Chapter in:
Grammatical and Sociolinguistic Aspects of Ethiopian LanguagesEdited by Derib Ado, Almaz Wasse Gelagay and Janne Bondi Johannessen †
[IMPACT: Studies in Language, Culture and Society 48] 2021
► pp. 213–227
Number marking in Nuer nouns
John Koang Nyang | Addis Ababa University
This paper investigates the formation of number in the nouns of
Nuer, a Nilo-Saharan language spoken both in South Sudan and Ethiopia. Forming
plurals in Nuer is by itself quite irregular: there are many different ways.
Suffixing the [-ni̤] after words that end in sounds other than [l] and [r] is the
first way. [l] and [r]take [-i̤] after them, which is the second way. There are also
many other ways of forming a plural from singular, including suppletion, vowel
shortening, change in vowel quality and internal vowel modification (this last way
is quite unpredictable in nature). There is also a null (Ø) formation of plurals
with no distinction between singular and plural. Other closely related languages
like Dinka (South Sudan) and Anyuak (both Ethiopia and South Sudan), see Reh (1996), share many of the same plural
formation processes.
Keywords: Nuer, singular, plural, singulative, suffixation, tone change
References
References
Crazzolara, J. Pasquale
Dimmendaal, Gerrit
Reh, Mechtild