Daju verbal morphology with special focus on Laggorí and Shatt Damam
Résumé
The Daju language group (Nilo-Saharan, Eastern Sudanic) consists of nine distinct languages scattered on a vast longitudinal area running from the Guera region (Chad) in the west to the Nuba Mountains (Sudan) in the east. At the present time, there is a wide agreement on the individuation of two main branches within Daju (Thelwall 1981a, 1981b): the Western Daju languages, including Daju Mongo, Daju Sila, Daju Nyala, Daju Logawa and Njangulgule, and the Eastern Daju languages, including Laggorí, Soborí, Tillew and Shatt Damam. The two branches are defined by important dissimilarities in the domains of phonology and nominal morphology (Bryan & Tucker 1956). Given that verbal morphology has been largely disregarded in the definition of an
internal classification of Daju, this paper primarily aims at drawing a comparative overview of the Daju verbal morphology in order to better assess the mechanisms of internal change and to compare the different typological features characterizing the Daju languages. After a morphological outline of the Daju verbal roots, the paper goes through differences and similarities in the verbal inflection and the verbal derivation of Daju languages. Particular
attention is paid to the morphological and semantic comparison of personal affixes, which give us significant causes of reflection for a redefinition of the internal classification of Daju (e.g. presence/absence of a gender distinction for the 3rd persons, presence/absence of inclusive/exclusive affixes for the 1PL person). The comparison is based on original fieldwork data on Laggorí (Manfredi) and Shatt Damam (Boyeldieu) as well as on a review of the existent literature on Daju verbal morphology (Alamin forth; Palayer 2011).