Comparative East Chadic B evidence on the Mubi pronominal series

Mubi is the best described member of a small "Mubic" subgroup consisting of Masmedje, Kajakse, and Zerenkel. The other members are much more poorly described, but enough can be gleaned from published materials to show that they share essentially the same system of subject pronominal suffix series with different syntactic functions.

For Masmedje, a short text is provided in Marti et al. (2007), from which much can be gleaned using Jungraithmayr's Mubi grammar. Sentence 3 is particularly illuminating:

wa	ka-sek-a	an-sual-ukun
and[?]	2-come.PFV-?	1Pl-ask-2Pl.I/td>
You (pl.) have come to ask us questions.

We also find examples of what seem to be 1Sg.III -ene (#9), 3Pl.I -ko (#6).

For Zerenkel, Ramat provides tac-ku "hit-3Sg.I", bar-kute "give-3MSg.II"; we've already seen -na "-1Sg.I", -ci "3FSg.I". Hunting through the untranslated texts might provide a fuller paradigm.

So it looks like this system is common across Mubic. What about its closest relatives, the Northern Guera languages? There, we find something reminiscent of Mubic, but a bit different: a distinction between preverbal subject proclitics (which do always seem to mark the subject, not the object) and postverbal subject suffixes, whose functions include marking subject continuity and object relativisation.

The best described of these, East Dangla (Shay 1999:125), has a distinction between preverbal subject markers (the default) and postverbal subject suffixes used when the subject is the same as in previous clauses. But the postverbal subject suffixes do not affect the interpretation of the immediate preverbal element, which remains a subject. Even if the object is fronted, the subject continues to intervene between it and the verb (ibid:130). Unfortunately, Shay does not describe the syntax of relative clauses in any detail, but every example of non-subject relativisation provided (pp. 95#24, 188#57, 213#63, 252#43) displays subject suffixes rather than subject prefixes.

For Bidiya, Alio (1986:222) makes the latter point explicit: object relativisation forces the verb of the relative clause to use the subject agreements suffixes, rather than the proclitics. The functional distinction between the two does not seem to be otherwise discussed, but examples (e.g. p. 347) again make it clear that the suffixes do not affect the interpretation of the preverbal position, which continues to be reserved for subjects.

For Migama, Jungraithmayr and Adams' (1992) sketch grammar reveals three different subject proclitic series, but no suffixed subject agreement series at all.

Further afield in the Southern Guera languages, we find even less in common with the Mubic system. As far as the materials available to me suggest, it seems that subjects there are simply preverbal irrespective of pronominal or morphological status, and irrespective of the syntactic context.

In Barain, "Subjects are primarily encoded by word order, being the only argument before the verb. Subjects pronouns appear to occur in the same syntactic position as other subjects" (Lovestrand 2012:132); pronominal elements suffixed to the verb are simply direct or indirect objects. The same structure applies in relative clauses (ibid:189). For Gali (Jungraithmayr and Peust 2019) and Saba (Jungraithmayr 2020), the brief sketches available likewise indicate that subject pronouns only precede the verb.

Putting this together, we start to get an idea of where the Mubi system might have come from. I assume that proto-Chadic basic word order was VSO, as still in some of its descendants. In proto-East Chadic B, the default word order was probably already SVO (fully generalised in Southern Guera), but VS was still preferred in object extraction contexts and for old information subjects, morphologising into a new subject suffix series in Northern Guera and Mubic. Old information subject contexts would notably have included object focus, a context for which fronting is cross-linguistically widely preferred; after the morphologisation, this would have led to the subject suffix series becoming obligatory when the object directly precedes the verb. Mubic overgeneralised this correlation, reinterpreting the subject suffix series as requiring the NP preceding the verb to be interpreted as its object.

Relativisation in Mubi and Zerenkel

The remarkable voice system described for Mubi seems to interact with relativisation, but textual data is scarce. In textual examples of subject relativisation, the same suffix shows up that Jungraithmayr describes as forming attributive adjectives; compare:

njó	tú	gì	hìtt-ìt	sàhíi	tú
person	?	M.REL	pronounce.IPFV-ADJ	truth	?
a person who speaks the truth (Jungraithmayr 2013:64, 115)

jóról	gì	mèed-ít
jackal	M.REL	die.PFV-ADJ
a dead jackal / a jackal which has died

Lukas gives phrasal examples where there is clearly no suffix, but are they really relatives?

njóo	gàŋ	húwútà	bògòs
person	M.DEM.DIST	fish[V].IPFV	fish.PL
fisherman = a person who catches fish (Lukas 1937:159)

What about when you relativise on a direct object? In the two textual examples found, the subject agreement seems to be from Series III (not I, as I would have expected); but perhaps these verbs take obliques rather than direct objects in Mubi. Thus:

lì	gì	fány-gát
thing	M.REL	want.PFV-2MSg.II/III
the thing that you want [whatever you want] (Jungraithmayr 2013:147)

lì	gì	wáa-got	wàaró	gà
thing	M.REL	call.PFV-3Pl.III	grain	DEM.M
this thing that they call grain (Jungraithmayr 2013:139)

The only other Mubic language for which data is available behaves reasonably similarly. In Zerenkel subject relativisation, we see what might be the same attributive suffix in some cases, whose -t is lost in Zerenkel:

ro	ga	guwaan-i	weyya
man	M.REL	cultivate.IPFV-ADJ?	field
the man who cultivates the field (Ramat 2017)

although the verb may instead appear with Series I for clause-internal reasons independent of relativisation:

luk	da	na	umma	ci
woman	F.REL	1Sg	see.IPFV	3FSg.I
the woman who sees me (Ramat 2017)

In object relativisation, it looks as though we see Series I as expected:

luk	da	umma	na
woman	F.REL	see.IPFV	1Sg.I
the woman whom I see (Ramat 2017)

Notes on Mubi syntax

Looking over Jungraithmayr's Mubi grammar again recently, I think I managed to make sense of the subject paradigms. Presumably all this was clear to Jungraithmayr, but it certainly wasn't clear to me, nor was it mapped to cross-linguistic typological categories; it may therefore be useful to comment.

At first sight, Mubi looks like its basic order is SVOX, as in sentences like:

màb-í	nyúbùt	rúm-jí	á	sìrèebí-jí
grandmother-1SgGen	carry_on_back.PFV	daughter-3FSgGen	LOC	rib-3FSgGen
My grandmother carries her daughter on her side. (Jungraithmayr 2013:153)

However, the reality is a little more complicated. Basically: Mubi syntax has what I suppose is a focus slot immediately before the verb, which can be filled by a noun phrase or by a short pronoun ("pronom personnel sujet préposé"). The syntactic role of an element in this slot is determined not by its position alone, but crucially also by what immediately follows the verb stem:

• If the verb has no pronominal suffixes, the preverbal element is the subject.
• If the verb has a pronominal suffix, the preverbal element is the object, whose interpretation depends on the subject suffix series:
  • J's "série I" puts the verb into object voice (cf. Remijsen on Shilluk) - that is, it promotes the direct object to this position;
  • J's "série II" puts the verb into benefactive voice - that is, it promotes the indirect object to this position;
  • J's "série III" puts the verb into applicative voice - that is, it promotes what would otherwise have been the object of a preposition (typically tí "with") to this position.

In relative clauses too, the head is treated as if it filled the preverbal slot (and, indeed, does precede the verb of the relative clause).

When arguments are not promoted, they remain postverbal; there are two distinct suffixed object pronoun series for direct and indirect objects respectively.

It is possible to have a ditransitive sentence with both objects postverbal, e.g.:

báar-á	tògò	gì	ʔjúrúk	à	sùltân
give.PFV-3MSg.0[!]	skin	Gen.M	leopard	to	Sultan
He gave the skin of the leopard to the sultan ("er gab der Fell des Leoparden dem Sultan" - Lukas 1937:177)

dì	lìî	kòrré	à	lòk
3FSg	make.PFV	beer	to	women
She made millet beer for the women. (Jungraithmayr 2013:143)

However, Jungraithmayr gives plenty of examples where one or the other is preverbal, in which case the appropriate subject pronoun series is used:

ká	háráɗí-ndé	sèerí
2MSg	tie-1Sg.II	rope
I tied the rope for you. (Jungraithmayr 2013:44)

ár	lúk	ngér-gu-dó
3MSg	woman	find.PFV-3MSg.I-1SgDat
He found a woman for me. (Jungraithmayr 2013:43)

It is also possible to use these series without any overt preverbal element, e.g.

íwín-gu	mà	cíi-gú,	ɓée-gút	á	gùrá-t
tie.PFV-3MSg.I	and	take.PFV-3MSg.I,	go-3MSg.II	to	bush-3MSg.Gen
He tied him and took him, went with him [brought him] into the bush. (Jungraithmayr 2013:43)

It looks like cases like this can most easily be interpreted elliptically, as featuring a null preverbal "pronoun".

So here we have a system that gives SVO if the verb lacks subject agreement, but SOV (one way or another) whenever it does have agreement. This is curiously reminiscent of West Nilotic. Anywaa is kind of the inverse: you get OVS if the verb lacks subject agreement, but SOV if it has it. The choice among subject agreement series is functionally very similar to what we see in Shilluk, where the preverbal argument is interpreted as a subject if the verb is in subject voice, an object if the verb is in object voice, and an instrument if the verb is in applicative voice, while all other arguments follow the verb. But Shilluk differs in that, unless the verb is in subject voice, the subject is marked by a preposition.

For completeness, here are (most of) the forms, somewhat simplified:

	free	short	I = object voice	II = benefactive voice	III = applicative voice	DO	IO	Poss
1sg	ndé	ní	-nà	-ndé	-én	-din	-dó	-̀í
2msg	kám	ká	-ká	-kát	-kát	-d(og)a	-(d)(ìg)á	-̀dá
2fsg	kín	kí	-ké	-két	-két	-dige	-(d)ìgé	-̀jí
3msg	ár	à	-kū	-kút	-kūt	-dar / -é	-(d)ìgí	- V́t
3fsg	tír	dì	-kī	-kít	-kīt	-dir	-(d)ìgí	-́jí
1exc	éné	á	-(á)nē	-nét	-ànēt	-dìné	-dìné	-́jìné
1inc	áná	á	-(á)nā	-nát	-ànāt	-dá	-dá	-́já
2pl	kéné	ká	-kún	-kún	-kún	-dùgún	-dùgún	-̀júgún
3pl	kér	kà	-kō	-kót	-kōt	-dugur / -á	-dùgó, -dógór	-́jó

We may notice that the benefactive and applicative are nearly the same, but with traces of an extra vocalic element preceding the agreement in the applicative; both show obvious traces of what must once have been a stranded preposition tí "with" at the end. Both the DO and IO series appear to show the same element before the pronominal marker rather than after it, oddly reminiscent of Hebrew ʔɛṯ. All three voice series show a curious -k- preceding the 3rd person forms.

Three Mubi proverbs via YouTube

In an episode of "Chadian Wisdom and Proverbs", Yaqub Muhammad Musa discusses three Mubi proverbs, providing the Mubi versions along with translation and extensive commentary in Arabic. Mubi is comparatively well-documented as East Chadic languages go, thanks primarily to Jungraithmayr's excellent 2013 monograph; but even this miniscule corpus reveals some aspects of the language that I was unable to find there.

Proverb 1:

njó	mà	lĭí-lò	gùbá,	ùfáad	à	mìlá
person	if	have.PFV-NEG	big.M,	fall.IMPF	in	well
"If a person has no elder, s/he will fall into a well."
الما عنده كبير، يقع في البير

Every element of this proverb is attested in Jungraithmayr, but the phonology contains some surprises: I hear a secondary gemination after the preposition à which is not discussed, and in ùfáad we observe that regular final devoicing fails to hold, presumably due to the following vowel. Moreover, mà is glossed there as "et, puis" (and, then), which is clearly not the intended sense here.

Proverb 2:

sín-dá	mà	báagì	ɗíil-ít,	ísì	wèelít-ɗò	àagŏ
brother-2M	if	[remaining]	sweet-ADJ,	refuse(?)	lick.PFV-NEG	a.lot
"If your brother is sweet, don't lick him a lot"
أخوك كان بقي عسل، ما تلحسه زيادة

Based on the Arabic version of the proverb, I assume báagì is a loan from Arabic, corresponding to classical bāqī "remaining", and functioning as a sort of copula; it's not in Jungraithmayr. ísì is not there either; in fact, J doesn't discuss the formation of negative imperatives at all that I can see. But it matches well with the attested verb íisí "to refuse", and presumably reflects grammaticalisation from that (cf. Latin noli). So this gives us a new construction.

Proverb 3:

írín-dà	máar	kà	sùsúm-gī	ísì	héegín-nò
eye-2M	even.if(?)	2M	itch-3F	refuse(?)	scratch.PFV-NEG
"Even if your eye itches you, don't scratch it"
عينك دي كان قاعدة تاكلك دا ما تحكّه

Here, máar is just a guess informed by context; no such form is found in J. But we find a second instance of the prohibitive construction, as well as an otherwise unattested verb sùsúm "itch". Note the OV-S construction, which alternates with SV-O under circumstances which seem to remain a mystery.

The fact that new things can be discovered about Mubi from a recording this short illustrates just how much remains to be done in terms of describing this morphologically fascinatingly complex language. At the same time, it tends to confirm the high accuracy of J's transcriptions. I hope further study will be possible.

The *Bugzu of Bagzan?

Mt. Băgzăn, at the heart of the predominantly Tuareg-speaking Air massif in Niger, bears a not very Tuareg-looking name. The only Berber meaning for the root BGZ found in Nait-Zerrad is a word used by the neighbouring Iwellemmedan, taken from Alojaly's dictionary: ebăgez, pl. ibəgzan "vessel for dogs or for rubbish"; this corresponds regularly to Tahaggart ebăǵăh, pl. ibəǵhan "crude vase or plate (used for giving dogs their food and for gathering rubbish)", with a feminine tebăǵăht, pl. tibəǵhin "flat, slightly concave instrument used as a dustpan" (Foucauld). Not a root one would want to reconstruct very far back in Berber, nor an obvious source for the name of a mountain.

Hausa provides a surely related form that may shed light on the term's history: the ethnonym būzu < *bugzu (by Klingenheben's Law, as shown by the pl. bugā̀jē) "serf of the Azben [Air] people" (Bargery). The term refers to ex-slaves, iklan, what in Mali would be called Bella. It presumably does not share an etymology with būzu pl. būzā̀yē "undressed skin mat, loin-cloth", with no *g, for which Skinner (1996) gathers plausible cognates elsewhere in Chadic.

Combining the two, we get what looks like a brief glimpse of morphology: the homeland of the *Bugzu is *Bagzan (perhaps their manufactures included crude plates). From a Tuareg perspective, -ăn looks like a masculine plural ending; but the specific vowel alternation would be hard to explain Tuareg-internally, though Tuareg has a-ablaut in other plural types. From a Chadic perspective, one is reminded of the -n plurals of Bade and Ngizim, e.g. Bade zawa-n pl. zawa-n-ən "stick" (Schuh ms), Ngizim gâzbə́r̃ pl. gázbàarín "tall" (Schuh ms, 1972); Ngizim even offers parallels for the vowel alternation, and a-ablaut plurals are widespread in Chadic more generally. The Bade-Ngizim subgroup includes geographically the closest Chadic varieties spoken to the Air besides Hausa, located almost due south of the Air, so it seems a promising point of comparison; could the *Bugzu have spoken a since lost West Chadic B.1 language? But of course, nothing guarantees that Bagzan should be an old plural; perhaps -ăn was a locative suffix, or something else entirely.

I wouldn't be surprised if some early 20th century work proposes this connection, but I haven't come across it in the literature so far; if you have, let me know.

Unifying Mubi -oo- plurals

NB: Sorry, no tone marking today – might throw it in later.

We’ve seen two productive plural allomorphs characterized by round vowels: BVCV > BuCooC vs. BVVCV [-front] > BooCuC. Let’s see where -oo- shows up in the plurals of longer nouns.

Nouns of the form BVCVD(V) [-front] tend to take a plural in BuCooDu (the reduplicative plural horoɗyo > horoɗyuc, discussed last time, seems to be isolated):

• jorol “fox” > juroolu
• ɗoloso “lynx” > ɗuloosu
• kabada “red fig” > kuboodu
• jubugo “arrow” > juboogu
• wasaga “thread” > wusoogu

In two cases, a suffix -k is added, with what seems to be dissimilation of *-guk > -yuk:

• fidak “mat” > fudooyuk
• cagada “hut” > cugooduk

Formally, despite the shape and the front vowel (which may lead us to rethink the conditioning), the following cases fit this pattern as well:

• kurri “chicken” (assimilated from *kurɗi) > kurooɗuk
• urde “granary” > urooduk

In another two cases, both ending in -k, the expected final vowel is omitted:

• tamak “sheep” > tumook
• koɗogo “toe-ring” > kuɗook

And, as we saw last time, in one case the final consonant is irregularly reduplicated:

• bodol “road” > budoolul

If a long vowel is present and this plural type is used, vowel length is normally preserved; thus BVCVVDV yields BuCooDu – sometimes, as above, the final vowel is omitted to end in -k:

• ɗyubaago “blind” > ɗyuboogu
• sinyaaro “cat” > sinyooru (the i in the first syllable is probably caused by the following palatal)
• duwaago “dorcas gazelle” > duwok (with unexpected shortening of the last vowel)

but BVVCVDV yields BooCuD(u):

• gaayimo “wildcat” > gooyumu
• kaarumo “fingernail” > koorum

On the other hand, we also find the variant plural gaayimo > guyoomu, suggesting that BuCooDu is starting to be generalized.

What about longer nouns? In those, frontness is irrelevant...

A nasal followed by a voiced stop (except in the Arabic borrowing (a)ngumbul "calabash" > (a)ngunoobul) behaves like vowel length, so BVNDVF(V) > Bo(o)CDuF:

• tengil “calf” > tongul
• minjilo “Mubi person” > monjul
• humbuk “hedgehog” > hoombuk

In the few relevant examples available, BVCVDFV(GV) > BuCoDFu(G), whether D is nasal or not:

• gomorko “basket” > gumorku
• suwangot “Arab” > suwongu
• aranjala “kidney” > uronjul

Otherwise, four-consonant nouns BVCDVF(V), BVCV(V)DVF(V) overwhelmingly (15 out of 24 examples) map to BuCooDuF:

• ɗurgul “donkey” > ɗuroogul
• kalman “in-law” > kuloomun
• sunsuna “tale” > sunoosun
• kasagar “sword” > kusoogur
• kodoguno “sorcerer” > kudoogun
• giraakumo “molar” > gurookum

Now we can finally start to put things together: all of these seem to be mapping to subsets of a notional template CuCo(o/C)CuCu, in a predictable fashion.

If the first syllable is long or includes the first half of a prenasalized stop, you drop the initial Cu:

BVVC >	Cu[BooCuC]u
BVVCV >	Cu[BooCuC]u
BVVCVD(V) >	Cu[BooCuDu]
BVNDVF(V) >	Cu[BoCDuF]u

If the first syllable is open and the second one is closed, you get oC instead of oo:

BVCVDFV >	[BuCoDFu]Cu
BVCVDFVG >	[BuCoDFuG]u

Otherwise, you just proceed from left to right, always respecting the requirement that the output have at least 2 syllables:

BVCV >	[BuCooC]uCu
BVCDV >	[BuCooDuk]u
BVCVC(V) >	[BuCooDu]Cu
BVCVVD(V) >	[BuCooDu]Cu
BVCDVF(V) >	[BuCooDuF]u
BVCV(V)DVF(V) >	[BuCooDuF]u

So we’re starting to get somewhere. But this opens up a new can of worms: do some geminate-internal plurals belong here too? And where do those BaaCaC plurals fit into the system now? Those questions will have to wait for another time.

Reduplicative plurals in Mubi

Yesterday we saw that the dominant plural type for CVC / CVVCV stems, CVVDvD, can be given a unified analysis. How does this generalize to other stem types?

Plurals with final reduplication, dominant for CVC / CVVCV stems, are much less common for other stem shapes. For CV(C)CV stems, however, we do find a reasonable number of reduplicative plurals, this time in -o(o)C:

• sùwá "calabash" > sùwòw
• tògò "skin" > tùgók
• rìwwí "song" > rèwòw
• màbò "old" > mùbóop
• cóɓɓì "lance" > cúɓóop
• lánjá "friend" > lúnjóoc

(There is also one reduplicative plural in -eC - kúrɗyí "buttock" > kòrɗyèc - which seems difficult to reduce to the same pattern. It suggests that height harmony may apply to short vowels too, in which case we might blame sùwòw above on the influence of the semivowel.)

In Mubi, final VVC seems to be rare in simplex words. In monosyllables, it occurs only in loans, while elsewhere, it mainly shows up in imperfectives (cf. Jungraithmayr 2013:31). We may very tentatively suppose that in some common plurals it has been reduced to VC. Reduction of vowel length in final VVC also allows us to revise our analysis from yesterday to take into account bàŋ "mouth" > bòŋúŋ; a surface CVC stem may be underlying *CVC or *CVVC, and the vowel length in the plural reflects that rather than changing the stem.

Apart from the issue of vowel length, the rules outlined so far would yield the following (or, if we assumed that height harmony applies to short vowels too, the forms in brackets):

• sùwòw (*sòwòw)
• *tògók
• *rìwwòw (*rèwwòw)
• *màbóop (*mòbóop)
• *cóɓɓóop
• *lánjóoc (*lónjóoc)

A rule spreading roundness along the lines of a,o > u / _Coo seems feasible, judging by the lexicon, and fixes some of the problems above (not sure what's going on with "song"):

• sùwòw
• *tògók
• *rìwwòw
• mùbóop
• *cùɓɓóop
• lúnjóoc

But that can't be the whole story here. If bòdòl (see below) is a possible word, then so is *tògók; and there's no general ban on geminates in these positions, cp. wíccáak "to jump about while dancing (impf.)". Instead, there seems to be a templatic element here, whereby the vowel before the plural o/oo has been generalized to be u irrespective of the input, and the consonant before it must not be geminate. Insofar as these involve fixed vowels inside the stem, that strengthens the case for a comparable analysis of the previous data, which is feasible for CooDuD plurals. Integrating the -oC plurals seen above, we can thus reformulate the reduplicative plural as follows:

sg. BV(C/D)DV => pl. Bu(C)DooD (with sporadic reduction to -oD)
sg. BVVD(v) [-front] => pl. BooDuD
sg. BVVD(v) [+front] => pl. BVVDaD

Note that the internal vowel lengths and positions of the singular are preserved in the plural in all three of these; only stem-final vowels are affected.

For other stem shapes, reduplicative plurals seem to be sporadic, mostly involving words whose last consonant is a liquid. I can only find 3 clear instances of -uC in Jungraithmayr's lexicon for them, and 1 of -aC:

• bòdòl "road" > bùdòolúl
• kòròojó "small calabash" > kòròojúc
• ɗíngírí "branch" > ɗìngéerúr
• gúrlí "testicle" > gòrlàl

Once again, the internal vowel positions of the singular are preserved in the plural, if not necessarily the lengths. However, the predictions of our previous hypothesis are thus slightly off in two cases; we would have expected:

• *bòdòolúl
• kòròojúc
• *ɗìngéerár (or, if we force a -uD plural despite the front vowels, *ɗìngúurúr)
• gòrlàl

For ɗìngéerúr, no explanation for the -uC comes to mind; it is tempting to hope that this one is a typo. For bùdòolúl, however, a templatic explanation for the irregularity is at hand: CuCooCuC is, as we will hopefully see in a later post, the dominant plural template in Mubi for four-consonant nouns, which behave rather differently from what we've seen so far.

Now we've covered final reduplication plurals (glossing over a couple of irregulars, notably gìn "face" > gèenín / gànàn). This leads on naturally into another set of plurals, likewise featuring long vowels but without reduplication; if everything goes well, we can look at those next time.

Pluralizing Mubi biradical nouns

(Attention conservation notice: Kind of technical...)
NB: Updated with important corrections shortly after posting, following discussion with Marijn van Putten.

To better understand the Mubi plural system (following up on last time), let's start with two-consonant nouns of the form CVVCV and CVC (not CVCV, which has different default plural templates). Most of these take a CVVDvD plural with reduplication of the final consonant, with the vowels accounted for by the following correspondences:

• CeeDi > CaaDaD, e.g. gèébí "horn" > gàabàp (final consonants automatically devoice)
• CiiDi > CeeDaD, e.g. lìísí "tongue" > lèesàs
• CooDi, CuuDi, CuD > CooDaD, e.g. fùúdí "thigh" > fòodàt
• CooDo > either CooDaD or CooDuD, e.g. góoró "throat" > gòoràr; zòoró "tributary river" > zòorúr
• CaD, CaaD, CeD, CoD, CaaDo > CooDuD, e.g. fáaɓó "breast" > fòoɓúp

(No such nouns end in -a, -e, or -u.)

There seem to be no instances in the lexicon of *iiCa or *uuCa (the only case of iiCaa is in an Arabic loanword); nor are there cases of *aaCi or *aaCu, except in manifest loans like áarìt pl. àwáarìt "devil" (Arabic ʕifriit), with the odd exceptions of gíráakúmò "molar" and káarúmo "fingernail". We may thus assume that there is backwards spread of height from the short vowel to the long vowel preceding it. The latter may be mid but must not be the opposite height to the short one, with conflicts resolved by changing to mid and harmonising for frontness and roundness:

• ii > ee / _a
• uu > oo / _a
• aa > ee / _i
• aa > oo / _u

Generalizing the latter point, it also looks like roundness spreads backwards to a long vowel in a preceding syllable, i.e.:

• ee > oo / _o, u
• ii > uu / _o, u

On a quick glance through the lexicon, the only exceptions I can see to this are vocalised semivowels as in hàaɗáw, pf. héeɗû "knead". This allows us to reinterpret CeeDi above as /CaaDi/, and CooDo as either /CeeDo/ or /CooDo/. We thus get a nice distribution of allomorphs: -aD if the singular contains an underlying front vowel, -uD if not:

• *CaaDi > CaaDaD
• CiiDi > *CiiDaD
• CooDi > CooDaD
• CuuDi, CuD > *CuuDaD
• *CeeDo > CooDaD
• CooDo, CoD > CooDuD
• CaD, CaaD, CaaDo > *CaaDuD
• CeD > *CeeDuD

Now we can almost rewrite the rule rather simply to unite all these cases:

sg. CVD, CVVDv [+front] => pl. CVVDaD
sg. CVD, CVVDv [-front] => pl. CVVDuD

The problem with this reformulation is that CooDo < *CeeDo nouns take a plural in CooDaD, not *CeeDaD. Perhaps this is best understood as an effect of the deleted final vowel: the delinked /o/ relinks to the previous vowel. But if so, this only applies for rounding, not for fronting...

This information, missing from the published grammar, gives us some of the necessary background to understand where those pesky CuCooDuC plurals might come from... But that's a story that still needs work, to be continued later perhaps.

Mubi plurals from Arabic

Mubi, an East Chadic language spoken in the Guera Mountains of eastern Chad, stands out even in Chadic for the sheer complexity of its plural system, and all the more so for its extensive use of internal vowel changes. This seems likely to give it particular relevance for the reconstruction of Afroasiatic. However, Mubi is also profoundly influenced by Chadian Arabic, to a greater degree than even an Arabic-speaker might suppose at first sight. How much of Mubi's plural system reflects Arabic influence?

Looking through Jungraithmayr's (2013) La Langue Mubi^review, I find 14 plurals of the form BaCaaDi(i)F (e.g. àbàlány "patas monkey", pl. àbàalîny) and 5 of the form BaCaaDo/u (e.g. móngò "monkey sp." > mánáagò). Of these, 9 and 4 respectively are found in Jullien de Pommerol's (1999) Dictionnaire arabe tchadien-français (including, to my surprise, both the previous examples), and many of the remainder seem semantically likely to be features of some more localized Arabic variety (e.g. mánjàk "village chief" pl. mànáajìk, various ethnonyms). It seems rather clear that these two plural types are borrowed from Arabic; but there is no strong evidence that they have been extended to inherited vocabulary.

For the closely related plural form BaCaaDiFe, we find 3 examples, of which only one is definitely of Arabic origin: shàddáarì "shaman" (i.e. "herbalist", based on Chadian Arabic šadar < šajar), pl. shàdáadìrè. Suffixation of -e is not otherwise typical of Mubi plurals, and matches perfectly with the Arabic plural in BaCāDiF-ah; it thus seems reasonable to consider this plural type as a borrowing from Arabic as well. If so, it provides us with one good candidate for an extension to inherited vocabulary. Mubi érìny "scorpion", pl. àráarínyè is comparable to other East Chadic forms in its singular, eg Dangaleat ɛ́rîndílɛ̀ pl. ɛ́ríndílnà, Toram irindeeɗà pl. irindeɗ, Kajakse ʔàràari pl. ʔàràaràk (Fedry 1971, Alio 2004), but disagrees strikingly with them in its plural.

At first sight, one is tempted to go further and conclude that the plural types BuCooDuF and BiCeeDiF are also adaptations of the Arabic iambic plural. But the evidence in those cases is not so clearcut. BiCeeDiF is only attested for a single word with no Arabic counterpart that I've been able to find (dólgúm "a type of basket", pl. díléegìm.) BuCooDuF is far more frequent than BaCaaDi(i)F and seems to contain a much greater proportion of inherited vocabulary, although some Chadian Arabic loans are found as well (e.g. àngúmbùl "calabash", pl. àngùnóobùl, corresponding to Chadian Arabic amgunbul pl. amganâbil). Moreover, it can plausibly be unified with another plural schema with no possible Arabic counterpart, BuCoDFuG, e.g. áránjálà "kidney", pl. ùrònjúl. For the time being, it seems prudent to withhold judgement on the explanation for why these two plural types are so strikingly reminiscent of the Arabic iambic plural.

Other Arabic plurals borrowed only for the corresponding Arabic nouns include BuCuuD (e.g. tês "billy-goat", pl. túyúùs), BiCiDaan (e.g. jédì "dorcas fawn", pl. jídíyáàn), and the sound masculine plural suffix -iin (e.g. máanì "strong", pl. màanìʔíìn). In the case of the sound feminine plural suffix -a(a)t, only two of the four examples in Jungraithmayr are clearly of Arabic origin (àntàháarà "mantis", pl. àntàhàarât; ràbàʔíyè "young woman", pl. ràbàʔìyáàt.) The other two look suggestively Arabic, however (ìrèedíyè "small granary", pl. ìrèedìyât; ròomìyè "crushing-stone", pl. ròomìyáàt), and this plural type too probably consists entirely of Arabic loans.

So far, it looks like in Mubi, as in Berber, Arabic influence has had the effect of further complicating an already very complex plural system. But Mubi is spoken in a far more multilingual context than most Berber varieties; one wonders whether some of the complexity here might be due to contact with regional languages other than Arabic as well...

fatta: a loan from Chadic into Songhay?

The Proto-Chadic word for "go out" was reconstructed by Newman and Ma (1966) as *p-t-, with attested reflexes in all primary subgroups of the family; the best known of these is of course (West Chadic A.1) Hausa fìtā.  The vowels vary across languages, and there is often no final vowel.  Only one subgroup, as far as I can see on a quick check, shows the consistent vocalisation *patā: the Bole languages (West Chadic A.2), spoken in Nigeria's Yobe State along the boundary between Hausa and Kanuri.  Thus Bole pàtā, Ngamo hàtâ, Karekare fàtā.

Most Songhay varieties have reflexes of two near-synonyms for "go out": *hùnú and *fáttá.  Usually, the distinction seems to be roughly "leave (a place or event)" vs. "go out of (an enclosed or concealed space)".  In Northern Songhay - the subgroup most isolated from the rest for longest, spoken in the Sahara - only reflexes of *hùnú seem to be attested, covering both senses (eg Korandje hnu).  This could be interpreted as reflecting Northern Songhay's general tendency to reduce its inherited vocabulary by widening the usage of generic terms.  In light of the Chadic data, however, it is tempting to interpret it the other way around: did Northern Songhay preserve the original situation, while a West Chadic borrowing spread throughout the rest of the family via the Niger River?

Shoes in Songhay and West Chadic: towards an etymology

The proto-Songhay word for "(pair of) shoes, sandals" is *tàgmú (Zarma tà:mú, Kandi tà:mú, Gao taam-i, Hombori tà:mí, Kikara tă:m, Djenne taam, Tadaksahak taɣmú, Korandje tsaɣmmu). It is evidently related to a less widely attested verb *tàgmá "step on" (Zarma tà:mú, Gao taama, Hombori tà:mà, Djenne taam). (Velar stop codas are lost in all of Songhay except the Northern branch, leaving behind either compensatory lengthening or a w; see Souag 2012.)

In Hausa, the word for "shoe, boot, sandal" is tà:kàlmí: (borrowed directly into the Songhay (Dendi) variety of Djougou as tàkăm). Within Hausa, this likewise corresponds to a verb tá:kà: "step on". The two-way similarity is striking, but if there was borrowing, which way did it go? A cognate set in Schuh (2008) casts some light on the question.

Hausa belongs to the West Chadic family, in which the best comparison to Hausa "shoe" seems to be Bole tàkà(:), with no obvious cognates within its own subgroup, Bole-Tangale (Ngamo tà:hò looks similar, but Ngamo h seems normally to correspond to Bole p, not k.) For "step on", however, Schuh points to a potential cognate set in a slightly more distantly related West Chadic subgroup, Bade. In this subgroup, we have Gashua Bade tà:gɗú, Western Bade tàgɗú, Ngizim tàkɗú which Schuh analyses as *tàk- plus an unproductive verbal extension -ɗu supported by Bade-internal evidence, eg tə̀nkùku "press" vs. tə̀nkwàkùɗu "massage". Within Bole-Tangale, one might speculate that Gera tàndə̀- is cognate, but Gera seems to be known only from short wordlists, so that would be difficult to show.

So the comparative evidence provides some support for the idea that Hausa tá:kà: "step on" goes back to proto-West Chadic. If tà:kàlmí: "shoe" could be regularly derived from this verb within Chadic, then the answer would appear clear: Songhay borrowed it from Chadic. However, while Hausa frequently forms deverbal nouns with a suffix -i: (Newman (2000:157), there seems to be no plausible language-internal explanation for the -lm-. In Songhay, on the other hand, a suffix -mi forming nouns from verbs (sometimes -m-ey with a former plural suffix stuck on) is reasonably well-attested: Gao (Heath 1999:97) dey "buy" vs. dey-mi "purchase (n.)", key "weave" vs. key-mi "weaving", Kikara (Heath 2005:97-98) kà:rù "go up" vs. kàr-mɛ̂y "going up", húná "live" vs. hùnà-mɛ̀y "long life". A shift *-mi to *-mu seems natural enough, especially since a few Songhay varieties actually have reflexes of "shoe" with a final -i in any case; so the Songhay form looks kind of like it could be **tàg "step on" plus deverbal -mí̀. To top it off, deverbal noun-forming suffixes in -r- are widely attested in Songhay, and Zarma attests a combined suffix -àr-mì: zànjì "break" vs. zànjàrmì "shard", bágú "break" vs. bàgàrmì "piece of debris" (Tersis 1981:244). If we treat the Hausa form as a borrowing from Songhay, we can then analyse it as **tàg "step on" plus deverbal -àr-mí. But before we get carried away, we should note that within Songhay there's no motivation for analysing the -mu / -mi in "shoe" as a suffix; the verb and the noun differ (if at all) only in the final vowel.

So what to make of all this? So far, the scenario that suggests itself is something like the following:

1. Songhay borrows a verb *tàk "step on" from West Chadic (or vice versa?).
2. Songhay internally forms a deverbal noun *tàk-mí "shoe" (there is no reconstructible contrast between *k and *g in coda position in proto-Songhay), alongside a variant *tàk-àr-mí.
3. Hausa borrows this as tà:kàlmí:.
4. Songhay replaces *tàk with a denominal verb formed from "shoe" (which becomes internally unanalysable): *tàgm-á. This step has possible internal motivations: in most of Songhay, final velar stops disappeared leaving behind only compensatory lengthening on the preceding vowel, and the resulting form tà: would have been homophonous with the much commoner verb "receive, take".
5. Djougou Dendi, a heavily Hausa-influenced, somewhat creolized Songhay variety spoken in Benin, borrows the Hausa form as tàkăm.

Further Chadic comparative data may yet turn out to bear upon this etymology, but one thing seems clear: these two families have been affecting each other for a long time.

Gravitational waves and lexical diffusion

Recently, the detection of gravitational waves made headlines all over the world. These waves were only hypothesised a century ago, and have literally never been consciously experienced by a human being before. Apart from a few physics fans, most people had (still have?) never heard of them. That means that, this month, millions of people all over the world are learning, for the first time, how to say "gravitational waves" in their own language, entirely as a result of media coverage. For the official languages of First World countries, determining how to say "gravitational waves" was simply a matter of looking it up in a dictionary, or consulting a physicist; the groundwork had been laid long since for terms such as the following (morphemes separated by dots). In most European languages, even the term for "gravity" and/or "gravitational" had been borrowed wholesale from Latin, and all that had needed doing was to translate "wave" and add appropriate inflectional morphology:

• French: onde.s gravitation.nel.le.s (wave-Pl gravity-Adj-F-Pl)
• German: Gravitation.s.wellen (gravity-LK-wave-NomPl)
• Spanish: onda.s gravitacion.al.es (wave-Pl gravitation-Adj-Pl)

Of course, Latin is not the only classical language; Japanese, for one, had opted to coin a term out of morphemes borrowed from Chinese:

• Japanese: 重力波 (jū.ryoku.ha; weight-force-wave)

In the Third World, the naming problem is a little less straightforward. There are plenty of physicists speaking Arabic, for example, but it cannot even automatically be assumed that an Arabic-speaking physicist will be capable of talking about physics in Arabic; many not only work but even teach in a foreign language. Nevertheless, the mere fact of a language being extensively used in media and teaching guarantees that it already contains expressions for "gravity" and "gravitational", not to speak of "wave", and makes it probable that they had already been combined, as in the following expressions:

• Arabic: usually أمواج الجاذبية (ʔamwāj al-jāđib.iyyah, wave.Pl Def-puller.Abstr) - but NASA says this is wrong and it should be الأمواج الثقالية (al-ʔamwāj al-ṯiqāl.iyy.ah Def-wave.Pl Def-gravitation-Adj-FSg)
• Persian: امواج گرانشی (amvɑj-e gerɑn.eš.i, wave.Pl-LK heavy-Abstr-Adj)
• Turkish: kütle çekimsel dalgalar (mass pull-Abstr wave-Pl)

For languages not lucky enough to enjoy official status, the issue poses more difficulties. The BBC's Hausa service heroically managed to coin or find a term for "gravitational waves" in Hausa - a language with no specific word for "wave" - but one wonders how physicists, to say nothing of ordinary speakers, feel about it...

• Hausa: toroƙon maganaɗisun duniyoyi (tōrōƙon màgànàɗīsùn dūniyōyī, overflow-MGen magnet-MGen world.Pl)

What about Berber? Well, in principle the relevant words have been coined, probably more than once. If we go with Mazed's (2003) Amawal amatu n tfizikt tatrart, "gravitational waves" should be timdeswalin tizayzayanin. You may not be unduly surprised to hear that this gets zero hits on Google. There are dictionaries of proposed terminology for Tamazight (pan-Berber), but there are no fully Berber-language newspapers, and nobody teaching physics in Berber. Very likely the Berber-language radio/TV stations have spoken about this news, but if so, my experience of Algeria's Radio 2 suggests that they probably just switched into French to express it - and if they did use the neologisms, chances are virtually none of their listeners understood them.

What about Siwi, or Korandje? Come on - who are we kidding? If a speaker of either wanted to speak about gravitational waves, they would simply use the Arabic term (or possibly the French or English one). Nothing in the structure of these languages prevents them from coining the terminology for this - but the fact that these languages have no media or educational system of their own, and are spoken by communities too small to include any professional physicists, makes it extremely unlikely that their speakers will do so, and even less likely that any such coinages will be successful.

The moral is obvious: for a language's speakers to effectively be able to talk about the full range of topics associated with the modern world without resorting to code-switching or nonce borrowing, they need mass schooling and mass media in that language.

Which brings me to another recent news item: it appears that Morocco's Minister of Education, Rachid Belmokhtar, plans to start teaching scientific and technical subjects in French, even in secondary school (1 2). The most obvious disadvantage of such a policy is that it makes it impossible for students doing badly in French to understand these subjects, thus reducing even further their already limited chances. But its implications for Standard Arabic in Morocco bear considering too: this decision condemns an important part of its vocabulary to local oblivion.

How to give orders in Angass

I'm researching Chadic imperatives at the moment, so I opened Angass Manual - written by H. D. Foulkes, Captain (late R. F. A.), Political Officer, Nigeria in 1915) to the appropriate section, and found it to consist solely of the following advice:

The Imperative is of the same form as the rest of the verbal forms, only uttered with the necessary tone of authority.

I suppose it's too much to expect an Edwardian captain to be able to transcribe tones, but I couldn't read that without bursting out laughing.

The book gets even better, with such cringeworthy gems as this "explanation" for phonological processes:

"The Angass, like most negroes, have a nice ear, and they endeavour to prevent harsh sounds coming together."

I particularly like how he explains that Angass grammar is really simple:

"The language is so simple in construction that I am hoping a study of it may help in elucidating the groundwork of more elaborated Negro languages."

since anything he can't get to grips with must not be part of its grammar:

"The only difficulty - but it is a very real one - in the colloquial is the apparently capricious employment of a large number of particles, the use of which, though immaterial from a grammatical point of view, is, however, necessary in practice, for without them the sentence certainly loses its flavour, and seemingly some of its sense, in that an ordinary man cannot understand a phrase unless it is enunciated exactly in the way he is accustomed to hearing it, and the omission or transposition of a word bothers him considerably."

Sahha eidkoum! and Yobe languages

And Eid Mubarak, everybody! I've already posted on the etymology of this term before, so for lack of anything new to say on it, here's a nice site I've come across: Yobe languages, with handy materials on six minor Chadic languages of Nigeria.