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Mursi language

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

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

Phoneme inventory

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]

Tone

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

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

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]

Referances

  1. ^ 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.
  2. ^ Mursi at Ethnologue (27th ed., 2024) Closed access icon
  3. ^ Worku (2021), p. 1.
  4. ^ Worku (2021), pp. 19 f.
  5. ^ Worku (2021), pp. 36 f.
  6. ^ 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.
  7. ^ Worku (2021), p. 45.
  8. ^ Mütze (2014), p. 26.
  9. ^ Worku (2021), p. 46.
  10. ^ Mütze (2014), pp. 26 f.
  11. ^ Worku (2021), pp. 46 f.
  12. ^ Worku (2021), pp. 46, 49 f, he even several times calls it velar.
  13. ^ Mütze (2014), p. 37.
  14. ^ Worku (2021), p. 59.
  15. ^ Mütze (2014), p. 39.
  16. ^ Mütze (2014), p. 42.
  17. ^ Worku (2021), p. 86.
  18. ^ Turton & Bender (1976), p. 559.
  19. ^ Moges Yigezu (2001). A Comparative Study of the Phonetics and Phonology of Surmic Languages. Brussels: Université Libre de Bruxelles.
  20. ^ Worku (2021), p. 102.
  21. ^ Worku (2021), p. 128.
  22. ^ Worku (2021), p. 130.
  23. ^ Worku (2021), p. 132.
  24. ^ Worku (2021), p. 143.
  25. ^ a b c d Worku (2021), p. 151.
  26. ^ Worku (2021), p. 154.
  27. ^ Worku (2021), p. 161.
  28. ^ Worku (2021), p. 163.
  29. ^ Worku (2021), p. 168.
  30. ^ Mütze (2014), p. 47.
  31. ^ Worku (2021), ch. 6.2.
  32. ^ a b Mütze (2014), p. 53.
  33. ^ Mütze (2014), p. 62.

Bibliography

External links