Information AboutLaal Language |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT LAAL | |
| endangered languages of africa | |
| languages of chad | |
| unclassified languages of africa | |
Laal is a still- Unclassified Language spoken by 749 people (as of 2000) in three villages in the Moyen-Chari prefecture of Chad on opposite banks of the Chari River , called Gori (''lá''), Damtar (''ɓual''), and Mailao . It may be a Language Isolate , in which case it would represent an isolated survival of an earlier language group of Central Africa . It is unwritten (except in Transcription by linguists). According to SIL -Chad member David Faris, it is in danger of extinction, with most people under 25 shifting to the locally more widespread Baguirmi Language . This language first came to the attention of academic linguists in 1977, through Pascal Boyeldieu 's fieldwork in 1975 and 1978. His fieldwork was based for the most part on a single speaker, M. Djouam Kadi of Damtar. SPEAKERS AND STATUS The language's speakers are mainly River Fishermen and Farmer s, who also sell Salt extracted from the ashes of Doum Palm s and '' Vossia Cuspidata ''. Like their neighbors the Niellim , they were formerly cattle herders, but lost their herds around the turn of the 19th century. They are mainly Muslim s, although until the latter half of the 20th century they followed the traditional ''Yondo'' religion of the Niellim. The area is fairly undeveloped; while there are Qur'anic School s in Gori and Damtar, the nearest government school is 7 Km away, and there is no medical dispensary in the region (as of 1995.) The village of . No other dialects of Laal are known. Under Chadian law, Laal — like all languages of Chad other than French and Arabic — is regarded as a National Language . While the 1996 Constitution stipulates that "the law shall fix the conditions of promotion and development of national languages", national languages are not used for education nor for official purposes, nor usually for written media, although some of the larger ones (not Laal) are used on the radio. CLASSIFICATION Laal remains Unclassified , although extensive Adamawa-Ubangi (particularly Bua ) and to a lesser extent Chadic influence is found. It is sometimes grouped with one of those two Language Families , and sometimes seen as a Language Isolate . Boyeldieu (1982) summarizes his view as "Its classification remains problematic; while it shows certain lexical, and no doubt morphological, traits with the Bua Languages (Adamawa-13, Niger-Congo Family of Joseph H. Greenberg ), it differs from them radically in many ways of which some, ''a priori'', make one think of geographically nearby Chadic languages." Roger Blench (2003), similarly, considers that "its vocabulary and morphology seem to be partly drawn from Chadic (i.e. Afro-Asiatic ), partly from Adamawa (i.e. Niger-Congo) and partly from an unknown source, perhaps its original phylum, a now-vanished grouping from Central Africa ." It is the latter possibility which attracts particular interest; if this proves true, Laal may be the only remaining window on the linguistic state of Central Africa before the expansion of the main African Language families— Afroasiatic , Nilo-Saharan , and Niger-Congo—into it. It contains many Loanword s from Baguirmi , since the region was for several centuries part of the Baguirmi Empire ; the local capital was Korbol . In addition, they almost all speak Niellim as a second language, and "at least 20%-30%" of their attested vocabulary (Boyeldieu 1977) shows similarities to that language. Their immediate neighbors speak Bua, Niellim, and Ndam . Like the Baguirmi , they are Muslim s; partly because of this, some Arabic loanwords are also found. SOUNDS The sounds of Laal are transcribed here using International Phonetic Alphabet symbols. The consonants are: Implosives and prenasalised stops, as well as h, are found only word-initially. Voiceless stops, as well as s, cannot occur at the end of a syllable. occurs only intervocalically and word-finally. appears exclusively in Loanword s and certain numbers. The prenasalized stops, as well as the implosive , are extremely rare. The vowel system for non-initial syllables is: , and the Diphthong , with no length distinction. For initial syllables, however, it is much more complicated, allowing length distinctions and distinguishing the following additional diphthongs: (though the latter two appear only as morphologically conditioned forms of and , and are perhaps better seen as allophonic.) In addition, may occur very occasionally; Boyeldieu quotes the example of ''mỳlùg'' "red (pl.)". There are three level tones: high (á), middle (a), low (à). Combinations of these may occur on a single vowel, resulting in phonetic rising and falling tones; these are phonemically sequences of level tones. Such cases are transcribed here by repeating the vowel (e.g. àá); long vowels are indicated only by the colon (e.g. a:). Suffixes may force any of four kinds of Ablaut on the vowels of preceding words: raising (takes to ), lowering (takes to ), low rounding (takes and to ; and to ; , and to ), and high rounding (takes and to ; and to ; , and to ). They are transcribed in the suffix section as ↑, ↓, ↗, ↘ respectively. In some verbs, a/ə is "raised" to rather than, as expected, . In suffixes, ə and o undergo Vowel Harmony : they become and u respectively if the preceding vowel is one of {i, , u}. Likewise, r undergoes consonant harmony, becoming l after words containing l. Suffixes with neutral tone copy the final tone of the word they are suffixed to. GRAMMAR Syntax The typical word order can be summarized as Subject - (verbal Particle ) - Verb - Object - Adverb ; Preposition - Noun ; Possessed - Possessor ; Noun - Adjective . Nouns can be fronted when Topic alized. See the Sample Sentences below for examples, and the Conjunctions for clause syntax. Nouns Nouns have plural and singular forms (the latter are perhaps better viewed as Singulative in some cases), with plural formation hard to predict: ''kò:g'' "bone" > ''kuagmi'' "bones", ''tuà:r'' "chicken" > ''tò:rò'' "chickens", ''ɲaw'' "hunger" > ''ɲə̀wə́r'' "hungers". Nouns do not have arbitrary gender; however, as in English, three natural genders (male, female, non-human) are distinguished by the pronouns. The possessive is expressed in two ways:
However, if the possessor is a pronoun, it is suffixed with extensive vowel - is found in many other languages, for instance the Andamanese Languages , usually for words referring to personal relationships. See The Pronouns Section for the relevant suffixes. A noun indicating someone who does, is, or has something can be formed with the prefix ''màr'', meaning roughly "he/she/it who/of": ''màr jùgòr'' "landowner", ''màr ce'' "farmer" (''ce'' = cultivate), ''màr pál'' "fisherman" (''pál'' = to fish), ''màr pàlà ta:'' "a fisher of fish". Pronouns Personal In the following tables, note the distinction between Inclusive and Exclusive We , found in many other languages but not English , and the gender differentiation of "I" in certain forms. The inanimate plural has in general been dropped by younger speakers in favor of the animate plural, though both are given below. The object paradigm for verbs is quite complex; only two of its several sets of Allomorph s are given in the table below. Relative and indefinite pronouns Interrogative ''jé'' "what?", ''ɟè'' "who?", ''ɗé'' "where?", ''sɨ̀g'' "how much?". Prepositions Preposition s precede their objects: ''gɨ̀ pə:l'' "in(to) the village", ''kɨ́ jà:ná'' "to his body" (="to near him".) Verbs The verb does not vary according to the person or gender of the subject, but some verbs (about a quarter of the verbs attested) vary according to its number: ''no kaw'' "the person eats", ''mùáŋ kɨw'' "the people eat". The plural form of the verb is hard to predict, but is often formed by ablaut (typically raising the vowel height) with or without a suffix ''-i(ɲ)'' or ''-ɨɲ'' and tonal change. The verb does, however, change according to the Direct Object . It takes personal suffixes to indicate a pronominal Direct Object , and commonly changes when a non-pronominal direct object is added to a Transitive form with final low tone (formed similarly to the "centripetal", for which see below); eg ''ʔà ná ká'' "he will do"; ''ʔà ná kàrà mɨ́ná'' "he will do something"; ''ʔà kú na:ra'' "he sees the man"; ''ʔà kúù:rùúŋ'' "he sees you (pl.)". The verb has three basic forms: simple, "centripetal", and "participative" (to and drinks water with it" (lit. "he take calabash he drink-participative water".) Immediately before the verb, a particle may be placed to indicate forms other than a simple present tense; such particles include ''ná'' (pl. ''ní'') marking future tense, ''taá:/teé:'' (pl. ''tií:'') marking continuous action, ''wáa:'' (pl. ''wíi:'') marking motion, ''náa:'' (pl. ''níi:'') being apparently a combination of ''ná'' and ''wáa:'', ''mà'' (pl. ''mì'') meaning "must", ''mɨ́'' marking reported speech (apparently an Evidential ), ''mɨ́nà'' (pl. ''mínì'') expressing intention, ''kò'' marking habitual action, ''ɓə́l'' or ''ga'' (pl. ''gi'') marking incomplete action, and ''wó'' (always accompanied by ''ʔàle'' after the verb) meaning "maybe". Mediopassives (see s - tonal changes, or changes to the plural, sometimes occur. Verbal Noun s can sometimes be formed, mainly from intransitives, by the addition of a suffix -(vowel)''l'', sometimes with Ablaut and tone change; eg ''wal'' "fall" > ''wàlál'' "a fall", ''sùbá'' "lie" > ''sɨ́blál'' (pl. ''súbɨ̀r'') "a lie". The ''l'' here becomes ''n'' near a nasal, and ''r'' near ''r'': ''man'' "taste good", ''manan'' "a good taste". Adjectives Adjectives do not seem to constitute an independent category in Laal; to all intents and purposes, they behave just like verbs. Eg ''gò: ʔì:r'' "the goat is black". Attributively, they are typically linked as a Relative Clause : ''gò: má ʔì:r'' "the black goat" (literally "goat which black".) Numbers The numbers include ''ɓɨ̀dɨ́l'' "one", ''ʔisi'' "two", ''ɓisan'' "four". No other numbers are given specifically in the works so far published. Adverbs Adverbs generally come at the end of the clause. Some important adverbs are: Adverbs of location:
Temporal adverbs:
Modals Among the most important modals are:
Conjunctions Syntactically, these can be divided into five types:
SAMPLE SENTENCES
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