Mursi language

Mursi (also Dama, Merdu, Meritu, Murzi, Murzu) is a Southeast Surmic language spoken by the Mursi people who live in the South Omo Zone on the eastern side of the lower Omo valley in southwest Ethiopia.^[3] The language is similar to Suri, another Southeast Surmic language spoken to the west of the Mursi language area.^[4] It is spoken by approximately 7,400 people.^[1]

Mursi
ሙነን‎ (munɛn)
Native to	Ethiopia
Region	Central Omo
Ethnicity	Mursi
Native speakers	7,400 (2007 census)[1][2]
Language family	Nilo-Saharan? Eastern Sudanic Southern Eastern Surmic South Southeast Pastoral Mursi
Writing system	Geʽez, Latin
Language codes
ISO 639-3	muz
Glottolog	murs1242
ELP	Mursi

Classification

Mursi is classified as belonging to the Southeast Surmic languages, to which the following other languages also belong: Suri, Me'en and Kwegu.^[5][6] As such, Mursi is also part of the superordinate Eastern Sudanic family of the Nilo-Saharan languages.

Phonology

Phoneme inventory

The vowel and consonant inventory of Mursi is similar to those of other Southeast Surmic languages, except for the lack of ejectives, the labial fricative /f/ and the voiceless stop /p/.^[7]

Consonants of Mursi^[8][9]

		Labial	Alveolar	Postalveolar/ Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Stop	voiceless		t	c ⟨č⟩	k	(ʔ)
	voiced	b	d	ɟ ⟨dʒ⟩	ɡ
Implosive		ɓ	ɗ
Fricative	voiceless		s	ʃ		h
	voiced		z
Nasal		m	n	ɲ	ŋ
Liquids			r, l
Approximant				j	w

• Except for the hesitant inclusion of the glottal stop /ʔ/ by Firew, both Mütze and Firew agree on the consonant inventory. The layout mostly follows Mütze. The characters in angled brackets are the ones used by Firew, where they differ from Mütze.
• Mütze rejects the phonemic status of the glottal stop [ʔ], claiming that it is phonetically inserted to break up vowel sequences.^[10] Firew discusses this and leaves the question undecided, but includes the sound in the phoneme chart.^[11]
• Firew classifies the alveolar implosive /ɗ/ as postalveolar, without giving reasons.^[12]

Vowels of Mursi^[13]

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Close-mid	e		o
Open-mid	ɛ		ɔ
Open		a

• Both Mütze and Firew agree on the vowel inventory and on the chosen transcription, as shown above.^[14]
• Even though vowel length appears phonetically in Mursi, it can be explained by the elision of weak consonants between identical vowels.^[15]

Tone

Both Mütze^[16] and Firew^[17] agree that there are only two underlying tone levels in Mursi, as opposed to larger inventories proposed by Turton and Bender^[18] and Moges.^[19]

Grammar

The Mursi grammar makes use of the following parts of speech: nouns,^[20] verbs,^[21] adjectives,^[22] pronouns,^[23] adverbs,^[24] adpositions,^[25] question words,^[26] quantifiers,^[25] connectors,^[27] discourse particles,^[28] interjections,^[29] ideophones,^[25] and expressives.^[25]

Nouns

Nouns can be inflected for number and case.^[30] The number marking system is very complex, using suffixation, suppletion or tone to either mark plurals from singular bases, or singulatives from plural bases.^[31] Mursi preverbal subjects and all objects are unmarked,^[32] whereas postverbal subjects are marked by a nominative case. Further cases are the oblique case and the genitive case.^[32] Modified nouns receive a special morphological marking called construct form by Mütze.^[33]