A Historical Reconstruction of the Koman Language Family
Datum
2020-02-27
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Verlag
University of Oregon
Zusammenfassung
This dissertation is a historical-comparative reconstruction of the Koman family, a small group of languages spoken in what now constitutes the borderlands of Ethiopia, Sudan and South Sudan. Koman is comprised five living languages: Gwama, Opo, Komo, Uduk, and the previously unidentified Dana language.
The Koman family has been relatively understudied though it has figured prominently in large-scale classifications of the Nilo-Saharan super family. These classifications are radically distinct, given the paucity of research on Koman as a whole at the time. Some current scholars even question Koman’s genetic affiliation to Nilo- Saharan entirely.
One main issue in high-level classifications is the lack of low-level reconstructions of families established with verifiable sound correspondences coupled with morphological evidence to support the internal structure of a given family. This dissertation addresses this issue by reconstructing the basic phonology, including segmental and suprasegmental domains, and tracing the evolution from Proto-Koman down through the nodes to the modern-day sound systems. In addition, some of the core lexicon and morphology is reconstructed to Proto-Koman and to the subnodes.
The data for this dissertation was collected in the field from native speakers of all of the living Koman languages including from previously undocumented varieties. In an effort to make the analyses as faithful to the data as possible, all of the data and all of the correspondence sets employed to reconstruct proto-sounds are provided in the Appendices. Further, an etymological wordlist of lexica reconstructed to distinct nodes within the family is also provided.
While Koman’s affiliation to the purported Nilo-Saharan super family is still under debate, the overarching aim of this dissertation is to provide a conservative reconstruction of Proto-Koman which will hopefully serve future Koman scholars as well as those interested in higher-level genetic classifications of East African languages.
Beschreibung
Schlagwörter
Historical Reconstruction, Koman, Nilo-Saharan