verb constructions. However, these nouns are fully incorporated into the verb stem and have become part of the verbal morphology (3-5). This verb + noun complex is similar to the Koman languages and Berta in that other
morphemes can intervene.

3) Daats’iin (Ahland 2016)
ná=gatsʼar    k-u-gám-b-áts                            jáhú
loc=old.days AFF-3PL.TR-know-PST-BODY reedbuck
‘In the old days, they saw reedbuck.’

4) Southern Gumuz (Ahland 2012)
ŋ́gafa    b-a-ŋ-gáʃ-agá-c                                      opá          ká=kóa
woman AFF-3SG.TR-PL-grind-NFUT-CL1:eye opa.bean BEN=sauce
‘The woman ground opa (beans) for the sauce’

5) Northern Gumuz (Ahland 2012)
dua  ná=amariká                d-a-fag-á-é-kʼw
child LOC=north.america AFF-3SG-grow-MV-TWRD-HEAD
‘The child grew up in North America.’

Due to these similarities, I have hypothesized that both the complex verbal stems of the B’aga languages and the phrasal verbs of the Koman languages and Berta historically arose from Noun-Noun associative constructions. In other words, phrasal verbs such as ʼcít͟h-íʼd īs (cross/cut body) ‘trim’ of Uduk arose from ‘cross/cut the body of the skin’ for example (1). Likewise, B’aga examples such as gáʃ- c (grind-eye/seed) of Southern Gumuz arose from ‘grind the eye/seed of the bean (plant)’ as per example (5). Such a development is similar to “possessor raising” or a type of external possession construction (see Payne and Barshi 1996:6).