Ethnicity: Daju people | Glottolog: daju1249 | |
Geographic
distribution: Sudan, Chad, South Sudan Linguistic classification: Nilo-Saharan?
Eastern Sudanic
Kir–Abbaian
Daju | ||
The Daju languages are spoken in isolated pockets by the Daju people across a wide area of Sudan and Chad, in parts of the regions of Kordofan, Darfur, and Wadai. They belong to the Eastern Sudanic subfamily of Nilo-Saharan.
Contents
Languages
They are sub-classified as follows, following Stevenson 1956:
Proto-Daju has been partially reconstructed by Robin Thelwall (1981). In his judgement, the Eastern Daju languages separated from the others perhaps as much as 2000 years ago, while the Western Daju languages were spread more recently, perhaps by the Daju state which dominated Darfur from about 1200 AD until scattered after the death of Kasi Furogé, the Daju king, and replaced by the Tunjur. The principal phonetic difference between the two branches is the reflex of proto-Daju *ɣ, reflected as Western *r and Eastern *x.
Grammar
The typical verb root in Daju is a monosyllable of the form (C)VC(C). The perfective takes a prefixed k-; the imperfective, a prefixed a(n)-. The verb takes person suffixes, exemplified in Shatt (for the verb "drink" in the imperfective):
Suffixes on nouns serve to mark singulative (-tic, -təs), generic, and plural forms. The typical word order is subject–verb–object in most Daju languages, with exceptions such as Sila, and possessed–possessor.