Murle (also Ajibba, Beir, Merule, Mourle, Murule) is a
Surmic Language spoken by the
Murle people
The Murle are a Surmic ethnic group inhabiting the Pibor County and Boma area in Greater Pibor Administrative area, South Sudan, as well as parts of southwestern Ethiopia. They have also been referred as ''Beir'' by the Dinka and as ''Jebe'' b ...
in the southeast of
South Sudan
South Sudan (; din, Paguot Thudän), officially the Republic of South Sudan ( din, Paankɔc Cuëny Thudän), is a landlocked country in East Africa. It is bordered by Ethiopia, Sudan, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the ...
, near the
Ethiopia
Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the ...
n border. A very small number of Murle live across the border in southwestern Ethiopia.
The basic
word order
In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how different languages employ different orders. C ...
for Murle clauses is VSO (
verb–subject–object). The morphology of the verb agrees with the
person
A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of prope ...
and
number
A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers c ...
of the
subject, and can also indicate that of the
object. Some typologically exceptional points of grammar are discussed by Arensen, et al., such as that VSO languages have been predicted to not have postpositions or final interrogatives.
Marking of number on nouns in Murle is complex, with no single suffix being generally productive. Some nouns are marked with a
singulative suffix, some with a plural suffix, some with both, and a few with irregular stems for each number. Arensen has proposed a set of semantically based categories (such as association with men, or with weather and seasons) to try to predict which suffixes will be used (1992, 1998).
Payne (2006) has proposed analyzing some cases as examples of
subtractive morphology. Payne proposes that these two forms exemplify how Murle plurals can be predicted from singular forms, but not vice versa.
''onyiit'' 'rib'
''onyii'' 'ribs'
''rottin'' 'warrior'
''rotti'' 'warriors'
However, the same final consonants are found in productive marking of
singulative number in Majang, another Surmic language, e.g. ŋɛɛti-n 'louse', ŋɛɛti 'lice'. Also, final -''t'' has been shown to be a singulative suffix in Murle and other Surmic languages, fitting the pattern of T for singular and K for plural pointed out by Margaret Bryant.
[Bryan, Margaret. 1959. The T/K languages:
A new substratum. ''Africa'' 29:1-21.] If these final consonants are analyzed as singulative suffixes, it means that the claim of unusual discovery of
subtractive morphology in Murle is incorrect. Rather, Murle is shown to have a frequent pattern of singulative suffixes.
The
New Testament
The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Chri ...
has been translated into the Murle language.
References
Literature
* Arensen, Jonathan E. 1982. Murle grammar. ''Occasional Papers in the Study of Sudanese Languages'' 2. Juba:
Summer Institute of Linguistics
SIL International (formerly known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics) is an evangelical Christian non-profit organization whose main purpose is to study, develop and document languages, especially those that are lesser-known, in order to ex ...
and University of Juba.
* Arensen, Jonathan E. 1988. "Names in the life cycles of the Murle". ''Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford'' 19: 125-130.
* Arensen, Jonathan E. 1989. "On comparing language relationships: A case study of Murle, Kacipo and Tirma". ''Occasional Papers in the Study of Sudanese Languages'' 6: 67-76
* Arensen, Jonathan E. 1991. Aspects of language and society among the Murle of Sudan. D.Phil. thesis.
Wolfson College, Oxford University.
* Arensen, Jonathan E. 1992. Mice are men: Language and society among the Murle of Sudan. International Museum of Cultures Publication, 27. Dallas: International Museum of Cultures.
* Arensen, Jonathan E. 1998. "Murle categorization" in Gerrit Dimmendaal and Marco Last (eds.), Surmic Languages and Cultures. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag. pp. 181–218.
* Lyth, R. E. 1971. The Murle Language: Grammar and Vocabulary. ''Linguistic Monograph Papers'' 7 Khartoum: University of Khartoum.
* Miller, Cynthia. 1984. "Connectives in Murle epistolary discourse". ''Occasional Papers in the Study of Sudanese Languages'' 5: 81-134.
* Unseth, Peter. 1986. "Word Order Shift in Negative Sentences of Surma Languages". ''Afrikanistische Arbeitspapiere'' 5: 135-143.
* Unseth, Peter. 2007. "Murle language" in Siegbert Uhlig (ed.) Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, Vol 3. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. pp. 1076–1077.
* Yigezu, Moges. 2001. A Comparative Study of the Phonetics and Phonology of Surmic Languages. Université Libre de Bruxelles.
External links
*
World Atlas of Language Structures
The World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) is a database of structural (phonological, grammatical, lexical) properties of languages gathered from descriptive materials. It was first published by Oxford University Press as a book with CD-RO ...
information o
MurleMurle basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database
{{Eastern Sudanic languages
Languages of South Sudan
Languages of Ethiopia
Surmic languages
Verb–subject–object languages