Wednesday, April 04, 2018

Songhay crows and Korandje ravens

In Niamey, where I went last week for a workshop on Songhay as a cross-border language, the crows do something I've never seen them do in any other country: they come to the window and start tapping on the glass, like something out of Edgar Allen Poe. The reaction of my fellow attendees taught me a new Songhay word - gaaru-gaaru "pied crow" (Heath 1998) - which in turn revealed a new Korandje etymology. In Korandje, "raven" is gạḍi. The shift of intervocalic *d to r in mainstream Songhay is well-established (Nicolaï 1981). But the vowels are more interesting.

Korandje usually derives from *ar or *or. In several inherited Songhay words, however, seems to derive from *a not followed by *r: thus kạṣ-əw "rough" < kas-ow, bạzu "skin bucket, waterbag" < baasu, hạmu "meat" < *hamu, kə̣kkạbu "key" < *karkabu. Yet *a otherwise usually yields a in similar contexts: contrast gani "louse" < *gani, akama "wheat" < *alkama, dzam-a "do it" < *dam-a. It looks as though the vowel in the following syllable is what makes the difference: if it's rounded, you get , otherwise you get a (though one or two exceptions suggest that the story may be more complicated: notably, "difficult" is gab-ə̣w < *gab-ow.) Assuming this rule, *gaadu should regularly have yielded gaaru in mainstream Songhay and gạḍu in Korandje.

What we actually get, however, is gạḍi. Why? Well, Korandje has a rule of final high vowel deletion phrase-internally: if a word ends in i or u, its final vowel will be deleted unless it comes before a pause, ie most of the time. (Basically the opposite of Classical Arabic.) In a number of words, this seems to have led to confusion between original -i, -u, and consonant-final words. For instance, ạṣạnkri "skink" comes from Berber asrmkal, which should regularly have yielded ạṣạmkər; the i is unetymological (Souag 2015). In effect, speakers must have been hypercorrecting final high vowels - a fact which suggests that, if Korandje survives, it may be on its way towards phonologically losing them altogether, much as Classical Arabic did with final short vowels.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

What does the convention of a dot under vowels mean?

Lameen Souag الأمين سواق said...

Sorry, I should have given IPA somewhere: ạ = [ɑ], a = [æ]. This conventions makes sense language-internally given the relationship between ạ and pharyngealised consonants, but it is kind of opaque externally.

Whygh said...

What's the ə̣ in kə̣kkạbu? Is it there through dissimilation?

Daniel N. said...

Why do crows tap on windows? To get some food from people?

Lameen Souag الأمين سواق said...

Whygh: ə̣ is [ʌ]. In contexts like this it can probably be analysed as an allophone of ạ.

Daniel: Wish I knew! I imagine it's something like that, but I didn't see any evidence.

Anonymous said...

Have you ever heard of 'agaywar' and 'ahaqqar' for crow [Morocco]

Tamachek
aghrut: corbeau
takarit: corbeau noir [Mali]