NILOMORPH: The evolution of suprasegmental morphology in West Nilotic

<!DOCTYPE html>    <html class="no-js">  <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=Edge,chrome=1"> <link href="/favicon.ico" rel="icon" /> <title>NILOMORPH: The evolution of suprasegmental morphology in West Nilotic - Surrey Morphology Group</title> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> <meta name="keywords"> <meta name="description" content=""> <link rel="canonical" href="/projects/nilomorph/" /> <link href="//fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Roboto:400,300,700,900,500" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"> <link href='http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Noto+Sans:400,700,400italic,700italic&subset=latin,cyrillic-ext,vietnamese,latin-ext,greek-ext,cyrillic,greek,devanagari' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'> <link rel="stylesheet" href="/assets/css/style.min.css"> <script type="text/javascript" src="/assets/scripts/libs/modernizr-2.6.2.min.js"> </script>  <script async src="https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=UA-120080746-1"></script> <script> window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);} gtag('js', new Date()); gtag('config', 'UA-120080746-1'); </script> </head> <body class="ProjectPage blue"> <div class="container"> <header class="header"> <div class="top"> <div class="wrapper"> <a href="http://www.surrey.ac.uk/" class="logo"> <img src="/assets/img/logo.png" alt="" /> </a> <div class="right"> <div class="search"> <form method="get" action="/search"> <input type="text" placeholder="Search..." id="s" name="s" class="in-text" /> <input type="submit" class="search-btn" /> </form> </div> <a id="btn-staff-students" href="http://www.surrey.ac.uk/" class="btn-blue">Staff & Students <i></i> </a> </div> </div> </div> <div class="bottom"> <div class="wrapper"> <a href="/" class="logo-main"> <img src="/assets/img/logo-main.png" alt="" /> </a> <nav class="main-navigation"> <ul> <li > <a href="/people/">People</a> </li> <li > <a href="/events/">Events</a> </li> <li class="active"> <a href="/projects/">Projects</a> </li> <li > <a href="/approaches/">Approaches</a> </li> <li > <a href="/languages/">Languages</a> </li> <li > <a href="/databases/">Databases</a> </li> <li > <a href="/study/">Study</a> </li> <li > <a href="/blog/">Blog</a> </li> </ul> <a href="javascript:;" class="mobile-nav-btn"> <i class="ico mobile-nav"></i> <span>menu</span> </a> </nav> </div> </div> </header> <section class="content" id="content"> <div class="wrapper details-page extra-bottom-space"> <div class="intro"> <h1>NILOMORPH: The evolution of suprasegmental morphology in West Nilotic</h1> </div> <div class="sidebar"> <ul class="sidebar-nav tab-links"> <li class="area-home priority first"><a href="/projects/"><span>Projects</span></a></li> <li class="current priority"> <a href="/projects/nilomorph/"><span>Project Overview</span></a> </li> </ul> <div class="mobile-navigation inner-menu"> <ul> <li> <a href="/projects/nilomorph/"><span>Project Overview</span></a> </li> </ul> </div> <div class="desktop widget"> <img src="/media/1199/erc.jpg?width=140" alt="" /> <h4></h4> </div> <div class="tab-content"> </div> </div> <div class="right-content"> <h2>Project Overview</h2> <div class="row"> <div class="grey-box"> <div class="one-half"> <h5>Project</h5> <p class="add-space"> NILOMORPH: The evolution of suprasegmental morphology in West Nilotic </p> <h5>Project members: </h5> <p>MORPHOLOGY team (Surrey)<br />Matthew Baerman (PI)<br />Oliver Bond (Senior Scientist)</p> <p>DESCRIPTION team (Edinburgh)<br />Bert Remijsen (PI)</p> <p>RECONSTRUCTION team (CNRS)<br />Lameen Souag (PI)</p> </div> <div class="one-half right"> <h5>Period of award</h5> <p> May 2025-April 2031 </p> <h5>Funder:</h5> <p> European Research Council Synergy Grant </p> </div> </div> <div class="tablet widget"> <img src="/media/1199/erc.jpg?width=140" alt="" /> <h4></h4> </div> </div> <p>NILOMORPH sets out to explain how linguistic evolution took a highly unexpected turn in one family of languages spoken in East Africa. They have evolved a morphological system where multiple grammatical categories are expressed simultaneously within a single syllable, through subtle modulations of its phonological properties. For example, in the Dinka language the word <strong>tèm</strong>, meaning ‘to cut’, can be made to mean ‘she cuts it for someone’ by lengthening the vowel, changing the low tone to high, and pronouncing it with breathy voice quality: <strong>té̤ːm</strong>, and more than dozen other contrasts can be generated by similar means. A single monosyllabic word in language like Dinka attains a degree of information density unparalleled elsewhere in the languages of the world. Surprisingly, comparative evidence suggests that the West Nilotic languages were once much more conventional, using suffixes to mark grammatical categories. As has happened in many other languages, such as English, these suffixes were lost over time. But rather than simply disappearing, they were transformed into suprasegmental phonological properties pronounced concurrently with the word stem. The aim of NILOMORPH is to reconstruct this evolution. But because of the extreme rarity of this morphological type, we need to explain not just how it happened here, we also have to explain why it did not happen in other language families. It is therefore not enough just to retrace the history of linguistic forms. NILOMORPH proposes a transformative step in historical linguistics: the reconstruction not just of external features, but of the cognitive motivation behind them. This will be achieved through the synergy of three teams, DESCRIPTION, MORPHOLOGY and RECONSTRUCTION, employing a combination of field linguistics, acoustic analysis, experimental linguistics, computational simulation, typology, and the historical-comparative method.</p> </div> <a href="javascript:;" class="to-top off-bottom">TOP</a> </div> </section> <footer class="footer" id="footer"> <div class="top-bar"> <div class="wrapper"> <ul class="breadcrumb"> <li> <a href="/"> <i class="ico home"></i> Home </a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/"> Projects </a> </li> <li class="last"> <a href="javascript:;">NILOMORPH: The evolution of suprasegmental morphology in West Nilotic</a></li> </ul> <a href="/" class="logo-footer"> <img src="/assets/img/logo-footer.png" alt="" /> </a> </div> </div> <div class="main"> <div class="wrapper"> <div class="top"> <ul> <li> <a href="/events/" target="_self">Events</a> </li> <li> <a href="http://eepurl.com/clVCz9" target="_blank">Join our mailing list</a> </li> <li> <a href="http://morph.surrey.ac.uk/" target="_blank">Subscribe to our blog</a> </li> <li> <a href="https://www.surrey.ac.uk/school-literature-languages" target="_blank">School of Literature and Languages</a> </li> </ul> <div class="right"> <h3>Surrey Morphology Group</h3> <span><a href="tel:01483 686230">01483 686230</a></span> <a href="mailto:smg@surrey.ac.uk">smg@surrey.ac.uk</a> </div> </div> <div class="bottom"> <ul class="social-network"> <li> <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Surrey+Morphology+Group/@51.243112,-0.589814,15z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x7692d176f40cad75" target="_blank"> <i class="ico google-map"></i> </a> <div class="tooltip"> <div class="tooltip-inner"> <span class="arrow"></span> <p>Find us</p> </div> </div> </li> <li> <a href="https://twitter.com/SurreySMG" target="_blank"> <i class="ico twitter"></i> </a> <div class="tooltip"> <div class="tooltip-inner"> <span class="arrow"></span> <p>Twitter</p> </div> </div> </li> <li> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/SurreyMorphologyGroupGuildford" target="_blank"> <i class="ico youtube"></i> </a> <div class="tooltip"> <div class="tooltip-inner"> <span class="arrow"></span> <p>Youtube</p> </div> </div> </li> <li> <a href="https://plus.google.com/+SurreyMorphologyGroupGuildford/photos" target="_blank"> <i class="ico instagram"></i> </a> <div class="tooltip"> <div class="tooltip-inner"> <span class="arrow"></span> <p>Google +</p> </div> </div> </li> </ul> <p> <p><span>Surrey Morphology Group,</span><br />School of Literature and Languages,<br /><span>University of Surrey, Guildford, GU2 7XH, UK</span></p> </p> </div> </div> </div> </footer> </div> <script type="text/javascript"> function AdjustHeight() { var height = document.getElementById("footer").offsetHeight; document.getElementById("content").style.paddingBottom = height + 'px'; } window.onload = AdjustHeight; window.onresize = AdjustHeight; </script> <div class="mobile-navigation"> <a href="javascript:;" class="close-btn"> <i></i> <span>close</span> </a> <ul> <li><a href="/"><span>Home</span></a></li> <li> <a href="/people/"><span>People</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/events/"><span>Events</span></a> <ul> <li><a href="/"><span>Home</span></a></li> <li> <a href="/events/25th-anniversary-workshop/"><span>25th Anniversary Workshop</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/events/apll10/"><span>APLL10</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/events/llcd-workshop-ws8-future-directions-in-word-and-paradigm-morphology/"><span>LLCD Workshop WS8: Future directions in Word and Paradigm morphology</span></a> </li> </ul> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/"><span>Projects</span></a> <ul> <li><a href="/"><span>Home</span></a></li> <li> <a href="/projects/nilomorph/"><span>NILOMORPH: The evolution of suprasegmental morphology in West Nilotic</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/revoluphon/"><span>REVOLUPHON - Rational Evolutionary Phonology</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/analogical-growth/"><span>Analogical growth of grammatical systems</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/ecf-2022-286/"><span>What Is Understood ? 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NILOMORPH: The evolution of suprasegmental morphology in West Nilotic - Surrey Morphology Group