Majang language

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Majang
Northern Surmic
Ato Majanger-Onk
Native toEthiopia
RegionGodere, Gambela Region
EthnicityMajang people
Native speakers
33,000 (2007 census)[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3mpe
Glottologmaja1242
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The Majang language is spoken by the

Surmic language cluster, it is the most isolated one in the group (Fleming 1983). A language survey has shown that dialect variation from north to south is minor and does not seriously impede communication. The 2007 Ethiopian Census lists 6,433 speakers for Majang (Messengo), but also reports that the ethnic group consists of 32,822 individuals (Messengo and Mejengir).[2] According to the census, almost no speakers can be found in Mezhenger Zone of Gambela Region; a total of eleven speakers are listed for the zone, but almost 10,000 ethnic Mejenger or Messengo people.[3]

Title page of the New Testament in the Majang language, 2018

Phonology

The vowel inventory below is taken from Joswig (2012) and Getachew (2014, p. 65).

Vowels of Majang[4]
Front Central Back
Close i iː u uː
Close-mid e eː o oː
Open-mid ɛ ɛː ɔ ɔː
Open a aː

Vowel length is distinctive in Majang, so meanings change depending on whether a vowel is long or short, such as goopan 'punishment' and gopan 'road'. Unseth (2007) posed a 9-vowel system with a row of -ATR closed vowels ɪ and ʊ. Moges [5] claims a tenth vowel ɐ, whereas Bender (1983) was only ready to confirm six vowels. All authors agree that there is no ATR vowel harmony in the language.

Consonants of Majang[6]
Labial Alveolar Palatal Velar
Nasal
 m n ɲ ŋ
Stop
voiceless
 		p t tʃ k
voiced
 		b d dʒ ɡ
Implosive ɓ ɗ
Tap
 r
Approximant
 l j w

Bender

implosives, bilabial and coronal, which Moges Yigezu has studied acoustically and distributionally.[9]

Prosodic Features

Tones distinguish meaning in Majang,[10] on both the word level and the grammatical level: táŋ (higher tone) 'cow', tàŋ (lower tone) 'abscess'. The tonal inventory consists of two tone levels, with falling and rising contour tones possible at the end of phonological words, plus automatic and non-automatic downstep. [11]

Morphology

The language has markers to indicate three different past tenses (close, mid, far past) and two future tenses (near and farther).[12]

The language has a wide variety of suffixes, but almost no prefixes. Though its use is limited to a handful of roots, there are a few words that preserve vestiges of the archaic causative prefix i-, a prefix found in other Surmic languages and also

Nilotic.[13]

The counting system is a modified vigesimal system, based on 5, 10, and 20. "Twenty" is 'one complete person' (all fingers and toes), so 40 is 'two complete people', 100 is 'five complete people'. However, today, under the influence of schools and increased bilingualism, people generally use the Amharic or Oromo words for 100.

The person and number marking system does not mark the

inclusive and exclusive we distinction,[14]
a morphological category that is found in nearby and related languages.

Syntax

Majang has a basic VSO word order,[15] though allowing some flexibility for focus, etc. The language makes extensive use of relative clauses, including for circumstances where English would use adjectives.[16] A recent study

ergative-absolutive system, and a conjoint-disjoint distinction which is based on the presence or absence of an absolutive noun phrase directly following the verb. Many of these distinctions are coded by tonal differences.[18]

Majang, and some related Surmic languages, has been shown to be exceptional to some syntactic typological predictions for languages with

verb-subject-object word order.[19]
Majang has postpositions and question words sentence-finally, two properties that had been predicted to not occur in languages with VSO word order.

See also

References

  1. ^ Majang at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)
  2. ^ 2007 Census countrywide
  3. ^ 2007 Census Gambella Region
  4. ^ Joswig (2012), p. 264
  5. ^ Moges (2007), p.114
  6. ^ Unseth (1991), p. 526
  7. ^ Bender (1983), p. 116
  8. ^ Unseth(1991), p. 533
  9. Ethiopian Studies
    , edited by Siegbert Uhlig, pp. 822-830. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz Verlag.
  10. ^ Bender (1983), p. 117
  11. ^ Joswig 2015b
  12. ^ Bender (1983), p. 132
  13. ^ Unseth (1998)
  14. ^ Bender (1983), p. 128
  15. ^ Getachew 2014, p. 193
  16. ^ Unseth(1989)
  17. ^ Joswig (2015a)
  18. ^ Joswig (2015a)
  19. ^ Jon Arensen, Nicky de Jong, Scott Randal, Peter Unseth. 1997. Interrogatives in Surmic Languages and Greenberg's Universals. Occasional Papers in the Study of Sudanese Languages 7:71-90.

Bibliography

External links
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