Mursi language
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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.Template:Sfnp The language is similar to Suri, another Southeast Surmic language spoken to the west of the Mursi language area.Template:Sfnp 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.Template:Sfnp[3] 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 /Script error: No such module "IPA"./ and the voiceless stop /Script error: No such module "IPA"./.Template:Sfnp
- 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 [[[:Template:IPA link]]], claiming that it is phonetically inserted to break up vowel sequences.Template:Sfnp Firew discusses this and leaves the question undecided, but includes the sound in the phoneme chart.Template:Sfnp
- Firew classifies the alveolar implosive /Template:IPA link/ as postalveolar, without giving reasons.Template:Sfnp
- Both Mütze and Firew agree on the vowel inventory and on the chosen transcription, as shown above.Template:Sfnp
- Even though vowel length appears phonetically in Mursi, it can be explained by the elision of weak consonants between identical vowels.Template:Sfnp
Tone
Both MützeTemplate:Sfnp and FirewTemplate:Sfnp agree that there are only two underlying tone levels in Mursi, as opposed to larger inventories proposed by Turton and BenderTemplate:Sfnp and Moges.[4]
Grammar
The Mursi grammar makes use of the following parts of speech: nouns,Template:Sfnp verbs,Template:Sfnp adjectives,Template:Sfnp pronouns,Template:Sfnp adverbs,Template:Sfnp adpositions,Template:Sfnp question words,Template:Sfnp quantifiers,Template:Sfnp connectors,Template:Sfnp discourse particles,Template:Sfnp interjections,Template:Sfnp ideophones,Template:Sfnp and expressives.Template:Sfnp
Nouns
Nouns can be inflected for number and case.Template:Sfnp The number marking system is very complex, using suffixation, suppletion or tone to either mark plurals from singular bases, or singulatives from plural bases.Template:Sfnp Mursi preverbal subjects and all objects are unmarked,Template:Sfnp whereas postverbal subjects are marked by a nominative case. Further cases are the oblique case and the genitive case.Template:Sfnp Modified nouns receive a special morphological marking called construct form by Mütze.Template:Sfnp
References
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Bibliography
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External links
- Mursi Online, University of Oxford
- Mursi basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database
- World Atlas of Language Structures information on Mursi
Template:Languages of Ethiopia Template:Eastern Sudanic languages