Surmic languages

Infobox Language family
name=Surmic
region=Southwestern Ethiopia and neighboring Sudan
familycolor=Nilo-Saharan
fam2=Eastern Sudanic
fam3=Kir-Abbaian

Surmic Languages are a subgroup of the Nilo-Saharan languages.
*North (Majang, also known as Majangir)
*South
**Southeast (Kwegu (Dialects: Yidinich, Mugiji), Me'en, Mursi, Suri (Dialects: Tirma, Chai))
**Southwest (Didinga, Kacipo-Balesi, Murle, Narim, Tennet, and Zilmamu)

The Surmic group of languages is part of the Nilo-Saharan language family, found in southwest Ethiopia and adjoining parts of southeast Sudan. It appears that the closest relatives of the Surmic group are the Nilotic languages. In the past, Surmic had been known as “Didinga-Murle” and “Surma”. The former name was too narrow by referring only to two closely related languages and the latter was a label also used to refer to a specific language (Unseth 1997b), so the label “Surmic” is now used. The relationships in the chart above are based on Fleming's work (1983).

Today, the various peoples who speak Surmic languages make their living in a variety of ways, including nomadic herders, settled farmers, slash and burn farmers. They live in a variety of terrain, from the lowlands of Sudan and the banks of the Omo River to mountains over 2,300 meters.

Much foundational fieldwork and analysis of Surmic languages was done by Harold C. Fleming and M. L. Bender. The most complete descriptions of Ethiopian Surmic languages are of Murle (Arensen 1982) and Tirma (Bryant 1999). All Surmic languages are presumed to be tonal, have implosive consonants, and have distinctive vowel length. Some have as many as nine vowel qualities, and more detailed study may confirm this in other Surmic languages, also. Me’en and Kwegu (also spelled Koegu) have sets of ejective consonants.

The languages share a system of marking the number of both the possessed and the possessor in possessive pronouns (Unseth 1991). Number of nominals is typically marked on a number of morphemes, with t/k marking singular and plural. Adjectives are formed by stative relative clauses.

Majangir (also called Majang) and Southwest Surmic languages (Fleming 1983) share a number of traits, so they are therefore presumably reconstructable in Proto-Surmic: relative clauses (which include adjectives), demonstratives, adverbs, numerals, genitives, and possessive pronouns follow their heads, noun derivations and subject marking on verbs are marked by suffixes, VSO (Verb Subject Object) order predominates in indicative main clauses. Some typologically exceptional points are discussed by Arensen, et al. (1997). However, Dimmendaal’s introduction proposes a different analysis (1998).

All Surmic languages have been documented as having case suffixes (Unseth 1989). None of them have a marked accusative, but at least Majang and Murle sometimes mark nominatives, part of a broader areal pattern (König 2006).

The original geographic home of the Surmic peoples is thought to be in Southwestern Ethiopia, somewhere near Maji, with the various groups dispersing from there: for example, the Majangir having moved north, the Murle having migrated clockwise around Lake Turkana (Arensen 1983:56-61, Tornay 1981), and the Mursi having moved into and out of the Omo River valley. Ethnolinguistic identities within the Surmic group have not been rigid, with ample evidence of people’s identities shifting from one ethnolinguistic group to another, (Tornay 1981, Turton 1979, Unseth and Abbink 1998).

The starting point for linguistic and anthropological research into Surmic studies is the book edited by Dimmendaal (1998), especially the bibliography article (Abbink and Unseth 1998).

See also

* Nilo-Saharan languages

References

* Abbink, Jon and Peter Unseth. 1998. "Surmic Languages and Cultures: A Bibiliography. Surmic Languages and Cultures", ed. by Gerrit Dimmendaal, pp. 127-142. Cologne: Köppe.
* Arensen, Jonathan. 1983. "Sticks and straw: Comparative house forms in southern Sudan". Dallas: International Museum of Cultures.
* Arensen, Jon, Nicky de Jong, Scott Randal, Peter Unseth. 1997. "Interrogatives in Surmic Languages and Greenberg's Universals," "Occasional Papers in the Study of Sudanese Languages" 7:71-90.
*Bender, M. Lionel. "The Surma language group: a preliminary report". Studies in African Linguistics, Supplement 7, pp. 11-21.
* Bryan, Margaaret. 1959. t/k languages article??
* Bryant, Michael. 1999. "Aspects of Tirmaga grammar." MA thesis, University of Texas at Arlington.
* Dimmendaal, Gerrit. 1998. "A syntactic typology of the Surmic family from an areal and historical-comparative point of view," in "Surmic Languages and Cultures", ed. by Gerrit Dimmendaal, pp. 35-82. Cologne: Köppe
* Fleming, Harold. 1983. "Surmic etymologies," in "Nilotic Studies: Proceedings of the International Symposium on Languages and History of the Nilotic Peoples", Rainer Vossen and Marianne Bechhaus-Gerst, 524-555. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer.
* König, Christa. 2006. "Marked nominative in Africa," "Studies in Language" 30.4: 655-732.
* Tornay, Serge. 1981. "The Omo Murle Enigma," in "Peoples and cultures of the Ethio-Sudan Borderland", M.L. Bender (ed.), pp. 33-60. (Northeast African Studies, Monograph 10). East Lansing: Michigan State University.
* Turton, David. 1979. " [http://www.mursi.org/pdf/a-journey-made-them.pdf/view A Journey Made Them: Territorial Segmentation and Ethnic Identity Among the Mursi] ," in "Segmentary Lineage Systems Reconsidered", Ladislav Holy (ed.), 19-143. (Queen's University Papers in Social Anthropology, vol. 4). Belfast.
* Unseth, Peter. 1987. "A Typological Anomaly in Some Surma Languages," "Studies in African Linguistics" 18.357-361.
* Unseth, Peter. 1988. "The Validity and Unity of the Southeast Surma Language Grouping," "Northeast African Studies" 10.2/3:151-163.
* Unseth, Peter. 1989. "An Initial Comparison and Reconstruction of Case Suffixes in Surmic Languages," "Journal of Ethiopian Studies" 22:97-104.
* Unseth, Peter. 1991. "Possessive Markers in Surmic Languages," "Proceedings of the 4th Nilo-Saharan Linguistics Colloquium", ed. by M. L. Bender, pp. 91-104. (Nilo-Saharan: Linguistic Analyses and Documentation", vol. 7.) Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag.
* Unseth, Peter. 1997a. "An Archaic Surmic Causative Prefix," "Occasional Papers in the Study of Sudanese Languages" 7:41-48.
* Unseth, Peter. 1997b. "Disentangling the Two Languages Called 'Suri'," "Occasional Papers in the Study of Sudanese Languages" 7:49-69. * Unseth, Peter. 1998. "Two Old Causative Affixes in Surmic," "Surmic Languages and Cultures", ed. by Gerrit Dimmendaal, pp. 113-126. Cologne: Köppe.
* Unseth, Peter and Jon Abbink. 1998. "Cross-ethnic Clan Identities Among Surmic Groups," in "Surmic Languages and Cultures", Gerrit Deimmendaal (ed.), pp. 103-112. Cologne: Koppe.