Murle language
Murle | |
---|---|
Native to | South Sudan, Ethiopia |
Ethnicity | Murle people |
Native speakers | 196,000 (2017)[1] nearly extinct in Ethiopia |
Nilo-Saharan?
| |
Dialects |
|
Latin (in South Sudan) | |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | mur |
Glottolog | murl1244 |
ELP | Murle |
Murle (also Ajibba, Beir, Merule, Mourle, Murule) is a Surmic Language spoken by the Murle people in the southeast of South Sudan, near the Ethiopian border. A very small number of Murle live across the border in southwestern Ethiopia.
The basic
Marking of number on nouns in Murle is complex, with no single suffix being generally productive. Some nouns are marked with a
Payne (2006)
onyiit 'rib' onyii 'ribs'
rottin 'warrior' rotti 'warriors'
However, the same final consonants are found in productive marking of
The New Testament has been translated into the Murle language.
Phonology
Consonants
Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Post- alveolar |
Palatal | Velar | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Stop/
Affricate |
voiceless | p | t̪ | t | tʃ | k | |
voiced | b | d̪ | d | dʒ | g | ||
implosive | ɓ | ɗ̠ | ɠ | ||||
Fricative | v | ð | z | ||||
Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | |||
Trill | r | ||||||
Lateral | l | ||||||
Approximant | w | j |
Vowels
+ATR | -ATR | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Front | Back | Front | Central | Back | |
Close | i | u | ɪ | ʊ | |
Mid | e | o | ɛ | ɔ | |
Open | a |
Vowel length is also distinctive.[8]
References
- ^ Murle at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
- ^ (Arensen 1982)
- ^ Arensen, Jon, 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.
- ISBN 0-521-67150-7.
- ^ p. 124; Bender, M. Lionel. 1983. Majang phonology and morphology. In Nilo-Saharan Language Studies, ed. by M. Lionel Bender, 114-147. East Lansing: Michigan State University.
- ^ p. 86. Unseth, Peter. 1988. Majang nominal plurals, with comparative notes. Studies in African Linguistics 19.1:75-91.
- ^ Bryan, Margaret. 1959. The T/K languages: A new substratum. Africa 29:1-21.
- ^ Yigezu, Moges (2005). Aspects of Murle phonology. In Journal of Ethiopian Studies XXXVIII. pp. 115–129.
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Literature
- Arensen, Jonathan E. 1982. Murle grammar. Occasional Papers in the Study of Sudanese Languages 2. Juba: Summer Institute of Linguisticsand University of Juba.
- Arensen, Jonathan E. 1988. "Names in the life cycles of the Murle". Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford 19: 125-130.
- Arensen, Jonathan E. 1989. "On comparing language relationships: A case study of Murle, Kacipo and Tirma". Occasional Papers in the Study of Sudanese Languages 6: 67-76
- Arensen, Jonathan E. 1991. Aspects of language and society among the Murle of Sudan. D.Phil. thesis. Wolfson College, Oxford University.
- Arensen, Jonathan E. 1992. Mice are men: Language and society among the Murle of Sudan. International Museum of Cultures Publication, 27. Dallas: International Museum of Cultures.
- Arensen, Jonathan E. 1998. "Murle categorization" in Gerrit Dimmendaal and Marco Last (eds.), Surmic Languages and Cultures. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag. pp. 181–218.
- Lyth, R. E. 1971. The Murle Language: Grammar and Vocabulary. Linguistic Monograph Papers 7 Khartoum: University of Khartoum.
- Miller, Cynthia. 1984. "Connectives in Murle epistolary discourse". Occasional Papers in the Study of Sudanese Languages 5: 81-134.
- Unseth, Peter. 1986. "Word Order Shift in Negative Sentences of Surma Languages". Afrikanistische Arbeitspapiere 5: 135-143.
- Unseth, Peter. 2007. "Murle language" in Siegbert Uhlig (ed.) Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, Vol 3. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. pp. 1076–1077.
- Yigezu, Moges. 2001. A Comparative Study of the Phonetics and Phonology of Surmic Languages. Université Libre de Bruxelles.