Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-x5gtn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-09T01:47:38.248Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Vowel quality alternation in Dinka verb inflection*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 October 2008

Torben Andersen
Torben Andersen
Affiliation:
Aalborg University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Dinka, a major Western Nilotic language spoken in the Sudan, is to a large extent a monosyllabic language. Nevertheless, it has a complex morphology. Thus a significant part of its morphology is non-affixal, being manifested by way of morphophonological alternations in the root. Such alternations involve one or more of the following parameters: vowel quality, vowel length, voice quality, tone and final consonant. While alternations in vowel length, voice quality and tone are treated in Andersen (in press), the present article deals with vowel quality alter-nation. The dialect of Dinka treated here is Agar, more specifically the variety of Agar spoken by people from the area of Pacong, a village about 20 kilometres south-east of Rumbek in Southern Sudan. My principal informants for the present study were Isaac Maker, David Daniel Marial and Peter Gum Panther.

Type
Articles
Information
Phonology , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , May 1993 , pp. 1 - 42
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Andersen, Torben (1987). The phonemic system of Agar Dinka. Journal of African Languages and Linguistics 9. 1–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Andersen, Torben (1990). Vowel length in Western Nilotic languages. Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 22. 5–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Andersen, Torben (1991). cubject and copic in Dinka. Studies in banguage 15. 265–294.Google Scholar
Torben, (in press). Morphological stratification in a monosyllabic language: on the alternations of voice quality, vowel length and tone in the morphology of transitive verbal roots in Dinka. Studies in African Linguistics.Google Scholar
Booij, Geert (1989). On the representation of diphthongs in Frisian. JL 25. 319–332.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crazzolara, J. P. (1933). Outlines of Nuergrammar. Vienna: Verlag der internationalen Zeitschrift ‘Anthropos’.Google Scholar
Denning, Keith (1989). The diachronic development of phonological voice quality, with special reference to Dinka and other Nilotic languages. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms International.Google Scholar
Dimmendaal, Gerrit (in press). The syllable nucleus in Nilotic. In Robert, Nicolai (ed.) Proceedings of the 5th Nilo-Saharan Linguistics Colloquim. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag.Google Scholar
Duerksen, John (1989). Syllable initial ‘h’ in Dinka. Occasional Papers in the Study of Sudanese Languages 6. 119–126.Google Scholar
Durand, Jacques (1990). Generative and non-linear phonology. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Goldsmith, John A. (1990). Autosegmental and metrical phonology. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Hall, Beatrice L., Ayom, Edward B.G. & Hall, R. M. R. (1982). Features for the vowels and voice qualities of Bor Dinka. Paper presented at the Conference on Phonological/Distincticve Features, State University of New York, Stony Brook, June 1982.Google Scholar
Kenstowicz, Michael & Jerzy, Rubach (1987). The phonology of syllabic nuclei in Slovak. Lg 63. 463–497.Google Scholar
Prince, Alan S. (1980). A metrical theory for Estonian quantity. LI 11. 511–562.Google Scholar
Tucker, A. N. (1939). Dinka orthography. Reproduced 1978 as Linguistic Monograph Series No. 9. Khartoum: Institute of African and Asian Studies, University of Khartoum.Google Scholar
Tucker, A. N. & Bryan, M. A. (1966). Linguistic analyses: the non-Bantu languages of North-Eastern Africa. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar