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In:Arabic in Contact
Edited by Stefano Manfredi and Mauro Tosco
[Studies in Arabic Linguistics 6] 2018
► pp. 189–205

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An assessment of the Arabic lexical contribution to contemporary spoken Koalib

 | LLACAN-UMR8135 (CNRS/INALCO/Université Sorbonne Paris Cité)
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Published online: 10 July 2018
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https://doi.org/10.1075/sal.6.10qui
Abstract
The present paper deals with the lexical contribution of Arabic, the dominant language of Sudan, to Koalib, a Kordofanian language traditionally spoken in the northeastern part of the Nuba Mountains (Southern Kordofan, central Sudan). The study is based on a corpus of 400 Koalib items borrowed from Arabic, the main characteristics of which (social context, phonology, part of speech and semantics) are successively examined and discussed. The conclusion summarizes the main typological implications of the Arabic influence upon the Koalib grammatical system.
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • 1.Koalib and Arabic in contact: Some basic notions
    • 1.1Linguistic characteristics of the contact
      • 1.1.1Varieties of Arabic involved in the contact
      • 1.1.2Varieties of Koalib involved in the contact
    • 1.2 Social characteristics of the contact between Koalib and Arabic
    • 1.3 The Arabic loanwords discussed in this study
  • 2.Phonological integration of Arabic borrowings into Koalib
    • 2.1Segmental integration
    • 2.2Tonal integration
  • 3.Arabic borrowings according to their parts of speech and their morphological characteristics
    • 3.1 Common nouns
      • 3.1.1Formal integration
      • 3.1.2Paradigmatic integration
      • 3.1.3Introducing new distinctions into Koalib: The case of sex-based gender
    • 3.2Proper nouns
    • 3.3Verbs
    • 3.4Adverbs
      • 3.4.1Classical loanwords
      • 3.4.2Arabic-Koalib adverbial bases used in conjugation
    • 3.5 Other parts of speech
  • 4.Some semantic characteristics of Arabic borrowings
    • 4.1Typical semantic fields
    • 4.2Conventionalized calques
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Abbreviations
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
References (19)
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Cited by (3)

Cited by three other publications

Quint, Nicolas & Marc Allassonnière-Tang
2023. Inferring case paradigms in Koalib with computational classifiers. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 19:2 ► pp. 237 ff. DOI logo
Quint, Nicolas
2020. Kordofanian. In The Oxford Handbook of African Languages, ► pp. 239 ff. DOI logo
Quint, Nicolas
2022. Classes nominales dans deux langues Niger-Congo : le baïnouck djifanghorois (atlantique) et le koalib (kordofanien). Faits de Langues 52:2 ► pp. 177 ff. DOI logo

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