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Vocabulary

The dialects spoken in Chad and Niger have some French influence whereas the dialects spoken in Libya and Sudan have more of an Arabic influence. The Dazaga language was not traditionally a written language but in recent years the SIL had developed an orthography. The majority of Dazaga speakers are bilingual or multilingual in their native tongue along with either Arabic, French, Zaghawa, Hausa, Zarma, Kanuri or Tuareg. There are thus many borrowings from other languages such as Arabic, Hausa or French. For example, the word for "thank you" is borrowed from Arabic shokran and incorporated into the language by usually being followed by the suffix -num marking the second person.

The following tables contain words from the Daza dialect spoken in Omdurman, Sudan. This romanisation is not standard.

Numbers

Basic words and phrases

The Azza are a blacksmith class who speak their own dialect of the language, referred to as Azzanga, which is considered by Dagaza speakers to be lower in status then the standard dialect.⁶

Phonology

The phonology of Daza is as follows:⁷

Consonants

Vowels

Tone

Dagaza showcases 4 distinct tones, high, low, rising, and falling, although the occurrence of rising and falling tones is limited to just a few specific contexts and no word exists which only contains low tones. For this reason, there is debate as to whether these truly represent 4 distinct tonemes or if instead Dagaza has a pitch accent system.⁸

Grammar

The Daza language exhibits a subject-object-verb word order, as can be seen in the following example:⁹

à̰ʊ̰́

à̰ʊ̰́

man

áɪ̀

áɪ̀

this

dɪ́lɪ̀mɪ̀

dɪ́lɪ̀m=ɪ̀

leprosy=ERG

[káá]

kɛ́ɛ́-a

hand-PL

[sʊ́nà]

sʊ́n-à

3S.POSS-PL

ɡɔ́ɾʊ̀

Ø-j-kɔ́ɾ

3.OBJ-3-cut

à̰ʊ̰́ áɪ̀ dɪ́lɪ̀mɪ̀ [káá] [sʊ́nà] ɡɔ́ɾʊ̀

à̰ʊ̰́ áɪ̀ dɪ́lɪ̀m=ɪ̀ kɛ́ɛ́-a sʊ́n-à Ø-j-kɔ́ɾ

man this leprosy=ERG hand-PL 3S.POSS-PL 3.OBJ-3-cut

‘This man, leprosy cut his hands.’

There are no grammatical genders in Dagaza, and biological gender is indicated with separate lexical items for male and female.¹⁰

Adding the adjectivalizer suffix -ɾ́ɛ at the end of a word forms adjectives from nouns, verbs, and occasionally even other adjectives.¹¹

Verbs are inflected for both subject and object arguments. This inflection is sensitive to grammatical person, but not number, gender, or other features of the subject and object.¹²

To signify presentational possession (exemplified by the have verb in English, e.g. "I have a computer"), Dazaga utilizes a transitive "have-verb" strategy where the possessor is the subject and the possessum is the object, similar to how this construction is made in English. The following example shows presentational possession in Dazaga:¹³

jɛ́ɡɛ̀

jɛ́ɡɛ̀

house

ɡòdúù

ɡòdú=ù

clay=GEN.SG

déì

Ø-j-téi

3.OBJ-3-have

jɛ́ɡɛ̀ ɡòdúù déì

jɛ́ɡɛ̀ ɡòdú=ù Ø-j-téi

house clay=GEN.SG 3.OBJ-3-have

'He has a house of clay.’

Dazaga uses clitic case markers for four cases: ergative, accusative, genitive, and dative. The marking of case is sensitive to an Animacy Hierarchy: the accusative enclitic /=ɡà/ encodes the object of a transitive verb when it is a high animacy referent (personal pronouns). For all other object referents, this clitic is optional.¹⁴

Interrogatives are indicated in two ways; yes/no questions are formed by attaching the clitic -ra to the end of the verb, information questions are indicated by the presence by equivalents to wh- question words in English at the end of the phrase.¹⁵

External links

• Relative Clauses in Dazaga [1] Archived 2016-03-11 at the Wayback Machine

References

1. Daza at Ethnologue (26th ed., 2023) https://www.ethnologue.com/language/dzg ↩

2. Daza at Ethnologue (26th ed., 2023) https://www.ethnologue.com/language/dzg ↩

3. Daza at Ethnologue (26th ed., 2023) https://www.ethnologue.com/language/dzg ↩

4. Greenberg, Joseph H. 1963. The languages of Africa. International Journal of American Linguistics 29.1. Repr. The Hague: Mouton, 1966. ↩

5. Cyffer, Norbert. 2000. Linguistic properties of the Saharan languages. Areal and Genetic Factors in Language Classification and Description: Africa South of the Sahara, ed. by Petr Zima, 30–59. Lincom Studies in African Linguistics 47. München: Lincom Europa ↩

6. Walters, Josiah K. (2016). A Grammar of Dazaga. Grammars and sketches of the world's languages Africa. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-32391-9. 978-90-04-32391-9 ↩

7. Walters, Josiah K. (2016). A Grammar of Dazaga. Grammars and sketches of the world's languages Africa. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-32391-9. 978-90-04-32391-9 ↩

8. Walters, Josiah K. (2016). A Grammar of Dazaga. Grammars and sketches of the world's languages Africa. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-32391-9. 978-90-04-32391-9 ↩

9. Walters, Josiah K. (2016). A Grammar of Dazaga. Grammars and sketches of the world's languages Africa. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-32391-9. 978-90-04-32391-9 ↩

10. Walters, Josiah K. (2016). A Grammar of Dazaga. Grammars and sketches of the world's languages Africa. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-32391-9. 978-90-04-32391-9 ↩

11. Walters, Josiah K. (2016). A Grammar of Dazaga. Grammars and sketches of the world's languages Africa. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-32391-9. 978-90-04-32391-9 ↩

12. Walters, Josiah K. (2016). A Grammar of Dazaga. Grammars and sketches of the world's languages Africa. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-32391-9. 978-90-04-32391-9 ↩

13. Walters, Josiah K. (2016). A Grammar of Dazaga. Grammars and sketches of the world's languages Africa. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-32391-9. 978-90-04-32391-9 ↩

14. Walters, Josiah K. (2016). A Grammar of Dazaga. Grammars and sketches of the world's languages Africa. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-32391-9. 978-90-04-32391-9 ↩

15. Walters, Josiah K. (2016). A Grammar of Dazaga. Grammars and sketches of the world's languages Africa. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-32391-9. 978-90-04-32391-9 ↩