Case inflection of construct-state constructions in Dinka
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Torben Andersen
Abstract
Dinka, a Nilo-Saharan language, is largely monosyllabic, nevertheless it has a fairly rich morphology. Thus, most of its morphology is expressed by alternations in phonological material of the root. The inflectional categories of nouns manifested in this way include state and case in addition to number. The state category consists of an “absolute” state and two “construct” states. The case category includes a nominative, a genitive, an allative, and an essive/ablative. The present article shows how case inflection is manifested in complex noun phrases consisting of a noun in a construct state and a following modifier. It is demonstrated that the case inflection of such noun phrases is manifested almost exclusively by tonal overlays on the nominative (lexical) tones, and that such overlays may occur either in the head or in the modifier or in both the head and the modifier. In this way, a head noun may simultaneously carry state information and case information. Thus, the case inflection of construct-state constructions in Dinka adds yet another layer of nonlinear morphology to nouns in this language.
Acknowledgments
This article is based on fieldwork carried out during a number of trips to Sudan between 1984 and 1995 and a trip in 2009. I gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Danish Research Council for the Humanities and from the Scandinavian Institute of African Studies. I wish to thank my principal Dinka informants Kuyok Abol Kuyok, David Daniel Marial, and Peter Gum Panther for their assistance. I also wish to thank two anonymous referees for comments on an earlier version of the article.
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©2016 by De Gruyter Mouton
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Cooperation and coercion
- Case inflection of construct-state constructions in Dinka
- Permission and obligation intertwined: The twofold modal meaning of the Finnish jussive from a discourse perspective
- The syntax of Tagalog relative clauses
- Verb class, case, and order: A crosslinguistic experiment on non-nominative experiencers
- Morphological fusion without syntactic fusion: The case of the “verificative” in Agul
- Book Review
- Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen and Jacqueline Visconti: The Diachrony of Negation
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Cooperation and coercion
- Case inflection of construct-state constructions in Dinka
- Permission and obligation intertwined: The twofold modal meaning of the Finnish jussive from a discourse perspective
- The syntax of Tagalog relative clauses
- Verb class, case, and order: A crosslinguistic experiment on non-nominative experiencers
- Morphological fusion without syntactic fusion: The case of the “verificative” in Agul
- Book Review
- Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen and Jacqueline Visconti: The Diachrony of Negation
