LANGUAGE FEATURES

For the details of the linguistic features and the corresponding data presented below, see
Moges (2015), “Ngaalam: sketch of grammar and its genetic position”.

Phonological Features

The sound pattern of Ngaalam is typical to Surmic; it shows close resemblance to the
South West Surmic (SWS) pattern.
Pattern of stop consonants
There is a three-way distinction between voiceless stops, voiced stops and implosives.
The voiceless stops occur in all positions within a word. Whereas voiced stops and
implosives occur only word initially and word medially and they are all absent from word
final position.
Ngaalam shares the characteristics of many Surmic languages in having the full series of
implosives and in imposing restrictions on the occurrence of implosives word finally.
ATR Vowels
There are nine vowels, which can be categorized into [+ATR] and [-ATR]; the [+ATR]
vowels includes [i, e, o and u] and the [-ATR] vowels are [ɪ, ε, ͻ, and ʊ]. The low vowel
[a] seems to be neutral.
Tone
A tentative analysis of tone shows that there are two tone levels, high and low, and a
falling tone. Examples: [akat] with H-H tone ‘tongue’, [akat] with L-L tone ‘food’; [mua]
with H-L tone ‘lion’.

Grammatical Features

Number marking
Number marking involves a tripartite division between plural marking, singulative
marking and a pattern of replacement. The tripartite marking system of number marking
in nouns is characteristic for Northeastern Nilo-Saharan languages (Dimmendaal, 2000).
Numerals
Like the rest of the Surmic languages Ngaalam has a quinary numeral system and
combines base five, base ten and base twenty systems for higher numerals. The word for
‘twenty’ contains the root for ‘person’, eeti with H-H-L tone (one person with all fingers
and toes); a system based on fingers and toes is typical to Surmic.
Higher numerals are twenty-based representing one person for ‘twenty’, two persons for
‘forty’, three persons for ‘sixty’, etc. The source and meaning of difa ‘one hundred’ is not
clear for the time being. Compare the Oromo form ɗiba and the Majang form ɗibe for
‘hundred’, however.
Demonstratives
Demonstratives in Ngaalam follow the head noun as in Baale and make a binary
distinction between proximal and distal and alternate between singular and plural: nigite
„this‟, nigitoni „that‟, niginegi „these‟, niginogi „those‟.
The demonstratives in Ngaalam contain the widespread Surmic formatives -ni (singular)
for the distal and -gi (plural) for both the proximal and distal. Examples: oroða nigite
‘this dog’; oroða nigitoni ‘that dog’; oroðe niginegi ‘these dogs’; oroðe niginogi ‘those
dogs’.
Adjectives
Adjectives follow the head noun: makaje ‘big’; ͻŋͻlε makaje ‘big elephant’; ͻŋͻl-tε
makaje ‘the elephant is big’ [literally: it is the elephant that is big]; kuttur ‘short’, kεεta
kuttur-ijo ‘the tree is short’.
Adjectival forms in Ngaalam express various concepts of dimension, value, physical
property, age, etc. Examples: unn-o ‘(It is) long’; kuttur-o ‘(It is) short’; abburew-o ‘(It
is) hot’; lalew-o ‘(It is) cold’; kilew-o ‘(It is) dry’; maane-o ‘(It is) yellow’.
Case System
The case system of Ngaalam is typical to the Surmic pattern: the accusative case has no
case marker (marked by a zero morpheme). The citation form of a noun or a pronoun is
also in the accusative case.

Historical-Comparative notes

See the Sketch of grammar and comparative data in Moges (2015) “Ngaalam: a
sketch of grammar and its genetic position”.
Alternation between voiced geminated stops and implosives
As described in detail in Moges (2001), there is a frequently recurring alternation
between voiced geminates and implosives in SWS languages. It is argued that this
alternation resulted in the development of implosive consonants from earlier geminated
voiced stops word medially, a sound change which further fed the existing pattern of
implosive consonants by means of the developments such as *gg > ɠ, *bb > ɓ and *dd >
ɗ. Ngaalam shares this regular sound change with the SWS languages.
ATR harmony
The ATR Harmony is also a dividing line between the two coordinate branches of South
Surmic namely, South West Surmic (SWS) and South East Surmic (SES). It is argued in
Moges (2001:314) that “Proto-Surmic must have had a balanced ten vowel system
consisting of two sets of five vowels each, which may be distinguished by the ATR
feature”.
It was further argued that synchronically languages such as Murle and Baale must have
lost the +ATR [a] vowel historically reducing in effect their vowels into a nine-vowel
system, while the seven-vowel system happened to be the norm for SES languages.
Ngaalam patterns with the Murle and Baale by having a nine-vowel system and ATR
harmony system between the two sets of vowels. In Ngaalam, just like the SWS
languages, the +ATR vowel triggers the harmony.