An insatiable appetite for ancient and modern tongues

Overview and Distribution. The Kordofanian family consists of some 20 languages spoken by no more than half a million people in a small area of central Sudan, in the Nuba Hills located in the province of South Kordofan, southwest of the capital Khartoum. They are geographically separated from Niger-Congo and surrounded by Nilo-Saharan languages. Until today, they remain little studied.


External Classification: Kordofanian languages are generally classified as one of the families of the Niger-Congo phylum, though this remains controversial. If they do belong to Niger-Congo, they must have separated from Proto-Niger-Congo earlier than all of the other families.


Internal Classification and Speakers: Kordofanian is divided into four main groups, centered around the towns of Heiban, Talodi, Rashad and Katla. There are perhaps close to half a million Kordofanian speakers. The numbers for each individual language are not very reliable.


  1. a) Heiban

  2. Koalib (Rere)

    Tiro

    Laro (Laru)

    Moro

    Utoro (Otoro)

    Ebang (Heiban)

    Shirumba

    Ko

    Logol

    Warnang

     

    70,000

    70,000

    50,000

    50,000

    12,000

    7,000

    5,000

    4,000

    3,000

    2,500



  1. b) Talodi

  2. Ngile/Dengebu

    Tocho

    Jomang (Talodi)

    Tegem (Lafofa)

    Nding (Eliri)

    60,000

    6,000

    2,000

    700

    extinct



  1. c) Rashad

  2. Tegali

    Tagoy (Tagoi)

         

    50,000

    20,000



  1. d) Katla

  2. Kalak (Katla)

    Lomorik (Tima)

    20,000

    ?



Oldest Documents

1829. A list of Shirumba and Tegali words, recorded by E. Rüppell.


1848-50. The first analysis of a Kordofanian language (Tumale, a dialect of Tagoi), published by Lorenz Tutschek.


1880. Richard Lepsius realized that the languages of the Nubian Hills constituted a distinctive group.



SHARED FEATURES


  1. Phonology

  2. -Stops have usually five places of articulation: labial, dental, alveolar or retroflex, palatal and velar. The contrast between voiced and voiceless stops is relatively unimportant to distinguish different words. Stops are usually voiceless if they are part of a sequence of stops or are at the end of a word; they are voiced between vowels, nasals and liquids.


  1. -Among the voiceless fricatives, alveolar s is the only widely distributed, being found across the four Kordofanian groups. Another voiceless fricative, f, occurs in the Rashad group and in Heiban language.


  1. -Nasals are usually articulated at four points: labial, alveolar, palatal and velar.



  1. Morphology

  2. -Noun class systems, marked by prefixes, are found in at least three branches of Kordofanian (Heiban, Talodi, Rashad). They are similar to those found in Bantu and other Niger-Congo languages. Adjectives, determiners and even verbs are marked by the same prefix as the head-noun.



  1. Syntax

  2. -There seems to be a lot of variation in word order among Kordofanian languages. Some, like Heiban, are Subject-Verb-Object (SVO); others are SOV and one is VSO.




  1. © 2013 Alejandro Gutman and Beatriz Avanzati                                                                               


Further Reading

  1. -'Niger-Congo'. K. Williamson & R. M. Blench. In African Languages: An Introduction, 11-42. B. Heine & Derek Nurse (eds). Cambridge University Press (2000).

  2. -'Kordofanian'. T .C. Schadeberg. In The Niger-Congo Languages, 67-80. J. Bendor-Samuel (ed). University Press of America (1989).

  3. -A Survey of Kordofanian. Volume 1: The Heiban Group. T. C. Schadeberg. Helmut  Buske Verlag (1981).

  4. -A Survey of Kordofanian. Volume 2: The Talodi Group. T. C. Schadeberg. Helmut  Buske Verlag (1981).



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Kordofanian Languages

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