Doctoral Dissertation Research: Documenting the endangered Koman languages and their linguistic relationships

University Of Oregon Eugene, Eugene OR

Investigators

Abstract

Just like biologists have methods to investigate the relationships between species, linguists have methods that allow them to determine the relationships between languages. Linguists do this by comparing a set of languages along various dimensions, such as words or language structures that may have a common origin. Documentation of individual languages plays a key role in how scholars reconstruct the family relationships between languages, but with little or no documentation, it is highly challenging to make conclusive determinations of the linguistic relationships. This project will investigate a small set of five endangered languages which are related to each other, according to the existing small sets of data. These languages are poorly documented due to being spoken only in a remote, conflict-ridden area, inaccessible except by footpaths. This project will also research whether these languages are related to others in the neighboring geographic region by documenting the individual languages in this group, and by making comparisons between specific words and other linguistic features of each of the languages. The dissertation will increase the linguistic understanding of the five targeted languages and their relationships with each other and with other languages in the region. This dissertation will also add deeper insight to the less frequent type of patterns ("typology") in the sound systems and in grammar of these languages by collecting and analyzing new documentation. The documentation will serve not only linguists and educators but also anthropologists and historians interested in the inhabitants of a virtually forgotten area. In this dissertation project, doctoral student Manuel Otero will document the endangered languages, including a comparative vocabulary of the Koman peoples. The Koman languages constitute a small group of five languages spoken in the Ethiopia, Sudan and South Sudan borderlands. Aside from Uduk, the Koman languages are only spoken in Africa, so fieldwork will be carried out primarily in Ethiopia for the Komo, Gwama, Opuo and Dana languages. Little is known about the Koman languages and peoples, as the terrain these groups have inhabited for centuries is rugged and primarily communicable by footpaths. Most Koman people continue traditional practices, including hunting and gathering alongside subsistence farming. Impacted by more than a century of strife and conflict, these populations continue to dwindle and some of their languages are on the verge of extinction, in urgent need of documentation. The primary research questions concern developing an understanding of their sound systems and grammar, their interrelationships, and how Koman relates to larger African language families, which is still under debate. Typologically rare grammatical features in Koman include temporal distinctions made by suffixes that primarily indicate direction of movement and track the location of participants. Such systems are important to the study of human language and cognition, as they show how grammatical material can evolve. In Koman languages, the grammar of "tense" is developing out of the human desire to communicate the whereabouts of other animate beings.