Mursi (also Dama, Merdu, Meritu, Murzi, Murzu) is a Southeast Surmic language spoken by the Mursi people who live in the South Omo Zone on the eastern side of the lower Omo valley in southwest Ethiopia.[2] The language is similar to Suri, another Southeast Surmic language spoken to the west of the Mursi language area.[3] It is spoken by approximately 7,400 people.[1]^: 91

Classification

Mursi is classified as belonging to the Southeast Surmic languages, to which the following other languages also belong: Suri, Me'en and Kwegu.[4][5] As such, Mursi is also part of the superordinate Eastern Sudanic family of the Nilo-Saharan languages.

Phonology

Phoneme inventory

The vowel and consonant inventory of Mursi is similar to those of other Southeast Surmic languages, except for the lack of ejectives, the labial fricative /f/ and the voiceless stop /p/.[6]

• Except for the hesitant inclusion of the glottal stop /ʔ/ by Firew, both Mütze and Firew agree on the consonant inventory. The layout mostly follows Mütze. The characters in angled brackets are the ones used by Firew, where they differ from Mütze.
• Mütze rejects the phonemic status of the glottal stop [ʔ], claiming that it is phonetically inserted to break up vowel sequences.[9] Firew discusses this and leaves the question undecided, but includes the sound in the phoneme chart.[10]
• Firew classifies the alveolar implosive /ɗ/ as postalveolar, without giving reasons.[11]

• Both Mütze and Firew agree on the vowel inventory and on the chosen transcription, as shown above.[13]
• Even though vowel length appears phonetically in Mursi, it can be explained by the elision of weak consonants between identical vowels.[14]

Tone

Both Mütze[15] and Firew[16] agree that there are only two underlying tone levels in Mursi, as opposed to larger inventories proposed by Turton and Bender[17] and Moges.[18]

Grammar

The Mursi grammar makes use of the following parts of speech: nouns,[19] verbs,[20] adjectives,[21] pronouns,[22] adverbs,[23] adpositions,[24] question words,[25] quantifiers,[24] connectors,[26] discourse particles,[27] interjections,[28] ideophones,[24] and expressives.[24]

Nouns

Nouns can be inflected for number and case.[29] The number marking system is very complex, using suffixation, suppletion or tone to either mark plurals from singular bases, or singulatives from plural bases.[30] Mursi preverbal subjects and all objects are unmarked,[31] whereas postverbal subjects are marked by a nominative case. Further cases are the oblique case and the genitive case.[31] Modified nouns receive a special morphological marking called construct form by Mütze.[32]

Notes

Bibliography

• Firew Girma Worku (2021). A Grammar of Mursi: A Nilo-Saharan Language of Ethiopia (Thesis). Brill: Leiden. doi:10.1163/9789004449916.
• Moges Yigezu; Turton, David (2005). "Latin Based Mursi Orthography". ELRC Working Papers. Addis Ababa: Ethiopian Languages Research Center. 1 (2): 242–57. Retrieved 9 July 2021.
• Mütze, Bettina (2014). A Sketch of the Mursi Language (MA thesis). Gloucester: Redcliff College, University of Gloucestershire.
• Turton, David; Bender, M. Lionel (1976). "Mursi". In Bender, M. Lionel (ed.). The Non-Semitic Languages of Ethiopia. East Lansing: African Studies Center, Michigan State University. pp. 533–561.
• Turton, David; Moges Yigezu; Oliserali Olibui (2008). Mursi-English-Amharic Dictionary. Addis Ababa: Culture and Arts Society of Ethiopia.

External links

• Mursi Online, University of Oxford
• Mursi basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database
• World Atlas of Language Structures information on Mursi

На других языках

[de] Mursi (Sprache)

[es] Idioma mursi

[fr] Mursi (langue)

[ru] Мурси (язык)