Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics Thesis Approval Sheet This thesis, entitled The Linguistic Structure of Baraïn (Chadic) written byy Joseph Lovestrand and submitted in partial fulfillment for the degree of Master of Arts with major in Applied Linguistics has been read and approvedi by the undersigned members of the faculty of the Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics Paul Kroeger (Supervising Professor) Stephen Parker Michael Cahill Dec, 10, 2012 date signed The Linguistic Structure of Baraïn (Chadic) by Joseph Lovestrand Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts with major in Applied Linguistics Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics December 2012 © 2012 Joseph Lovestrand All Rights Reserved CERTIFICATE I acknowledge that use of copyrighted material in my thesis may place me under an obligation to the copyright owner, especially when use of such material exceeds usual fair use provisions. I hereby certify that I have obtained the written permission of the copyright owner for any and all such occurrences and that no portion of my thesis has been copyrighted previously unless properly referenced. I hereby agree to indemnify and hold harmless the Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics from any and all claims that may be asserted or that may arise from any copyright violation. Signature Dec 2 2or2 Date THESIS DUPLICATION RELEASE I hereby authorize the Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics Library to duplicate this thesis when needed for research and/or scholarship. Agreed: Refused: ABSTRACT The Linguistic Structure of Baraïn (Chadic) Joseph Lovestrand Master of Arts with major in Applied Linguistics Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics, December 2012 Supervising Professor: Dr. Paul Kroeger This thesis is the first linguistic analysis of Baraïn [bva], an East Chadic (Afroasiatic) language spoken by about 6,000 people in the Republic of Chad. The study focuses on the fundamental phonological, morphological, and syntactic structures of the language. Baraïn has sixteen consonants (no implosives) and five vowels. It uses contrastive length and three levels of contrastive tone. No syllables are super-heavy. Morphophonological processes include asymmetrical patterns of voice spreading in consonant clusters and vowel backness harmony. Major class lexical items are minimally bimorphemic. Nouns are unbound roots with covert grammatical gender. However, gender is only distinguished in singular forms. Verbs are bound roots with an underlying tone melody. A small class of verb roots consist of a single consonant (and tone). Two classes of verbs have distinctive argument structures: labiles and causatives. Objects, indirect objects, and some oblique arguments can be indexed by verbal agreement, but xi not subjects. Six distinct tense, aspect, and mood categories are marked by suffixes and one auxiliary. There are ten categories in the pronominal and agreement systems, but the first person plural inclusive markers are all bimorphemic. The language is head-initial and the unmarked syntactic order is SVO. Question words are in situ. Negation is sentence-final. The appendices include a proposed orthographic system and seven interlinearized texts taken from recorded natural speech. xii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This work is one result of the initiative taken by the Baraïn community and the founding members of the Association pour le développement et la promotion de la langue baraïn (ADPLB) who refused to sit idly by while their language was threatened by the realities of the modern world. Two members of that community, Moussa Adou and Sayide Moussa of Balili, played a key role as language informants, patiently enduring the peculiar experience of being subjected to the probings of a foreign linguist. This research project was facilitated by the Chadian mother-tongue literacy organization Fédération des associations pour la promotion des langues du Guéra (FAPLG). As a cultural outsider, I benefited immensely from the logistic and moral support of Sakine Ramat, Michel Karim, and Yaya Ali Ramat. I am thankful for my friends in the SIL office in N'Djamena and the team in Mongo who continue to impress me with their perseverance in a less-than-ideal living environment. My colleagues Jim Roberts and Silke Sauer patiently reviewed my analysis in its most immature and naive stages, and put me on the right track early in my research. Mary Pearce, Don Burquest, and Sean Allison provided helpful insights and improved several parts of the analysis on multiple occasions. I would like to thank the members of my committee, Paul Kroeger, Steve Parker, and Mike Cahill—especially the first two whose courses introduced me to linguistics. Finally, thank you to my family and many friends who provided the material, emotional, and spiritual support needed during the past few years; and thank you to him who gives everyone life and breath, and everything else. November 7, 2012 xiii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract..............................................................................................................................xi Acknowledgments...........................................................................................................xiii List of tables....................................................................................................................xxi List of figures................................................................................................................xxiii List of abbreviations......................................................................................................xxv Chapter 1: Introduction....................................................................................................1 1.1 Research aims and organization...............................................................................1 1.2 Research participants...............................................................................................2 1.3 The Baraïn people....................................................................................................3 1.4 Linguistic classification...........................................................................................4 1.5 Previous research.....................................................................................................7 1.6 Dialect situation.......................................................................................................8 1.7 Language endangerment..........................................................................................9 Part I : Phonology............................................................................................................11 Chapter 2 : Phonemic segments......................................................................................12 2.1 Consonants.............................................................................................................12 2.1.1 Non-phonemic glottal stop.............................................................................13 2.1.2 Phonetic realizations of the rhotic trill...........................................................14 2.1.3 Fricatives resulting from lenition and loan words..........................................14 2.1.4 Phonetic realizations of the palatal consonant /ɟ/.........................................14 2.1.5 Phonemic status of the palatal consonant /ɟ/.................................................15 2.1.6 Phonemic status of the velar and palatal nasals /ɲ/ and /ŋ/........................15 2.1.7 Long consonants.............................................................................................17 2.2 Vowels....................................................................................................................19 2.2.1 Long vowels...................................................................................................19 Chapter 3 : CV (syllable) structures...............................................................................21 3.1 Nominal CV structures...........................................................................................22 3.2 Verb root CV structures..........................................................................................24 3.2.1 Monoverb roots..............................................................................................25 3.2.2 Polyverb roots.................................................................................................26 3.3 Function word syllable structures..........................................................................28 3.4 Distribution of consonants.....................................................................................29 Chapter 4 : Morphophonemics.......................................................................................31 4.1 Assimilation of the point of articulation (nasals)...................................................31 4.1.1 Nasal clusters..................................................................................................33 4.2 Voicing in plosive clusters......................................................................................33 xv 4.3 Rhotic assimilation.................................................................................................36 4.4 Fronting of back vowels.........................................................................................37 4.5 Vowel