Shilluk lexicography materials – preliminary version July 2015
Bert Remijsen & Otto Gwado Ayoker (University of Edinburgh)
Description
This document contains lexicographic materials on Shilluk. For each of over 530
lemmas, we provide a phonological transcription (field1), an orthographic transcription
(field2), word class identification (field3), illustrative forms (field4), and explanation of
the meaning (field5). When a form is underlined, this means that it has been recorded.
These audio recordings represent the voice of the second author, a native speaker of
Shilluk who grew up in Tonga, the southernmost Shilluk town; they are also made
publicly available. The phonological analysis on which the transcription is based is laid
out in Remijsen, Ayoker & Mills (2011). This analysis was later revised in relation to the
tone system (Remijsen & Ayoker 2014). These data were collected from June 2014
onwards.
Shilluk is rich in morphology, so that content morphemes involve extensive paradigms
(cf. Remijsen, Miller-Naudé & Gilley 2015, Remijsen, Miller-Naudé & Gilley, under
review). In this context, we have represented the various word classes as follows. In the
case of nouns, singulars and plurals are listed as separate entries. The lemma displays
the base form of the noun (singular or plural), and the illustrative forms display the
noun inflected for 1st singular possessor, and for demonstrative (proximal). All nouns
are recorded in the context /kɛ̀ dɪ́ɪ [noun target]/ ‘If there is [noun target]’. In the case
of transitive verbs, the imperative is used as the lemma entry, and the illustrative forms
are past, past 1st singular, past 2nd singular, imperfective. When additional inflections
are included as illustrative forms, these are identified between brackets. In the case of
intransitive verbs, again the imperative is used as the lemma entry; here the illustrative
forms are past and imperfective. If a transitive verb has inceptive forms, then those are
also given, in past and in imperfective. In the case of adjectives, these are listed under
the permanent-state singular form. The non-permanent-state singular form is included
as an illustrative form. And if there is a separate plural form, this is also included as an
illustrative form. Non-content-morphemes, both bound and free, are illustrated by an
example utterance. These are often drawn from narratives, i.e., from spontaneous
discourse. At this point, no identification of the text is included, unfortunately. Forms
highlighted in light blue are uncertain and need further checking.
Acknowledgements
This research is funded by the Volkswagen Foundation, through a research network
grant entitled “Tonal Placement: Interactionof Qualitative and Quantitative Factors”.
References
Remijsen, B., O. G. Ayoker, & T. Mills (2011). Shilluk. Journal of the International
Phonetic Association 41(1), 131-145.
Remijsen, B. & O.G. Ayoker (2014). Contrastive tonal alignment in falling contours in
Shilluk. Phonology 31(3), 435-462.
Remijsen, B., C.L. Miller-Naudé & L.G. Gilley (2015). Stem-internal and affixal
morphology in Shilluk. In M. Baerman (ed.) The Handbook of Inflection.
Oxford University Press.
Remijsen, B., C.L. Miller-Naudé & L.G. Gilley (under review). The morphology of Shilluk
transitive verbs. Submitted to Journal of African Languages and Linguistics.