| Mursi | |
|---|---|
| ሙነን (munɛn) | |
| Native to | Ethiopia |
| Region | Central Omo |
| Ethnicity | Mursi |
Native speakers | 7,400 (2007 census)[1][2] |
| Geʽez, Latin | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | muz |
| Glottolog | murs1242 |
| ELP | Mursi |
Mursi (also Dama, Merdu, Meritu, Murzi, Murzu) is a Southeast Surmic language spoken by the Mursi people who live in the South Omo Zone on the eastern side of the lower Omo valley in southwest Ethiopia.[3] The language is similar to Suri, another Southeast Surmic language spoken to the west of the Mursi language area.[4] It is spoken by approximately 7,400 people.[1]
Classification
[edit]Mursi is classified as belonging to the Southeast Surmic languages, to which the following other languages also belong: Suri, Me'en and Kwegu.[5][6] As such, Mursi is also part of the superordinate Eastern Sudanic family of the Nilo-Saharan languages.
Phonology
[edit]Phoneme inventory
[edit]The vowel and consonant inventory of Mursi is similar to those of other Southeast Surmic languages, except for the lack of ejectives, the labial fricative /f/ and the voiceless stop /p/.[7]
| Labial | Alveolar | Postalveolar/ Palatal |
Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stop | voiceless | t | c ⟨č⟩ | k | (ʔ) | |
| voiced | b | d | ɟ ⟨dʒ⟩ | ɡ | ||
| Implosive | ɓ | ɗ | ||||
| Fricative | voiceless | s | ʃ | h | ||
| voiced | z | |||||
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | ||
| Liquids | r, l | |||||
| Approximant | j | w | ||||
- Except for the hesitant inclusion of the glottal stop /ʔ/ by Firew, both Mütze and Firew agree on the consonant inventory. The layout mostly follows Mütze. The characters in angled brackets are the ones used by Firew, where they differ from Mütze.
- Mütze rejects the phonemic status of the glottal stop [ʔ], claiming that it is phonetically inserted to break up vowel sequences.[10] Firew discusses this and leaves the question undecided, but includes the sound in the phoneme chart.[11]
- Firew classifies the alveolar implosive /ɗ/ as postalveolar, without giving reasons.[12]
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | u | |
| Close-mid | e | o | |
| Open-mid | ɛ | ɔ | |
| Open | a |
- Both Mütze and Firew agree on the vowel inventory and on the chosen transcription, as shown above.[14]
- Even though vowel length appears phonetically in Mursi, it can be explained by the elision of weak consonants between identical vowels.[15]
Tone
[edit]Both Mütze[16] and Firew[17] agree that there are only two underlying tone levels in Mursi, as opposed to larger inventories proposed by Turton and Bender[18] and Moges.[19]
Grammar
[edit]The Mursi grammar makes use of the following parts of speech: nouns,[20] verbs,[21] adjectives,[22] pronouns,[23] adverbs,[24] adpositions,[25] question words,[26] quantifiers,[25] connectors,[27] discourse particles,[28] interjections,[29] ideophones,[25] and expressives.[25]
Nouns
[edit]Nouns can be inflected for number and case.[30] The number marking system is very complex, using suffixation, suppletion or tone to either mark plurals from singular bases, or singulatives from plural bases.[31] Mursi preverbal subjects and all objects are unmarked,[32] whereas postverbal subjects are marked by a nominative case. Further cases are the oblique case and the genitive case.[32] Modified nouns receive a special morphological marking called construct form by Mütze.[33]
References
[edit]- ^ a b "Ethiopian Census 2007". csa.gov.et. Addis Ababa: Ethiopian Central Statistics Agency. 2007. Archived from the original on 2011-07-28. Retrieved 9 July 2021.
- ^ Mursi at Ethnologue (27th ed., 2024)
- ^ Worku (2021), p. 1.
- ^ Worku (2021), pp. 19 f.
- ^ Worku (2021), pp. 36 f.
- ^ Dimmendaal, Gerrit J. (1998). "Surmic Languages and Cultures: an Introduction". In Dimmendaal, Gerrit J.; Last, Marco (eds.). Surmic Languages and Cultures. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag. pp. 35–81.
- ^ Worku (2021), p. 45.
- ^ Mütze (2014), p. 26.
- ^ Worku (2021), p. 46.
- ^ Mütze (2014), pp. 26 f.
- ^ Worku (2021), pp. 46 f.
- ^ Worku (2021), pp. 46, 49 f, he even several times calls it velar.
- ^ Mütze (2014), p. 37.
- ^ Worku (2021), p. 59.
- ^ Mütze (2014), p. 39.
- ^ Mütze (2014), p. 42.
- ^ Worku (2021), p. 86.
- ^ Turton & Bender (1976), p. 559.
- ^ Moges Yigezu (2001). A Comparative Study of the Phonetics and Phonology of Surmic Languages. Brussels: Université Libre de Bruxelles.
- ^ Worku (2021), p. 102.
- ^ Worku (2021), p. 128.
- ^ Worku (2021), p. 130.
- ^ Worku (2021), p. 132.
- ^ Worku (2021), p. 143.
- ^ a b c d Worku (2021), p. 151.
- ^ Worku (2021), p. 154.
- ^ Worku (2021), p. 161.
- ^ Worku (2021), p. 163.
- ^ Worku (2021), p. 168.
- ^ Mütze (2014), p. 47.
- ^ Worku (2021), ch. 6.2.
- ^ a b Mütze (2014), p. 53.
- ^ Mütze (2014), p. 62.
Bibliography
[edit]- Worku, Firew Girma (2021). A Grammar of Mursi: A Nilo-Saharan Language of Ethiopia (Thesis). Brill: Leiden. doi:10.1163/9789004449916.
- Yigezu, Moges; Turton, David (2005). "Latin Based Mursi Orthography". ELRC Working Papers. 1 (2). Addis Ababa: Ethiopian Languages Research Center: 242–57. Retrieved 9 July 2021.
- Mütze, Bettina (2014). A Sketch of the Mursi Language (MA thesis). Gloucester: Redcliff College, University of Gloucestershire.
- Turton, David; Bender, M. Lionel (1976). "Mursi". In Bender, M. Lionel (ed.). The Non-Semitic Languages of Ethiopia. East Lansing: African Studies Center, Michigan State University. pp. 533–561.
- Turton, David; Moges Yigezu; Oliserali Olibui (2008). Mursi-English-Amharic Dictionary. Addis Ababa: Culture and Arts Society of Ethiopia.