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Ikoma Orthography Statement IKOMA ORTHOGRAPHY STATEMENT SIL International Uganda-Tanzania Branch Ikoma Orthography Statement Approved Orthography Edition Acknowledgements Many individuals contributed to this document by formatting the structure, contributing the language data, organizing the data, writing the document and by giving advice for editing the document. This document was authored by Holly Robinson, and it is an updated and expanded version of the Ikoma Orthography Sketch, which was also authored by Holly (Higgins) Robinson. Additional contributors from SIL International include consultants Tim Roth and Brigitte Niederseer, who reviewed and helped to improve this document. Contributors from the Ikoma language community include: Mussa Karume Thobias and Paul Muya (Ikoma Bible translators), as well as Thobius Masanja, Daniel Mahagura, John Siringo, Thabitha Gabriel, Wilsoni Machota, Samina Mahemba, Yohana Sigori, Samwel Shanyangi, and Dominick Maguye. © SIL International Uganda-Tanzania Branch P.O. Box 1235 Musoma, Tanzania P.O. Box 60368 Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania P.O. Box 750 Entebbe, Uganda P.O. Box 44456 00100 Nairobi, Kenya Approved Orthography Edition: 2018 ii Contents ABBREVIATIONS .............................................................................................................................. V 1. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................ 1 1.1 CLASSIFICATION ............................................................................................................................ 1 1.2 DATA ............................................................................................................................................. 1 1.3 DIALECTS ...................................................................................................................................... 1 1.4 FORMAT AND PURPOSE OF THIS ORTHOGRAPHY STATEMENT ........................................................ 2 2. PHONOLOGY ............................................................................................................................. 3 2.1 VOWELS ........................................................................................................................................ 3 2.1.1 Vowel inventory ................................................................................................................. 3 2.1.2 Vowel length ....................................................................................................................... 4 2.1.3 Vowel length in conditioned environments ........................................................................ 5 2.2 CONSONANTS ................................................................................................................................ 7 2.2.1 Consonant inventory ........................................................................................................... 7 2.2.2 Palatalization ....................................................................................................................... 8 2.2.3 Labialization ....................................................................................................................... 9 2.2.4 Prenasalization .................................................................................................................. 10 2.3 TONE ........................................................................................................................................... 11 2.3.1 Lexical tone....................................................................................................................... 11 2.3.2 Grammatical tone .............................................................................................................. 12 2.3.2.1 Past and Anterior .................................................................................................................... 12 2.3.2.2 Narrative and Inceptive .......................................................................................................... 14 3. MORPHOPHONOLOGY ........................................................................................................... 15 3.1 VOWELS ...................................................................................................................................... 15 3.1.1 Vowel harmony processes ................................................................................................ 15 3.1.1.1 Vowel harmony in prefixes .................................................................................................... 15 3.1.1.2 Vowel harmony in suffixes .................................................................................................... 17 3.1.1.3 Vowel harmony in noun stems ............................................................................................... 18 3.1.2 Vowel adjacency processes .............................................................................................. 20 3.1.2.1 Elision ..................................................................................................................................... 21 3.1.2.2 Desyllabification ..................................................................................................................... 22 3.1.2.3 Assimilation ............................................................................................................................ 23 3.1.2.4 Intervocalic semivowels ......................................................................................................... 24 3.1.3 Additional vowel length conventions ............................................................................... 25 3.1.3.1 Class 5 and 10 prefix vowel length ........................................................................................ 25 3.1.3.2 Word-initial vowel shortening ................................................................................................ 28 3.1.3.3 Long vowels in seemingly conditioned environments (verbs) ............................................... 28 3.1.3.4 Multiple long vowels within a verb ....................................................................................... 29 3.1.3.5 Non-Past, Inceptive and Narrative verbs................................................................................ 31 3.1.3.6 1SG object prefix written as vowel length ............................................................................. 32 3.1.4 1SG subject prefix ............................................................................................................ 33 3.2 CONSONANTS .............................................................................................................................. 33 3.2.1 Dahl’s Law ........................................................................................................................ 33 iii 4. WORD BOUNDARIES ............................................................................................................. 35 4.1 COPULA ....................................................................................................................................... 35 4.2 LOCATIVES .................................................................................................................................. 38 4.3 ASSOCIATIVES ............................................................................................................................. 40 4.4 CONJUNCTION ............................................................................................................................. 42 4.5 QUESTION WORDS ....................................................................................................................... 43 4.6 REDUPLICATION .......................................................................................................................... 45 4.7 COMPOUND WORDS ..................................................................................................................... 46 5. LOAN WORDS ......................................................................................................................... 46 6. PUNCTUATION AND CAPITALIZATION .............................................................................. 47 6.1 SENTENCE-FINAL PUNCTUATION ................................................................................................. 47 6.2 COMMAS ..................................................................................................................................... 48 6.3 COLON ........................................................................................................................................ 48 6.4 QUOTATION MARKS .................................................................................................................... 48 6.5 CAPITALIZATION ......................................................................................................................... 49 APPENDIX A: IKOMA NOUN CLASSES ......................................................................................... 50 APPENDIX B: HISTORY OF IKOMA ORTHOGRAPHY DEVELOPMENT...................................... 52 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................................... 54 iv Abbreviations * ungrammatical; incorrect spelling 1 first person; class 1 2 second person; class 2 3 third person;
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