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.

Eastern Sudanic subgroup reconstructions

This is basically a note to myself, and may be updated.

Eastern Sudanic is generally taken to embrace most of the languages of Sudan, including the following families:

• Nubian
• Nara
• Taman
• Nyima
• Jebel
• Daju
• Surmic
• Nilotic
• Temeinic

Its existence, however, remains debatable (cf. Güldemann 2022). A reconstruction of Eastern Sudanic (much less anything above it, such as Nilo-Saharan) remains out of reach. If it is possible at all, it will most likely need to be based on prior reconstructions of each of these subgroups. It is therefore useful to outline what has been done in terms of reconstruction.

Rilly's (2010) monograph identifies a clearer family consisting of Nubian, Nara, Taman, and Nyimang (along with the extinct Meroitic), which he labels North Eastern Sudanic ("soudanique oriental du nord"), and for which he proposes some 200 lexical reconstructions. In the process, he also offers 200-word reconstructions of proto-Nubian and proto-Taman, finding it necessary for the former to amend Bechhaus-Gerst's reconstruction of 97 items significantly, and drawing for the latter primarily on Edgar (1991).

Nara is a single language, whose dialectal diversity is not sufficiently well documented to make even internal reconstruction feasible.

Nyima consists of two languages, both poorly documented; Rilly gives provisional reconstructions.

For (Eastern) Jebel, Bender (1998) proposes an extremely provisional reconstruction of 100 items, outlining major sound correspondences.

Proto-Daju is reconstructed in the Ph.D. thesis of Thelwall (1981), who provides more than 300 lexical reconstructions along with the principal sound correspondences, but keeps discussion of morphology and syntax to a minimum.

Proto-Surmic has yet to be reconstructed; Yigezu (2001), however, reconstructs 200-300 words for each of two of its three subgroups, Southwest and Southeast. (The third is a single language, Majang.)

For Proto-Nilotic, Dimmendaal (1988) provides a "first reconnaissance", giving 204 items and ignoring tone; the work of Hall et al. (1975) and Hieda (2006) also deserves notice. Much more elaborated monograph-length reconstructions are available for Eastern Nilotic (Vossen 1982) and Southern Nilotic (Rottland 1982); each of these provides about 200 items for the relevant proto-language along with quite a few more for lower-level subgroups. Western Nilotic has not been reconstruced, but one sub-subgroup, Southern Luo, has been reconstructed in Heusing (1983).

Temein, with three poorly documented members, has not been reconstructed.

In brief: out of nine primary Eastern Sudanic families, none has yet been reconstructed in detail. Where reconstructions at this level exist, they cover a limited number of sound correspondences (usually segmental, ignoring tone), and a couple of hundred basic words; discussion of morphology is limited to a few prominent affixes.

More Mabaan pharyngeals

Thomas Anour has posted a number of Bible extracts: Mark 10:13-18, John 1:1-13, and James 4:1-3. Comparing these to a published translation from 2002 (from which he sometimes diverges slightly) and to the anonymous dictionary linked in the previous post makes it possible for a beginner to parse much of the text. No more examples of /ħ/ were heard; but another pharyngeal, /ʕ/, was. This phoneme is absent from the online audio version of this Bible translation, but can be heard clearly in Thomas Anour's pronunciation of at least three frequent words, despite occasional variation, and seems to contrast with the glottal stop /ʔ/, as illustrated by the the last few lines of the following table. While one of the words with /ʕ/ is an Arabic loan, the rest clearly are not.

Unfortunately, I don't know yet where it's coming from. I have yet to find any useful cognates to the words with the pharyngeal in the rest of Nilotic, or even in the meager Jumjum dictionary. "We" corresponds to Nuer <kɔn> and (probably?) Dinka /wɔ̂ɔk/.

English	Mabaan (Anour)	Mabaan (anon)	Mabaan (Anderson)
and	[ʕɔ́sì]	ɔci	ʔɔ́cé
so that	[ʕáŋkàː]	aŋ-ka	ʔáŋkà
because (< Ar.)	[ʕásàan]	acaan
where	[ʔáŋɛ̀]	aŋɛ
quotative particle	[ʔàgɪ́]	agi	ʔàgē
we	[ʔɔ̂ːn]	ɔɔn	ʔɔ̆ɔn

Mabaan pharyngeals

The least well documented subgroup of West Nilotic is the Burun group, spoken around the borders between Sudan, South Sudan, and Ethiopia. The largest language in this subgroup is Mabaan, spoken in South Sudan, for which there exists at least one dictionary (available without bibliographic information on Roger Blench's site), and several very interesting articles by Torben Andersen. But we are no longer in the era where a non-field linguist could be content to look at printed sources alone; there is a fair amount of Mabaan content on YouTube, including a channel by a BA-trained linguist and first language speaker of Mabaan, Thomas Anour: Learn Maban, African Language with Thomas Anour. (Like and subscribe, or whatever it is you're supposed to do on YouTube to encourage creators.) Between these, that makes enough material to observe an interesting phonological difference.

In Mabaan as described by Torben Andersen and in the aforementioned anonymous dictionary, /h/ seems to show up only in interjections or loans, and /ħ/ is not mentioned at all. The variety spoken by Thomas Anour, however, features a number of words with initial [ħ] (occasionally varying with [h]). A single cognate in a North Burun language, Mayak, suggest that this is the reflex in his variety of *r, which otherwise becomes a semivowel in Mabaan; more would be desirable.

English	Mabaan (Anour)	Mabaan (anon)	Mabaan (Andersen)	Jumjum (Fadul et al.)	Mayak (Andersen)
sorghum field (?)	<hill> [ħîl]	<yielo> "field for dura grain"	-	<yiil> "field, farm"	-
rat	<heeñ> [ħéːɲ]	<yyeño> "rat"	yiiêɲ-ʌ̀ "~, mouse"	<yiiñ>	rii-nit̪
sausage tree	<heeṭṭa> [ħétà]	<wyeṭṭa> "pod of ~"	-	-	-
desert	<hong> [ħʌ̂ːŋ]	<wɔɔŋ> "wilderness, desert"	-	-	-
salmon (sic)	<hitta> [ħítàː]	-	-	-	-
excuse (Ar. izin)	<honda> [ħʌ̀ndá]	-	-	-	-

Edit (12/12/2024): The Elenchus comparativus (von Hurter, 1800) records, s.v. "souris" (mouse), <hén> for "Abugonos Burun" vs. <rine> for "J. Kurmuk". This is the only word in the list transcribed with initial h - and the only word on the list corresponding to any of the ones above - but seems sufficient to suggest that this pronunciation is indeed old. Among words with *r, one notes Abugonos <yonga> "meat" and <ímaghi> "blood" (Kurmuk <rin>), which do not support the hypothesis of *r > ħ, but, given the imprecise transcription, do not disprove it either. My thanks to Shuichiro Nakao for sending me a link to this exceptionally early source.

Instrument nouns between Dholuo and Arabic

In Dholuo (a West Nilotic language of Kenya), instrument nouns are formed using ra-...-i (the final -i is dropped after sonorants and semivowels), as in the table below (Tucker 1993:111-112, retranscribed). Both English and Arabic have comparable formations. In English, instrument nouns are occasionally formed with the -er suffix, like agent nouns. In Arabic, instrument nouns are more systematically formed, but with a variety of different patterns, starting with mi-..., or in modern colloquials with a feminine agent noun CaCCaaC-a.

However, taking a look at the cases listed by Tucker, we may note a striking cross-linguistic difference in distribution. In Arabic, all but three of the translated nouns use an instrument noun pattern of some sort, and two of the others use a more general verbal noun pattern; only "ladder" appears completely underived. In English, "peg", "billhook", "pestle", "tongs", "lid" all seem to be underived and simplex, and for several cases with zero-derivation (notably "hoe", "rake", "drill", "sign"), intuition suggests that the verb derives from the noun, the opposite of what we see in Arabic or Dholuo.

This suggests a typological difference in the structure of the lexicon: perhaps some languages "prefer" to mark instrument nouns as such and to form them from corresponding actions, while some prefer simple instrument nouns from which verbs may be formed indicating the corresponding actions. I wonder whether that holds up on a larger sample? What does your language tend to do, dear reader?

cut	toŋ-o	قطع	|	billhook, cutter	ra-tóŋ̂	منجل
slash	bẹt-ọ	مزّق	|	slasher	rạ-bẹ́t-ị̂	منجل طويل
hoe	pur-o	عزق	|	hoe	ra-púr̂	معزق
scratch	gwạr-ọ	خدش	|	forked rake	rạ-gwạ́r̂	مدمّة
see	ŋịy-ọ	رأى	|	mirror	rạ-ŋị́ị̂	مرآة
strain	dhịŋ-ọ	صفّى	|	strainer	rạ-dhị́ŋ̂	مصفاة
pound	yọk-ọ	دق	|	pestle	rạ-yọ́k-ị̂	مدقة
pierce	cwọw-ọ	ثقب	|	piercing instrument	ra-cwọ́p-î	مثقاب
hold	mạk-o	مسك	|	tongs	rạ-mạ́k-ị̂	ممساك
plug up	din-o	سد	|	stopper	ra-dín̂	سدّادة
hang	ŋạw-ọ	علّق	|	peg for hanging	ra-ŋạ́ŵ	علاّقة
cover	um-o	غطّى	|	lid, cover	ra-úm̂	غطاء
show	nyis-o	أظهر	|	sign	ra-nyís-î	علامة
climb	ịdh-ọ	صعد	|	ladder	rạ-ị́dh-ị̂	سلّم