A Grammar of Tommo So. Dogon Language Family Mali

574 Pages·2.424 MB·

by  McPherson Laura.

A Grammar of Tommo So
Dogon Language Family
Mali

Laura McPherson
UCLA

Draft dated 10/23/11
Not finished or definitive, use caution in citing. Chapters 1-20 revised, later chapters await
revision and in some cases writing.

Supported by National Science Foundation grant BCS-0537435, the
J. William Fulbright Institute of International Education, and the National Science Foundation
Graduate Research Fellowship Program

[email protected]

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1. Introduction

1.1 Dogon languages

The Dogon language family is made up of around 20 languages, and it is currently
thought to constitute its own branch of the Niger-Congo phylum (Blench XXX). The
languages are spoken on the plains and mountains in the eastern part of Mali’s Région de
Mopti, with small crossover into Burkina Faso. The internal classification of the language
family is not yet clear, for there are not yet enough detailed grammars of the constituent
languages; the Dogon Language Project, under whose auspices I have prepared this
grammar, aims to fill this gap.
In the absence of genetic classification, the following table summarizes our current
understanding of the Dogon language family based on geographic distribution:

(xx) Northern
Northeast Ben-Tey (Heath, m.s.)
Jamsay (Heath 2008)
Northwest Najamba (Heath, m.s., Hantgan xxx)
Kindige
North central Nanga (Heath, m.s.)
Yanda-dom (Heath, m.s.)

Central
North central Tommo So (McPherson, m.s.)
Donno So (xxx)
South central Togo-Kan (Heath, m.s.)

Eastern
Sangha So1 (Calame-Griaule 1968, Moran, m.s.)
Yorno So (Heath, m.s.)

Western
Mombo (Prokhorov, m.s.)
Ampari (Prokhorov, m.s.)

1 Also called Toro So.
2
Dogulu-dom
Tomo-Kan
…

This should not be understood as representing genetic similarity. For example, despite the
fact that Tommo So and Dogulu Dom fall into the same geographic location, Tommo So
bears a closer relation to Nanga or Najamba, while Dogulu Dom bears a closer relation to
Mombo and Ampari.

MAP

1.2 Tommo So

Tommo So /tɔm̀ mɔ ̀ sɔɔ̀ /́ is a Central Dogon language spoken on the plateau between
Douentza and Bandiagara by an estimated 40,000-60,000 people (Hochstedtler et al. 2007).
The name itself is made up of the name of the ethnic group Tommo /tɔm̀ mɔ/́ and the word
for language /sɔɔ̀ /́.
The communes of Ningari /niŋari/, Mory /mori/, Tédié /teeʥe/, Dè /dɛ/, Ondogu
/óndógú/, Kani Goguna /kànì gógúná/ and Kéndié /kèɲʥé/ constitute the heart of Tommo
territory. Each of these communes have a market whose lingua franca is Tommo So. Other
nearby languages include Bɔndu-Sɔ (made up of Najamba and Kindige) to the northwest,
Nanga and Jamsay to the east, and Dulɔ-Sɔ to the west. Donno So, Dogulu Dom….
Tommo So’s closest relative is Donno So, spoken in and around the major market
town of Bandiagara. In fact, until recently, Tommo So has not been listed as a separate
language in Ethnologue, simply due to the fact that Donno So was documented earlier by
Catholic missionaries (CITE). While the two languages are mutually intelligible,
particularly those dialects of Tommo So closest to Bandiagara (e.g. Kani Gogouna), the data
I have seen suggest that Donno So is an intermediate step between two poles formed by
Tommo So and Sangha So (Toro So). Furthermore, Tommo So is a culturally important
language to the Dogon people, seen as one of the main or original varieties of spoken
Dogon, and many Dogon songs are in Tommo So regardless of the language of the village
where they are sung (Hochstedtler et al. 2007).

1.3 Environment

Tommo villages are all located on the plateau of a rocky inselberg mountain
between Douentza and Bandiagara and generally cannot be reached by paved roads. The
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most efficient way of reaching most villages is by motorcycle, though the area can be
navigated by 4x4 vehicle via Dogani or Bandiagara.
The landscape consists of areas with large boulders interspersed with pebbly or
clayey plains and punctuated by small densely wooded copses. The climate is arid, with a
rainy season between June and September, when millet (Pennisetum glaucum) is cultivated
along with other minor crops such as sorghum (Sorghum bicolor), cow-pea (Vigna
unguiculata), sesame (Sesamum indicum), roselle (Hibiscus sabdariffa in red and green
varieties), okra (Hibiscus esculentus), peanut (Arachis hypogaea), and groundnut (Vigna
subterranea). Wild fruits such as the shea fruit (Vitellaria paradoxa), wild grapes (Lannea
microcarpia), and zaba (Saba senegalensis) are also harvested throughout the year.
Aside from farming, Tommo people also do a small amount of herding of sheep,
goats and cows. Most of the herding knowledge appears to have originated with the Fulani
people, indicated by the near total lack of native Dogon words for practices of animal
husbandry. Large game animals have mostly disappeared from the region, but small
mammals, such as hedgehogs, mongooses, and dassies, as well as many species of birds and
reptiles still thrive.
In the dry season, there are few ponds or other sources of water; wells and pumps
provide water to most villages in the region. Thus, plant life is confined for most of the year
to those trees and shrubs not requiring much water, such as the doum palm, indigo, baobab,
and a few species of Acacia trees. When the rains arrive, the sandy soil bursts to life with
many varieties of grasses, and Ipomoeia flowers line the banks of nascent streams.

1.4 Language use and vitality

1.5 Tommo So sources

1.5.1 Previous work

To my knowledge, the only scholarly work published on the grammar of Tommo So
is Dogon (1995), written by Vladimir Plungian for the Languages of the World series.
While providing a good introduction to the language, his work is based on the dialect
spoken around XXX, which differs slightly from the dialect discussed here, and he does not
mark tone, a key grammatical feature of all Dogon languages. Several articles have
appeared over the last 50 years that mention Tommo So (often under the name Tombo-Sɔ)
among other dialects of Dogon, including several by Plungian. For a detailed bibliography,
see Hantgan (2007).
In terms of lexical work, the Direction Nationale de l'Alphabétisation Fonctionnelle
et de la Linguistique Appliquée (D.N.A.F.L.A., now known as the Institut National des
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Langues – Abdoulaye Barry) has published Elements de Terminologie Dogon (1984) based
on Tommo So, and several other articles provide limited wordlists (CITE).

1.5.2 Current fieldwork

The data in this grammar are from work with speakers from the commune of Tédié
(villages of Tongo-Tongo and Anji) from June 2008 to February 2012. Elicitation was done
both in situ and in the nearby towns of Douentza and Sévaré with consultants from Tédié.
Recordings were made using a Zoom H4 digital recorder and analyzed using Praat (CITE).
In addition to notebooks, data were stored in Microsoft Word, Excel, and Filemaker Pro,
and Excel was used to plot vowel formants.

1.5.3 Acknowledgements

Funding for this research is provided by National Science Foundation grant PA
50643-04, “Dogon languages of Mali” (DATES), the J. William Fulbright Institute for
International Education (2008-2009), and the National Science Foundation Graduate
Research Fellowship Program (2010-2013) with the support of the Institut National des
Langues – Abdoulaye Barry in Bamako. I would also like to thank the UCLA Department
of Linguistics, in particular Bruce Hayes and Russell Schuh, for their advice and
encouragement for this project.
I would like to express my deep gratitude to Dr. Jeffrey Heath for getting me
involved in this project. Without his support and unending knowledge, this work would not
be what it is today. Also thanks to Seydou Moro, Minkailou Djiguiba and Oumar Koné for
their assistance in establishing contacts and getting me to the village, to Kirill Prokhorov for
collaboration and company, and to Abbie Hantgan, for unquestioning support and friendship
over the years.
I am very grateful to the chief and people of Tongo-Tongo for taking this strange
American into their village. Special thanks to Ramata Ouologuèm, my main consultant, for
her patience, eagerness, and friendship, and to her father Sana ‘M. le Maire’ Ouologuèm for
his guidance, wisdom, and prolific knowledge of the Tommo people’s language and history.
Thank you as well to my consultant in Sévaré Issa Toloba, without whom this grammar
would not be here. Many thanks as well to Ajuma Guindo and Zakaria Ouologuèm for
additional help and perspective.
Finally, thank you to my family and friends who continued to support me on all of
my trips to Mali. I am deeply indebted.

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2 Grammatical Sketch

This chapter will provide an introduction to the main grammatical features of
Tommo So, all of which will be covered more in depth later in the grammar.

2.1 Phonology

2.1.1 Segmental inventory and phonotactics

The phonemic inventory of Tommo So consists of 18 consonants, including
nasalized sonorant /yn/, and 7 vowels, for which length and nasalization are contrastive.
ATR and backness harmony is present in stems and to a lesser extent between stems and
derivational affixes; inflectional affixes are outside the domain of both kinds of harmony.
Harmony is discussed in section XXX.
Unlike some Dogon languages, /l/ and /r/ are contrastive, but neither liquid occurs in
word-initial position. Only sonorant consonants can serve as codas.
The transcription system used in this grammar is a modified form of IPA. The
divergences are intended to make it closer to standard orthographies in use for other West
African languages like Bambara. Thus, affricate /ʥ/ will be written ‘j’, tap /ɾ/ as ‘r’, and /j/
as ‘y’, while long vowels will be written as two consecutive vowels (‘aa’ rather than /aː/).
Nasalization will be marked with a superscript n {vn} to distinguish it from nasal codas; this
also ensures maximum visibility of tone marking, since the use of tilde would require
stacking diacritics.

2.1.2 Tonal inventory and tonotactics

Like all Dogon languages, Tommo So is tonal, with tonal primitives H[igh] and
L[ow], marked {v́} and {v̀}, respectively. It also has two contour tones, <LH> rising ({v̌}
or {v̀v́}) and <HL> falling ({v̂} or {v́v̀}), though instances of the latter are rare. Tommo
So lacks the “bell-shaped tone” (following Heath 2008) <LHL> characteristic of other
Dogon languages such as Jamsay or Nanga, but it does maintain a three-way contrast
between H, L and toneless, with the latter constrainted to clitics and certain suffixes
(McPherson 2011).
Native Tommo So stems all have one of two melodies: {H} or {LH}, but loanwords
have introduced {HL} and {LHL} tone melodies into the lexicon. {HLH} is not a licit
surface melody. Word-level tone melodies can be overwritten in certain grammatical
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contexts; these changes are listed at the end of this sub-section and described in depth in
Chapter 3.
Intonation plays an important role in some Dogon languages (e.g. the “dying quail”
intonation in Jamsay, Heath 2008), but this does not seem to be true for Tommo So.
Nonetheless, certain words or constructions have intonational pitch-raising, such as [kɛḿ́ ]
‘all’ and the ‘you’d better not’ type of threat.

2.1.3 Key phonological alternations

One salient feature of Tommo So phonology is the variable epenthesis of [u] after
sonorants. While Plungian (1995) lists sun as nàmú, most of the speakers in Tédié will say
simply nǎm. On other words, like ‘white’, they may vary, pronouncing either pílu or píl.
The fact that the vowel is epenthetic is clear from the fact that it is toneless and does not
harmonize with the stem. This will be discussed further in section XXX.
Another phonological process is rhotic dissimilation, where an r-initial suffix after a
syllable in the stem containing /r/ will dissimilate to [l]. For example, the stem góró ‘hat’
with the transitive suffix -rV will, in the Sarédina dialect, become gòrí-ló ‘put a hat (on a
child)’ rather than the expected gòrí-ró. The Tédié dialect does not use this verb. For more
on rhotic dissimilation, see section XXX.
Vowel harmony is also a key feature of the vowel system in Tommo So, but this too
is variable. Specifically, the levels of harmony of derivational suffixes on verbs correlate
with how close the suffix is to the stem in terms of affix order. On a given day, the speaker
may pronounce the very same verb with or without harmony. For exampleː

(xx) pɔń ní-yɔ ́~ pɔń ní-yɛ ́ ‘put on pants’

Section XXX treats this variation.
A final phonological effect to note is that like other Dogon languages like Jamsay
(Heath 2008), Tommo So shows the effects of a single left-aligned trochee, in that the
second syllable, particularly in longer words, tends to be metrically weak. This results in
both vowel syncope and vowel reduction. For examples and discussion, see section XXX.

2.1.4 Key tonal changes

Grammatical tone permeates the system in Tommo So, with typically word level
tone changes in both the nominal and verbal realms. The following summarizes some
possible tonal overlays:

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Overlaid all L (“tone lowering”)
- NP as head of a relative clause
- Relative participle before demonstrative
- NP before adjective or demonstrative
- Possessed NP following full NP (non-pronominal) possessor
- First noun in canonical and synthetic compounds
- Second noun in pseudogenitive compounds
- Verb stem before perfect negative suffix

Overlaid all H
- Singular affirmative imperative of most verbs
- Inalienably possessed nouns (1-2 morae) with a pronominal possessor
- Verbal stem in gerundive compounds
- Certain infinitives

Overlaid HL
- Perfective and negative relative participles
- Possessed kinship terms (3+ morae) with a pronominal possessor
- Verb stems in the imperfect affirmative

Overlaid LH
- Verb stems in the imperfect negative
- Certain infinitives

2.2 Verbal Inflection

The basic word order is SOV; the inflected verb (be that auxiliary or otherwise)
comes at the end of the sentence. Like nominal stems, verb stems in Tommo So belong to
one of two tonal classes: either all {H} or {LH} with the L on the first syllable or mora (on
monosyllabic verbs). In the rare monomoraic verbs, {LH} surfaces as simply {L} in the
absence of a second mora. Depending on the inflection, the {H} may surface on the
following suffix. Which tone pattern a verb stem will take is partially predictable by the
first consonant, with voiced obstruent-initial stems taking {LH}, voiceless obstruent- and
vowel-initial stems taking {H}, and sonorant-initial stems lexically listed.
As indicated in section 2.1.4, the lexical tone of the stem is often overridden by
grammatical tone patterns when inflected. I will discuss this in conjunction with verbal
inflectional paradigms below.
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The basic form of the verb in main clauses is as follows:

(xx) [stem- (derivational suffix(es))] – aspect/negation – pronominal subject

The verb is obligatorily inflected for subject agreement, using the following suffixes:

(xx) 1sg -m 1pl -y
2sg -w 2pl -y
3sg -ø 3pl (-N)

I have placed the 3pl suffix in parentheses because there is no one suffix that surfaces in
each inflected form. Rather, the 3pl seems to have at least some nasal element that morphs
and fuses with the aspectual suffix.
Inflection of a verb generally changes it in one of three ways: by 1) changing its
tonal pattern, 2) changing the final vowel of the stem and 3) adding a discrete suffix.
Because these three are intertwined, it is hard to simply list the forms without comment.
Thus, I will briefly discuss aspectual categories in the affirmative followed by a section on
negation in each of these aspects. For the full treatment of aspect and verbal inflection, see
Chapter 11.

2.2.1 Aspect

There are two perfective forms for each verb, one of which changes the final vowel
of the stem to /-aa/ and the other of which changes it to one of three classes: 1) +ATR /e/,
2) -ATR /ɛ/, or 3) neutral /i/, which sometimes surfaces as [u] before a labial consonant. If
the stem is two syllables or less and the final vowel is a mid vowel, then it will necessarily
also become a front mid-vowel agreeing in ATR value with the stem. However, if the final
vowel is not a mid-vowel, it is unpredictable whether it will become a mid-vowel or a high
vowel, and if mid, its ATR value is also unpredictable. Stems with three or more syllables
always take /i/ as the perfect vowel.
The two perfective forms differ in their tonal contours as well. The /-aa/ form has no
effect on the lexical tone of the stem, except perhaps in monosyllabic {LH} verbs, in which
case it may become all low if the auxiliary can take the H. The second perfective form,
however, does change the tone of the stem. If the verb is defocalized, it undergoes tone
lowering (its tone is overwritten with {L}). If it is focused and reduplicated, it takes {HL}
with a L-toned initial reduplicant. If it is the relative participle, it also takes {HL}.
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