Phonological Descriptions

Dr. V.A. (Valentin Aleksandrovič) Efimov was born on 22 March, 1933, in the interior countryside of Russia. As a young man he moved to Moscow to study at the State University there. He successfully pursued an academic career at the Institute of Linguistics of the Academy of Sciences in Moscow, where he worked for the larger part of his life as an expert of the languages of Afghanistan, and of Iranian linguistics in general. He died on 27 March, 2007, after a painful illness, at the age of 74. At the time of his death, he was professor and chair of the Iranian languages department of the Institute of Linguistics, as well as a member of the academic council of the Institute. Dr. Efimov conducted his fieldwork on the Ormuri language in the summer of 1971 in the Logar valley in Afghanistan. One of his Ormuri language consultants from Logar, Mr. Khalilullah Ormur, came to Moscow for university studies during the 1970s, thus providing Dr. Efimov with the opportunity for further work with a native speaker. Dr. Efimov‘s main work on Ormuri was published as a monograph in 1986, written in Russian. A literal translation of its title is, The Ormuri Language in a Historical and Synchronic Light. True to its title, the book pairs an in-depth synchronic analysis and description of Ormuri phonology and morphology to an equally in-depth historical-comparative analysis of the same. The purpose of publishing an English translation of The Ormuri Language is, on the one hand, to enhance the accessibility of Dr. Efimov‘s important work to the professional linguistic community outside of Russia. On the other hand, the purpose is also to call attention once again to the fate of this interesting language. It has, amazingly, persisted over many centuries in the face of pressure from the surrounding predominant Persian and Pashto languages. Nowadays, however, it is on the verge of extinction in Afghanistan (where only a few members of the older generations are still able to speak it), and it is still alive but seriously endangered in Pakistan.

Ganza is a previously undescribed Omotic language of the Mao subgroup, and is the only Omotic language found primarily outside of Ethiopia. This paper presents the results of nearly a year of phonological fieldwork on Ganza in the form of a descriptive phonology. Included are presentations of the consonant and vowel phonemes, syllable structure and phonotactics, notable morphophonemic processes, and an overview of the tone system. Some interesting features of the phonology highlighted in this paper include the existence of a nasalizing glottal stop phoneme, lack of phonemic vowel length, a lexically determined vocalic alternation between ja~e, and the existence of "construct melodies" in the tone system. Given that both Omotic languages in general and especially the Mao subfamily are understudied, this paper provides much-needed data and analysis for the furtherance of Omotic linguistics.

Smolders, Joshua A. G. 2016. A Phonology of Ganza (Gwàmì Nánà). Linguistic Discovery 14(1):86-144.

Sumi (also known by its exonym ‘Sema’) is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Nagaland, North-east India. It is one of the major languages of the state, with an estimated 242,000 speakers living primarily in Zunheboto district, as well as in the major cities of Kohima and Dimapur. Bradley (1997) places Sumi (referred to as Sema), among the ‘Southern Naga’ languages, which include Angami (also known as Tenyidie) and Ao, in contrast to the ‘Northern Naga’ languages such as Konyak and Nocte. Burling (2003) offers a more conservative classification, placing Sumi (referred to as Simi) in an ‘Angami-Pochuri’ group containing Angami, Chakhesang (Chokri and Kheza) and Mao. Four main dialects of Sumi have been identified: the Western dialect, the Eastern dialect, the Chizolimi dialect, and the Central dialect. The Central dialect is the standard dialect used in published works of Sumi (Sreedhar 1976: 4–5).