The Elgeyo language, or Kalenjin proper, are a
dialect cluster
A dialect is a variety of language spoken by a particular group of people. This may include dominant and standardized varieties as well as vernacular, unwritten, or non-standardized varieties, such as those used in developing countries or iso ...
of the
Kalenjin
Kalenjin may refer to:
* Kalenjin people of Kenya
** Elgeyo people (Keiyo people)
** Kipsigis people
** Marakwet people
** Nandi people
** Pokot people
** Terik people
** Tugen people
** Sebei people
* Kalenjin language
Kalenjin may refer t ...
branch of the
Nilotic
The Nilotic peoples are peoples Indigenous people of Africa, indigenous to South Sudan and the Nile Valley who speak Nilotic languages. They inhabit South Sudan and the Gambela Region of Ethiopia, while also being a large minority in Kenya, Uga ...
language family.
In Kenya, where speakers make up 18% of the population, the name ''Kalenjin'', an Elgeyo expression meaning "I say (to you)", gained prominence in the late 1940s and early 1950s, when several Kalenjin-speaking peoples united under it. This ethnic consolidation created a major ethnic group in Kenya, and also involved a standardization of the Kenyan Kalenjin dialects. However, since outside Kenya the name ''Kalenjin'' has been extended to related languages such as
Okiek of Tanzania and
Elgon languages of Uganda, it is common in linguistic literature to refer to the languages of the Kenyan Kalenjin peoples as ''Elgeyo'', after the principal variety.
Varieties
The Kenyan conception of ''Kalenjin'' is an inclusive term for different dialects spoken in the north Rift region of Kenya.
*Nandi
**
Kipsigis
**
Markweta
***
Naandi (Cemual) (Kenya)
***
Terik
***
Keiyo (Kenya)
***
(North) Tugen (Kenya)
Phonology
Vowels
Kalenjin has a simple five-vowel inventory , which is then expanded by the presence of a contrastive
">/-ATR feature as well as a phonemic
vowel length
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived or actual length (phonetics), duration of a vowel sound when pronounced. Vowels perceived as shorter are often called short vowels and those perceived as longer called long vowels.
On one hand, many ...
distinction. In (at least) Kipsigis (Toweett 1979) and Nandi (Creider 1989), all five vowels have both
ATR and
ATRcounterparts, but the contrast is neutralized for the vowel
in Tugen (Jerono 2012). The neutralization of the
/-ATRcontrast for this specific vowel is common in other Nilotic languages of the region, such as
Maasai of Kenya and
Didinga
The Didinga (also spelled DiDinga) are a Surmic ethnic group that occupy the Didinga Mountains region in Budi County, Eastern Equatoria State in South Sudan. They live in the valleys, on the plateaus and slopes, and on the adjacent plains of t ...
of
South Sudan
South Sudan (), officially the Republic of South Sudan, is a landlocked country in East Africa. It is bordered on the north by Sudan; on the east by Ethiopia; on the south by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda and Kenya; and on the ...
.
Kalenjin, like many other African languages, exhibits
Advanced Tongue Root
In phonetics, advanced tongue root (ATR or +ATR), or expanded pharynx, and retracted tongue root (RTR or −ATR) are contrasting states of the pharynx during the pronunciation of vowels in some languages, especially in Western and Eastern Afri ...
harmony. As a result, all vowels in a word have the same
TRvalue. In the rest of the article, Kalenjin words with
ATRwill be spelled in italics.
It is common in the language to use
TRdistinctions to signal grammatical functions. For example, in Kipsigis, the word for ‘bird’ ''tàríit'' with a
ATRfeature on the vowels forms its plural by changing the value of the
TRfeature to
ATRfor all its vowels.
Similarly, vowel length is important for certain grammatical distinctions. For example, perfect aspect in the past is signaled through lengthening of the vowel of the subject agreement prefix. Therefore, the only difference between simple and perfect aspect in the past is that the subject agreement prefix is short in the former, but long in the latter.
Consonants
The following table shows the consonant phonemes of the language:
Voicing is not phonemic for consonants, but the velar and bilabial stops
and
are voiced intervocalically, and in fast speech there is sometimes
lenition
In linguistics, lenition is a sound change that alters consonants, making them "weaker" in some way. The word ''lenition'' itself means "softening" or "weakening" (from Latin 'weak'). Lenition can happen both synchronically (within a language ...
of these consonants. The alveolar stop
though, has no voiced allophone.
All nasals apart from
assimilate for
place
Place may refer to:
Geography
* Place (United States Census Bureau), defined as any concentration of population
** Census-designated place, a populated area lacking its own municipal government
* "Place", a type of street or road name
** Of ...
to the following consonant.
Tone
Kalenjin is a
tonal language
Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. All oral languages use pitch to express emotional and other para-linguistic information and to convey emphasi ...
. Tone is used both for lexical distinctions and to signal grammatical functions. For example,
nominative case
In grammar, the nominative case ( abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case, or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb, or (in Latin and formal variants ...
is marked with a special tonal pattern on the noun, while certain singular-plural distinctions in nouns and adjectives are signaled exclusively through tone.
Morphology
Nouns
Nouns inflect for case (nominative vs. non-nominative) and number (singular-plural). Case is tonal and is very regular, while number formation is quite irregular, with plural being signaled in a variety of different ways, including various plural suffixes, changes in the
TRspecification of the vowels of the stem, or changes in the tonal pattern of the stem.
Moreover, each noun in the language has two different forms, called “primary” and “secondary” forms in the literature. For example, the primary form of the word for ‘bird’ in Kipsigis is ''tàríit'', while its secondary form is ''tàrìityét''. Nouns have primary and secondary forms in both the singular and plural number. The semantic difference between these two forms is currently not well understood. Hollis (1909) characterized the primary and secondary forms as indefinite and definite forms of the noun respectively, but this is not the correct treatment of these forms according to Toweett (1979) and Creider (1989). The former author refers to the primary form as an ‘inclusive’ form, and to the secondary one as an ‘exclusive’ form, while the latter author simply explains that it is not clear what the correct characterization of these forms is. The language has no overt articles and it seems like these two forms are related to definiteness and/or specificity in some way.
Derivational and inflectional affixes associated with nouns are always suffixes, with the exception of the prefixes kip – and ''che:p -'', which denote male and female gender respectively. Gender is not expressed in all nouns, and does not participate in agreement.
Verbs
The verbal morphology of Kalenjin is extremely rich. Moreover, nouns and adjectives follow the verbal inflection paradigm when they are predicates.
Kalenjin verbs show a distinction between past and non-past tense, with three degrees of past being distinguished (based on distance from the present). Moreover, there is a difference between perfective and imperfective aspect, and within each one of these aspects there is a further distinction between simple and perfect aspect. In the non-past only, the perfect aspect also shows a distinction for simultaneous versus non-simultaneous actions.
The verb agrees with both the subject and the object in person and number. The order of morphemes is that of tense – subject agreement – (aspect) – stem – (aspect), with a lot of aspectual work being done by changes in the tonal pattern and/or vowels of the subject agreement prefix and/or the verbal stem.
Finally, there is a series of suffixes that can be attached to the verb to change its argument structure or add extra meaning. Toweett (1979:129) gives for Kipsigis the following list of verbal suffixes and other phonological changes that target verbal meaning:
*–tʃi:
applicative morpheme (it introduces and applied argument, such as a recipient or a
beneficiary
A beneficiary in the broadest sense is a natural person or other legal entity who receives money or other benefits from a benefactor. For example, the beneficiary of a life insurance policy is the person who receives the payment of the amount of ...
)
*tonal and/or vowel change of the stem: the action is towards the speaker
*–aan: action and movement towards the speaker
*–ta: action is ‘off’ the speaker
*–ak: used for dispositional middles (and possibly other middles and/or some
anticausatives)
*–: there are two events of what the verb denotes which take place simultaneously
*
Reduplication
In linguistics, reduplication is a Morphology (linguistics), morphological process in which the Root (linguistics), root or Stem (linguistics), stem of a word, part of that, or the whole word is repeated exactly or with a slight change.
The cla ...
of the stem (with a vowel intervening between the two occurrences of the stem): the action is repeated several times
*–iis/-sa:
antipassive
The antipassive voice (abbreviated or ) is a type of grammatical voice that either does not include the object or includes the object in an oblique case. This construction is similar to the passive voice, in that it decreases the verb's valency ...
*-een:
instrumental
An instrumental or instrumental song is music without any vocals, although it might include some inarticulate vocals, such as shouted backup vocals in a big band setting. Through Semantic change, semantic widening, a broader sense of the word s ...
(it introduces an instrument)
*-ya: there are two or more agents involved in the event denoted by the verb
*-kee:
reflexive or reciprocal
*:
comitative
In grammar, the comitative case (abbreviated ) is a grammatical case that denotes accompaniment. In English, the preposition "with", in the sense of "in company with" or "together with", plays a substantially similar role. Other uses of "with", l ...
The above suffixes show different behavior with respect to ATR harmony (some take the ATR value of the vowels of the stem, while others change the ATR value of the vowels of the stem). The above suffixes can co-occur on the same verb, yielding complex meanings.
Syntax
Word Order
The predominant word order in the language is
Verb – Subject – Object (VSO), a common word order in
Nilotic
The Nilotic peoples are peoples Indigenous people of Africa, indigenous to South Sudan and the Nile Valley who speak Nilotic languages. They inhabit South Sudan and the Gambela Region of Ethiopia, while also being a large minority in Kenya, Uga ...
. An example of a simple VSO sentence in Nandi can be seen in (1).
The order in sentences with nominal or adjectival predicates is Predicate – Subject, as can be seen in (2) and (3).
For locative predicates, a special locative copula is used, in which case the order is Verb-Subject-Locative predicate.
In the presence of an indirect object, the order is Verb – Subject – Indirect Object – Direct Object.
VP adverbs, such as ''always'', are usually placed after the direct object in Kalenjin.
Finally, Kalenjin is unusual among
verb-initial languages, in expressing
possession with a transitive verb HAVE. Other verb-initial languages of the
Nilotic language family, such as
Maasai, also express possession with the use of a transitive verb HAVE.
Case
Kalenjin is a marked nominative language:
nominative case
In grammar, the nominative case ( abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case, or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb, or (in Latin and formal variants ...
is the only case that is marked in the language, while all other cases (accusative, genitive, dative etc.) are left unmarked. Nominative case is marked through tone only.
Negation
Negation is expressed with the prefix ma-/maa-, which attaches to the verb. It precedes the subject agreement prefix, but it follows the tense prefixes.
Topicalization
There are two strategies for
topicalization
Topicalization is a mechanism of syntax that establishes an expression as the sentence or clause topic (linguistics), topic by having it appear at the front of the sentence or clause (as opposed to in a canonical position later in the sentence). T ...
in the language, according to Creider (1989). In the unmarked case, a topicalized subject appears at the end of the sentence, retaining its nominative case marking. In the marked case, the topicalized element appears at the beginning of the sentence and is followed by the topic marker kò. In this case, if the topicalized element is a subject, it loses its nominative case.
Interrogative sentences
Yes–no question
In linguistics, a yes–no question, also known as a binary question, a polar question, or a general question, is a closed-ended question whose expected answer is one of two choices, one that provides an affirmative answer to the question versus ...
s are formed by attaching the question particle ''–í'' to the last word of a sentence.
There are three ways of forming wh-questions in Kalenjin. In the first one, the wh-word remains ''in situ'' (and retains any case marking it has). In the second one, the wh-word appears in topic position (it is followed by the topic marker kó and it loses its nominative case marking if it is a subject). The third strategy is only possible with predicative sentences, in which case the predicate appears in topic position, with the wh-word remaining ''in situ''. The three strategies for a predicative sentence are illustrated in (7-9) below for Nandi (Creider 1989: 143).
The Lord's Prayer in Kalenjin
References
* Creider, Chet A., and
Jane Tapsubei Creider. 1989. ''A Grammar of Nandi''.
* Hollis, Alfred Claud. 1909. ''Nandi: Their Language and FolkLore''. Negro Universities Press.
* Jerono, Prisca. 2012. ''Tugen Word Order. A Minimalist Program''. Unpublished PhD. Dissertation: University of Nairobi.
* Rottland, Franz. 1982. ''Die Südnilotischen Sprachen: Beschreibung, Vergelichung und Rekonstruktion'' (Kölner Beiträge zur Afrikanistik vol. 7). Berlin: Dietrich Reimer.
* Toweett, Taaitta. 1979. ''A Study of Kalenjin linguistics''. Kenya Literature Bureau.
External links
Kalenjin–English DictionaryKalenjin Word of the Day*
PanAfrican L10n page on Kalenjin
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nandi-Markweta languages
Languages of Kenya
Kalenjin languages
Verb–subject–object languages