Suvarna Garge (Editor)

Toposa language

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Native to
  
South Sudan

Ethnicity
  
Toposa

Writing system
  
none

Region
  
Eastern Africa

Native speakers
  
100,000 (2000)

Language family
  
Nilo-Saharan? Eastern Sudanic Nilotic Eastern Nilotic Teso–Turkana Toposa

Toposa (also Akara, Kare, Kumi, Taposa, Topotha) is a Nilo-Saharan language (Eastern Sudanic, Nilotic) spoken in South Sudan by the Toposa people. Mutually intelligible language varieties include Jiye of South Sudan, Nyangatom of Ethiopia, Karimojong, Jie and Dodos of Uganda and Turkana of Kenya. Teso (spoken in both Kenya and Uganda) is lexically more distant.

Contents

Consonants

  • All consonants (except, of course, for /w/ and /j/) can occur in labialized and palatalized forms.

    • Vowels

    +ATR

    -ATR

  • Toposa, like many Nilotic languages, has vowel harmony with two sets of vowels: a set with the tongue root advanced (+ATR) and a −ATR set. +ATR is marked. The vowel /a/ is neutral with respect to vowel harmony.
  • All nine vowels also occur as devoiced, contrasting with their voiced counterparts. These voiceless vowels occur primarily in prepause contexts. Some Toposa morphemes consist only of a high voiceless vowel; the functional load appears to be much greater with the high vowels than with the lower.
  • Toposa has tone, which is grammatical rather than lexical. Tone is used to mark case in nouns and tense in verbs.

    • References

    Toposa language Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA