Integration of borrowed nouns in Koalib, a noun class language
Résumé
Koalib is one of the aboriginal languages of the Nuba Mountains. It belongs to the Heiban branch of the Kordofanian family.
The Koalib ethnic group is made up of approximately 200,000 people (estimate for 2011), the majority of whom speak Koalib. However, a large proportion of the Koalib now no longer live in their homeland which was ravaged by fighting between the government and SPLA supporters during the second Sudanese civil war, which lasted from 1983 (Prunier 1989: 414-426) to 2002 in the South Kordofan area (when a local cease-fire was agreed between the SPLA and government troops). Indeed, during the war, tens of thousands of Koalib found refuge in Sudanese cities, particularly in Khartoum, where I began studying Koalib in 2000 during my first field-trip, before visiting Koalib-speaking villages in the Nuba Mountains from 2001 onwards. Since the formal signing of a peace agreement between the Khartoum government and the SPLA (on 9 January 2005), there has been a reverse flow of Koalib, who are now leaving the Sudanese cities and
relocating back in the Koalib homeland. However, the Koalib diaspora continues to represent a considerable proportion (probably over 50%) of individuals who consider themselves to be ethnically Koalib. All linguistic data presented in this article are derived from the Rere (ŋèrɛ́ɛɽɛ̀) dialect, spoken in the centre of the Koalib area (in the localities of Dere and Abri, see Quint 2009: 20-23, 2006b: 23-25). It has a written tradition dating back 80 years, linked to the arrival in 1923 of the first Protestant missionaries in Abri (Spartalis 1981: 58-59; Stevenson 1984: 72).