Doctoral Dissertation Research: A Grammar of Nyang'i with Historical-Comparative Notes

University Of Colorado At Boulder, Boulder CO

Investigators

Abstract

Nyang'i is a nearly extinct Kuliak language spoken in northeastern Uganda. The Kuliak languages have attracted the attention of linguists since the 1970s due to the light they shed on East African prehistory and to their typologically unique features. Nevertheless, Nyang'i remains almost entirely undescribed and undocumented. Nyang'i is no longer used as a language of everyday communication, and was once believed to be extinct; however, a small number of semi-speakers of Nyang'i have been located in recent years, only one of whom is able to fluently produce narrative texts. These semi-speakers represent the last opportunity to supplement our currently limited understanding of the Nyang'i language. Primary data collected by this project will consist of a large transcribed and annotated corpus of video and audio recorded speech in Nyang'i. This corpus will be used to prepare descriptive materials including a grammar and an English-Karamojong-Nyang'i dictionary. The descriptive materials will include particular emphasis on typological features that remain understudied in East African languages at large such as tone, vowel harmony, case marking, and the grammatical indication of motion, location, and direction. This project will support the scientific training of a rising early-career scholar.