Mabaan domestic animal loanwords

The core of the Eastern Sudanic hypothesis is the idea that Nubian - historically the largest language family of Sudan proper - is related to Nilotic, the largest language family of South Sudan. One complication for this analysis is that, as the primary language of the medieval Nubian kingdoms, Nubian was well-positioned to influence the more northerly Nilotic languages from an early date. A couple of possible cases recently came to my attention.

Mabaan (not to be confused with Maban) is spoken in South Sudan's Upper Nile province near the Yabus River, at the southern fringes of a region historicallly dominated by the Funj sultanates. It belongs to the Burun subgroup of West Nilotic. In the course of elicitation recently, I was struck some domestic animal terms that did not seem to have obvious cognates elsewhere in West Nilotic:

• "horse": mún-t̪-ʌ̂n, pl. mún-t̪án
• "pig": kúc-c-ʌ̀, pl. kwɔ́t̪-în
• "camel": kʌ́l-ŋʌ̂n, pl. kʌ́l-ŋàn
• "sheep": kál-ŋ̀, pl. kʌ́l-ìn

"Horse" immediately recalls Old Nubian and modern Nobiin murti, borrowed across a wide area of eastern Africa (see e.g. Rilly 2009:168) including into nearby Bertha as murθá (Bender 1989). The nasal is not isolated; as Andersen (2006) shows, in Mabaan most nouns that originally ended in stops have replaced them with the corresponding nasal in the singular, reflecting merger with a secondary singular suffix *-n. However, this development did not affect nouns ending in *r, which regularly becomes y; is this a regular development of the cluster *-rt-, perhaps?

"Pig" is evidently likewise to be related to Old Nubian kutunni (pl.; Browne 1996:102) and similar forms spread equally widely across the Sudan, including in Sudanese Arabic (cf. Spaulding 1989). Proto-Koman *gUd̪Um (Otero 2019) is part of the same series, but the voicing difference suggests a different borrowing path (though some Koman languages do have k- here).

"Camel" is a more widespread root, though it does not seem to be found elsewhere in West Nilotic, and most similar forms elsewhere in the region start with g/j (as in Arabic or Cushitic) rather than k. Old (and modern) Nubian kam- is a possible source, via a plural such as Kunuzi kamli; Mabaan's closest relative, Jumjum, has kalman, pl. kʌlʌmgʌ (Jumjum Language Committee 2020), suggesting historical loss of m in the Mabaan form.

For "sheep", the most immediate comparandum is found next door in Koman: Central Koman *kʰālí (Otero 2019). Jumjum kabal matches Uduk kʰāɓāl (Killian 2015). The similarity to Old Nubian tikan- (modern tiigan) is probably only suggestive; it would neither explain the l nor the b/Ø variation.