|
|
|
|
|
Nobiin LanguageNobiin is a Nubian language spoken along the banks of the Nile river in southern Egypt and northern Sudan by approximately 495 000 people. It is one of the Nubian languages, ultimately of the Nilo-Saharan phylum. Many Nobiin speaking Nubians were forced to relocate in 1963-1964 due to the construction of the Aswan High Dam at Aswan, Egypt, to make room for Lake Nasser. Nowadays, Nobiin villages are found north of Aswan on the west bank of the Nile. Additionally, many Nubians have moved to large cities like Cairo and Khartoum. Nobiin has been called Mahas, Mahas-Fiadidja, and Fiadicca in the past. Mahas and Fiadidja are geographical terms corresponding to alleged dialectal variants of Nobiin; Roland Werner has argued, based on Bell (1974) that in fact there is no evidence for the distinctness of the two (cf Werner p. 18—24). Nobiin, or any other Nubian language, should not be confused with the Arabic-based creole Ki-Nubi spoken in Uganda and Kenya by the descendants of Sudanese soldiers. The name Kinubi derives from a misuse of the term ‘Nubi’; in fact, the soldiers were from the south of Sudan and spoke Mamvu and Bari . History Nobiin is one of the few African languages having a written history that can be followed over the course of more than a millenium. Old Nubian, preserved in a sizable collection of mainly early Christian manuscripts and documented in detail by Gerald M. Browne (1944-2004), is considered ancestral to Nobiin. Sounds Consonants Nobiin has long and short consonants, e.g. drl 'I am present' vs. drrl 'I climb'. Tone Nobiin is a tonal language. In Nobiin, tone is used to mark lexical contrasts but also to perform syntactical funtions. Semantical and/or syntactical contrasts are often accompanied with (or marked by) changes in the tonal pattern. For example, the noun ksr 'turban' is transparently related to the verb form ksr 'I wind’. Nobiin has two underlying tones, High and Low. A falling tone occurs in certain contexts; this tone can in general be analysed arising from a High and a Low tone together. - rr 'settlement' (High)
- nr 'shadow' (Low)
In Nobiin, every utterance ends in a low tone. This is one of the clearest signs of the occurrence of a boundary tone, realized as a low tone on the last syllable of any prepausal word. The examples below show how the surface tone of the High tone verb kkr- ‘cook’ depends on the position of the verb. In the first sentence, the verb is not final (because the question marker –n is appended) and thus it is realized as High. In 2, the verb is in utterance final position, resulting in a low tone on the last syllable. - ttrk kkn? (vegetables:DO cook:she.PRESENT-Q) Does she cook the vegetables?
- yy ttrk kk. (yes vegetables:DO cook:she.PRESENT) Yes, she cooks the vegetables.
Tone plays an important role in several derivational processes. The most common situation involves the loss of the original tone pattern of the derivational base and the subsequent assignment of Low tone, along with the affixation of a morpheme or word bringing its own tonal pattern. Morphology Nouns Nouns in Nobiin are predominantly disyllabic. In plural formation, the tone of a noun becomes Low and one of four plural markers is suffixed. Nouns Verbs Verbal morphology in Nobiin is subject to numerous morphophonological processes, including syllable contraction, vowel elision, and assimilation of all sorts and directions. A distinction needs to be made between the verbal base and the morphemes that follow. The majority of verbal bases in Nobiin end in a consonant; notable exceptions are j- 'go' and n- 'drink'. Verbal bases are mono- or disyllabic. The verbal base carries one of three or four tonal patterns. Grammar The basic word order in a Nobiin sentence is Subject-Object-Verb. References - Bell, H. (1974) 'Dialect in Nobin Nubian'. In Qbd el-Gadir Mohmoud Abdalla (ed.) Studies in Ancient Languages of the Sudan. Khartoum. 109—122.
- Thelwall, Robin (1978) 'Lexicostatistical relations between Nubian, Daju and Dinka', tudes nubiennes: colloque de Chantilly, 2-6 juillet 1975, 265—286.
- Werner, Roland (1987) Grammatik des Nobiin (Nilo-Saharan Studies vol. 1). Hambrg: Helmut Buske Verlag. ISBN 0932-1993
|
 |
|
| Copyright 2005-2009 OnPedia.com. All Rights Reserved |
|
|