Mursi language

Mursi
ሙነን‎ (munɛn)
Native to	Ethiopia
Region	Central Omo
Ethnicity	Mursi
Native speakers	7,400 (2007 census) [1] [2]
Language family	Nilo-Saharan? Eastern Sudanic Southern Eastern Surmic South Southeast Pastoral Mursi
Writing system	Geʽez, Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3	muz
Glottolog	murs1242
ELP	Mursi

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. ^[3] The language is similar to Suri, another Southeast Surmic language spoken to the west of the Mursi language area. ^[4] 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. ^{[5] [6]} 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 /f/ and the voiceless stop /p/. ^[7]

Consonants of Mursi ^{[8] [9]}

		Labial	Alveolar	Postalveolar/ Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stop	voiceless		t	c ⟨č⟩	k	( ʔ )
	voiced	b	d	ɟ ⟨dʒ⟩	ɡ
Implosive		ɓ	ɗ
Fricative	voiceless		s	ʃ		h
	voiced		z
Nasal		m	n	ɲ	ŋ
Liquids			r , l
Approximant				j	w

• 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 [ ʔ ], claiming that it is phonetically inserted to break up vowel sequences. ^[10] Firew discusses this and leaves the question undecided, but includes the sound in the phoneme chart. ^[11]
• Firew classifies the alveolar implosive / ɗ / as postalveolar, without giving reasons. ^[12]

Vowels of Mursi ^[13]

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Close-mid	e		o
Open-mid	ɛ		ɔ
Open		a

• Both Mütze and Firew agree on the vowel inventory and on the chosen transcription, as shown above. ^[14]
• Even though vowel length appears phonetically in Mursi, it can be explained by the elision of weak consonants between identical vowels. ^[15]

Tone

Both Mütze ^[16] and Firew ^[17] agree that there are only two underlying tone levels in Mursi, as opposed to larger inventories proposed by Turton and Bender ^[18] and Moges. ^[19]

Grammar

The Mursi grammar makes use of the following parts of speech: nouns, ^[20] verbs, ^[21] adjectives, ^[22] pronouns, ^[23] adverbs, ^[24] adpositions, ^[25] question words, ^[26] quantifiers, ^[25] connectors, ^[27] discourse particles, ^[28] interjections, ^[29] ideophones, ^[25] and expressives. ^[25]

Nouns

Nouns can be inflected for number and case. ^[30] The number marking system is very complex, using suffixation, suppletion or tone to either mark plurals from singular bases, or singulatives from plural bases. ^[31] Mursi preverbal subjects and all objects are unmarked, ^[32] whereas postverbal subjects are marked by a nominative case. Further cases are the oblique case and the genitive case. ^[32] Modified nouns receive a special morphological marking called construct form by Mütze. ^[33]

References

1. "Ethiopian Census 2007". csa.gov.et. Addis Ababa: Ethiopian Central Statistics Agency. 2007. Archived from the original on 2011-07-28. Retrieved 9 July 2021.
2. Mursi at Ethnologue (27th ed., 2024)
3. Worku (2021), p. 1.
4. Worku (2021), pp. 19 f.
5. Worku (2021), pp. 36 f.
6. Dimmendaal, Gerrit J. (1998). "Surmic Languages and Cultures: an Introduction". In Dimmendaal, Gerrit J.; Last, Marco (eds.). Surmic Languages and Cultures. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag. pp. 35–81.
7. Worku (2021), p. 45.
8. Mütze (2014), p. 26.
9. Worku (2021), p. 46.
10. Mütze (2014), pp. 26 f.
11. Worku (2021), pp. 46 f.
12. Worku (2021), pp. 46, 49 f, he even several times calls it velar.
13. Mütze (2014), p. 37.
14. Worku (2021), p. 59.
15. Mütze (2014), p. 39.
16. Mütze (2014), p. 42.
17. Worku (2021), p. 86.
18. Turton & Bender (1976), p. 559.
19. Moges Yigezu (2001). A Comparative Study of the Phonetics and Phonology of Surmic Languages. Brussels: Université Libre de Bruxelles.
20. Worku (2021), p. 102.
21. Worku (2021), p. 128.
22. Worku (2021), p. 130.
23. Worku (2021), p. 132.
24. Worku (2021), p. 143.
25. Worku (2021), p. 151.
26. Worku (2021), p. 154.
27. Worku (2021), p. 161.
28. Worku (2021), p. 163.
29. Worku (2021), p. 168.
30. Mütze (2014), p. 47.
31. Worku (2021), ch. 6.2.
32. Mütze (2014), p. 53.
33. Mütze (2014), p. 62.

Bibliography

• Worku, Firew Girma (2021). A Grammar of Mursi: A Nilo-Saharan Language of Ethiopia (Thesis). Brill: Leiden. doi:10.1163/9789004449916.
• Yigezu, Moges; Turton, David (2005). "Latin Based Mursi Orthography". ELRC Working Papers. 1 (2). Addis Ababa: Ethiopian Languages Research Center: 242–57. Retrieved 9 July 2021.
• Mütze, Bettina (2014). A Sketch of the Mursi Language (MA thesis). Gloucester: Redcliff College, University of Gloucestershire.
• Turton, David; Bender, M. Lionel (1976). "Mursi". In Bender, M. Lionel (ed.). The Non-Semitic Languages of Ethiopia. East Lansing: African Studies Center, Michigan State University. pp. 533–561.
• Turton, David; Moges Yigezu; Oliserali Olibui (2008). Mursi-English-Amharic Dictionary. Addis Ababa: Culture and Arts Society of Ethiopia.

External links

• Mursi Online, University of Oxford
• Mursi basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database
• World Atlas of Language Structures information on Mursi