The Linguistics department is excited to host our first symposium of the Winter 2024 semester on Friday Feburary 16th at 2pm. The colloquium will be located at 5057 Woodward, room 7909, featuring Irina Monich, a new Assistant Professor in the Linguistics Program at Wayne State University.

Short biography

Irina Monich is a new Assistant Professor in the Linguistics Program at Wayne State University. She acquired her Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut and has since worked as a researcher and a lecturer at the University of Surrey, UC San Diego, and Princeton University. Her primary research interests are phonology, morphology, and comparative reconstruction of Nilo-Saharan languages, especially its Western Nilotic branch.

Abstract

Nuer language (Nilo-Saharan, endemic to South Sudan and parts of Ethiopia) presents a
unique analytic challenge due to its complex non-concatenative morphology. Practically
all morphological categories are signaled via mutation of four targets in the root: the quality
and the quantity of the root vowel, the tonal contour, and the quality of the root-final
consonant. Presumably, these mutations are accomplished through affixation of various
“floating” (i.e., not pre-linked to consonants and vowels) entities, such as morae, tones,
and phonological features.

In this talk, I report on discovery of two morphological categories that have not been
recognized in the earlier work on Nuer: alienable possession and spatial
deixis/definiteness. These categories are marked via “invisible” particles, which modify
the tonal contour of certain nouns only and have no other phonological manifestation. For
example, some nouns change their tonal properties when followed by an alienable
possessor: ɲe ̤́
t rân ‘a person’s (own) rib’ vs. ɲe ̤̀
t rân ‘a person’s (animal) rib’. Similarly,
the genitive form of the noun dɪ̂:t “bird” shows a three-way tonal contrast depending on
whether the noun is proximal/definite, distal/indefinite, or proper: 1) cɔ ̤̀a :: dìɛ::t ‘bone
of (this/the) bird’; 2) cɔ ̤̀a :: dǐɛ::t ‘bone of (that/a) bird’; 3) cɔ ̤̌a :: dɪ̂ɛ::t ‘bone of Diit (person
named ‘bird’)’.

I will describe the phonological effects of the particles, their distribution, the pragmatic
factors conditioning their usage, and the comparative evidence suggesting their probable
diachronic origins.
In addition to revealing new layers of morphosyntactic complexity in the Nuer nominal
phrase, the discovery of the tonal particles is sure to have positive implications for our
understanding of the Nuer tonal system. Going forward, elicitation of the Nuer nominal
data should incorporate controls for the relevant pragmatic factors in order to ascertain a
more accurate identification of lexical tonal properties.