Keywords: proper names, case, toponyms, locative adjuncts, demonstratives, personal pronouns

Proper names and case markers in Sinyar / 1 Proper names and case markers in Sinyar (Chad/Sudan) Pascal Boyeldieu * "We have stressed the need to rely on grammatical criteria, which are too often ignored in approaches to names." (Van Langendonck & Van de Velde 2016: 38) "Proper names are reported to combine with adpositions which differ from those of common nouns although identical grammatical

Introduction

In line with the first quotation above, the aim of this paper is to expound, in the case of the Sinyar language, on grammatical evidence of a specific category of names. Indeed Sinyar, a language of Chad/Sudan, is one of the (few?) languages where the morphosyntactic contrast between common nouns and proper names is straightforward and obvious: each category calls for its own system of case markers, the two systems differing both in their expression -the form of the markers -and in their structure -the number of marked cases.

Section 2 is devoted to a presentation of the language and briefly puts some typological features forward, in particular the tonal behaviour of case markers. A detailed description of the two case marking subsystems that are characteristic of the categories of nouns and names respectively is presented in Section 3. Section 4 considers several situations where personal names are used as common nouns. Section 5 gives details of the different semantic fields that may be identified among the proper names. Beside typical units as personal names and toponyms, it is shown that two other subsets are, under conditions that are not quite clear, ambivalent and may function both as nouns or as names: some nouns/names referring to rather small or 'atypical' animals on one hand, and nouns/names referring to kinship and social relations on the other hand. In either case an attempt is made to explain the peculiar behaviour of these terms by their semantic characteristics (namely 'non-standard' quality of the former or familiarity/intimacy of the latter). Lastly further types of units exhibit some formal affinities with proper names: absolute locatives that represent a limited set of frozen adverbial forms (Section 6), and demonstratives and personal pronouns that display the same four-case structure like proper names (Section 7). Section 8 concludes the paper. 1

Presenting Sinyar

Location and classification

The Sinyar language (tààr ꜝʃàmɲà {mouth=language/Sinyar}) is spoken in Chad (Waddai region, main settlement: Mongororo) and Sudan (Western Darfur, main settlement: Foro Boranga). The general situation of Sinyar in central Africa is shown on Map 1.

[Map 1 to be inserted about here (lanscape format)] For Chad only the number of speakers was estimated to be 12,300 in 2000 (Eberhard, Simons & Fennig 2019); a somewhat similar number may be claimed for Sudan. The language is directly surrounded by speakers of various languages that, apart from the unclassified Kujarge, all belong to the Nilo-Saharan phylum: Dar Sila Daju (Eastern Sudanic), Gele (also known as Kole or Fongoro, Central Sudanic), Masalit (Maban), and Fur.2 Some Sinyar speakers may also speak neighbouring languages (namely Fur) and, above all, Chadian or Sudanese varieties of Arabic. As a consequence, the widespread use of Arabic has, at the lexical level at least, a strong influence on the language. Moreover, the numerous loanwords appearing in a folktale recorded by Paul Doornbos in 1981 in the Sinyar country show that this impact is not so recent and was not limited to big cities (Doornbos 1982).

Sinyar itself is condidered to be Nilo-Saharan: upon the suggestion of earlier scholars it has been classified as a member of the SBB (Sara-Bongo-Bagirmi) branch of Central Sudanic (Tucker & Bryan 1956; Haaland 1978; Doornbos & Bender 1983, Bender 1992). However, Doornbos, the author of a grammatical sketch of the language, expressed doubts concerning this view ([1980?]: 1): "It is the contention of this writer that although many superficial bonds with the larger group [i.e. Sara-Bongo-Bagirmi] exist on the level of vocabulary, differences of phonology, grammar, and also vocabulary are very impressive." Deeper insights into the language clearly confirm Doornbos' view: Sinyar shares with the SBB languages a good part of its basic vocabulary and several striking morphosyntactic features, but differs also from them in complementary aspects of the same domains, the most remarkable one being the existence of a (double) system of case markers that are nonexistent in SBB.

This particular situation of ambivalence raises, of course, the question of the genesis of Sinyar, the present nature of which seems to result from two distinct, yet intertwined historical sources. How these two major legacies came to join together into one original language is a problematic issue, especially since the likely second -non-SBB -source of Sinyar remains unidentified. For the time being I would at most suggest that an exogenous language came into intensive contact with SBB languages of the Yulu/Gula type, thus bringing about the numerous interferences that may be now observed.3

Typological features

A few words have to be said here concerning typological features that are more specifically relevant for the present topic:

1 I am very much obliged to two anonymous reviewers for the careful reading of a first draft of the present paper. Their comments and advices -in particular the numerous 'minor issues' listed by one of them -have been a great help for improving the text and making the presentation clearer.

i.) The basic syntactic order is SVO, but the presence of case markers (see below) obviously allows numerous variations in this theoretical order with pragmatic effects that are not fully understood. Within the noun phrase, however, the order of words is more restrictive and the different modifiers always follow the head.

ii.) Except when directly followed by a case marker, the noun does not require any necessary marker nor determiner but may appear in its bare form. Beside a limited number of irregular, compact plural forms (e.g. ùmmàꜝ /pl. ꜝmòmmò 'woman/women', ɓìsìꜝ /pl. ꜝɓìsààr 'dog/dogs'), plural is marked on nouns by means of a suffix -ŋà/-ŋá that is usually dropped in presence of an explicit plural case marker (e.g. ꜝcàngè 'animal', ꜝcàngè-n 'animal (NOMINATIVE.SG)', ꜝcàngè(-ŋà)-sí 'animals (NOMINATIVE.PL)'.

iii.) Number is the only category that may affect the noun. There are no noun classes and no gender distinction, not even in pronouns. iv.) Sinyar has a system of two contrastive level tones (Low/High, more briefly L/H). Moreover, frequent downsteps (marked by ꜝ ) are attached to a lexical unit and may appear, especially between two successive L tones, at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end of the word.

The lowering effect of an initial downstep (e.g. ꜝcàngè 'animal', ꜝmòmmò 'women') is perceptible only if the word is not sentence initial but preceded by another word ending with any tone, L or H.

Cases of internal downsteps (e.g. kwòòꜝlàꜝkìn 'this year', ɗèꜝèꜝ 'who?') -that could sometimes result from compounding or borrowing (?) -remain exceptional but are always effective.

As for final downsteps (e.g. ùmmàꜝ 'woman', ɓìsìꜝ 'dog'), they do not have a systematic impact on the following unit but their influence is limited to the initial L of the different clitics that may be suffixed to them. These clitics comprise several modifers of the verbsuch as verbal plurals, negation, object and applicative pronouns -and the nominal case markers that concern us more specifically for the present topic.

Example (1) shows that the final downstep of ùmmàꜝ (LLꜝ) 'woman, wife' has no impact on the following noun sìmàrʄà 'man' (1b) and behaves tonally exactly like mààsì (LL) 'spear' (1c), i.e. the -virtual -final downstep of ùmmàꜝ (LLꜝ) is not activated, and both head nouns appear in this context as LL.

( By contrast a final downstep exerts its effect on a successive L-toned clitic, or may even condition the L-toned allomorph of an otherwise toneless or H-toned clitic. The first situation is illustrated in (2) with the case marker of proper names -(y)àà 'ACCUSATIVE.SG': according to the final downsteps of Kàwáynàŋꜝ, the tonal realisation of -yàà is lowered in (2c). 4 (2)

a.

-yàà

[-jàː] 'ACCUSATIVE.SG' Kùrgùl [kùɾgùl] 'Kurgul [village name]' Kàwáynàŋꜝ [kàwájnàŋ] 'Kawaynan' [village name]' b. Kùrgùl-yàà [kùɾgùljàː] Kurgul-ACC.SG 'Kurgul (Accusative sg.)' c. Kàwáynàŋꜝ-yàà [kàwájnàŋꜜjàː] Kawaynan-ACC.SG 'Kawaynan (Accusative sg.)'
The second situation is illustrated in (3) and ( 4) with the markers of common nouns -n / (ꜝ)-ǹ 'NOMINATIVE.SG' and -sí / (ꜝ)-sì 'NOMINATIVE.PL' respectively.

In (3) the -n variant of the Nominative sg. is toneless and may function as the coda of a Htoned (3b) or L-toned syllable (3c) while the allomorph -ǹ is conditioned -and lowered -by the final downstep of ɓìsìꜝ 'dog' (3d).

(3) a.

-n / (ꜝ)-ǹ In (4) the H-toned variant -sí of the Nominative pl. displays the default tone of the marker that appears after preceding H or L tone (4b-c). In a complementary way, the variant -sì is both triggered and lowered by the final downstep of ìngàꜝ 'mountain' (4d).

(4) a.

-sí / (ꜝ)-sì By convention all downsteps are transcribed in the isolated citation form of words. Initial downsteps are not transcribed if they are sentence initial and do not contrast with a preceding unit. Internal downsteps are transcribed in every case. Lastly final downsteps are transcribed only when they do affect a following L-toned clitic.

Fieldwork and data

Paul Doornbos, a former researcher at the African Studies Center (University of Leiden) who spent several months in the Sinyar country around 1980 wrote a grammatical sketch of the language that remained unpublished (Doornbos [1980?]). However his transcription of a Sinyar folktale (see above) was published in 1982, together with a presentation of the group (location, history, culture, and names of the Sinyar sections). More recent fieldwork has been conducted by myself in Khartoum (Sudan) since 20095 and the data this article rests on consist of hundreds of handwritten pages of grammatical enquiries and questionnaires, several texts, and a provisional lexicon of about 2,000 words in the Toolbox ® format.

A few sentences illustrating this paper were either transcribed on the spot or extracted from song texts, in which case they are explicitly marked as such. But most examples have been systematically elicited in order to investigate the properties of case markers and proper names.

Long vowels and geminated consonants are transcribed with doubled graphemes (e.g. íílé [íːlé] 'liver', kàggá [kàgːá] 'tree'). In accordance with a widespread -though questionableusage in African linguistics, IPA [ɟ] and [j] are transcribed as j and y respectively.

A double system of case markers / alignments

As mentioned above, Sinyar indicates case by means of postpositions having the form of clitics suffixed to the last term of the noun phrase (order is modified-modifier, i.e. the head always comes first). However, the language has two different, complementary subsystems of case markers depending on the nature of the head word, common noun or proper name.

Two further clarifications have to be made right now:

-the presence of the case marker, if any for a given function, is regular and obligatory; -the head word is not necessarily the one to which the case marker is suffixed. In the case of nouns, the case marker comes after the last modifier or modifying group of the phrase. An example is the identifiying sentence in (5) that is composed of two nominal constituents, both regularly marked with the Nominative. The subject is a detopicalized, focalized demonstrative in the Nominative (ènì 'THIS') and the predicate is a noun phrase, the head of which (ɲíì 'girl') controls a Nominative marker (-ǹ) that appears at the end of the sentence, after the last term of the relative clause, that is after the associative pronoun náꜝ-'his':

( As for proper names, unless they are used as common nouns (see Section 4 below), they do not accept any modifier and case markers are always directly suffixed to them.

Common nouns

Noun phrases whose head is a common noun distinguish only two cases -Nominative (NOM) and Adverbial (ADV)6 -beside instances of a morphologically unmarked or absolute form:

(absolute) Nominative Adverbial Sg.

unmarked -n / (ꜝ)-ǹ / -Ní / (ꜝ)-Nì 7 -tí / (ꜝ)-tì Pl.

-sí / (ꜝ)-sì Table 1. Case markers for common nouns

The marking of the main syntactic functions is insured as follows:

-The subject -of any predicate (6-7) -, the nominal predicate (7), and the vocative ( 8 If the adjunct contains a modifier represented by an associative proper name marked with the Genitive (see 3.2 below), the Adverbial marker controlled by the head is directly suffixed to the Genitive marker of the modifier as illustrated in (11):8 (11) èèrè Móólàꜝ-nàꜝ-tì name God-GEN.SG-ADV 'In the name of God[Ar.?]!' (religious invocation, = Ar. bismillahi) Similar patterns involve a head noun referring to a part of a whole (e.g. 'top of') or to a space relative to a whole (e.g. 'front of') that constitutes, together with the Adverbial marker, a complex, more or less grammaticalized circumposition. Examples are àkúrré... -ti 'behind' (lit. in the back space of) with an unmarked common noun as associative in ( 12), and kùbàl... -ti 'near' (lit. in the proximity of) with an associative proper name marked with the Genitive (see 3.2 below) in ( 13):

(12) ùbbà-n àkkúré ìngàꜝ-tì river-NOM.SG back mountain-ADV 'The river is behind the mountain.' (lit. in the back of the mountain) (13) m-èɓì ꜝkùbàl ꜝFòrɓáráŋá-náꜝ-tì 1S-IPFV.live proximity Foro_Boranga-GEN.SG-ADV 'I'm living near Foro Boranga.' (lit. in the proximity of F.B.)

A further example is ꜝdì... -ti 'at the place of' and, more precisely, with a human associative, 'at (N)'s (French chez), to/from (somebody)'. This is illustrated in ( 14) with an unmarked common noun as modifier:

(14) m-áɲɲáꜝ` ꜝdì ngáàrꜝ-tì 1S-PST.stand_up.PFV place chief-ADV 'I'm going (lit. I have stood up) to the chief's.' Now in the particular case where the associative of ꜝdì 'place' is a proper name, the adverbial marker tends to be dropped, as if the structure of the adjunct were attracted by that of the unmarked locative proper names (see 3.2 below): the marker -ti has been noted as optional in (15) but is more often than not absent as in ( 16 10 According to the nature of the verb and that of the objects, the order of the latter may be free or not. 11 Formona (fórmónó) refers to a likely subgroup (clan?) of Sinyar. (23) ɓìsìꜝ-ǹ ràffà dog-NOM.SG 3.be_white 'The dog is white.'

Proper names

Noun phrases whose head is a proper name differentiate four cases -Nominative (NOM), Genitive (GEN),12 Accusative (ACC), and Adverbial (ADV) 13 -beside a morphologically unmarked form:

(absolute) Nominative Genitive Accusative Adverbial 14 Sg. unmarked -n / (ꜝ)-ǹ / -lè 15 -nàꜝ / -nâꜝ 16 -(y)àà °-lèè Pl.
-ngè -ngàá °-ngèèr Table 3a. Case markers for proper/individual names The allocation of these cases to the main syntactic functions is as follows:

-The subject -of any predicate (24-25) -and the nominal predicate ( 26 The full set of these combinations is displayed in Table 3b below (note that some groupings imply minor tone modifications that have not been described in Section 2.2 above; see also p. 9, footn. 16):

G EN G EN + NOM.SG G EN + NOM.PL G EN + ADV Sg.
-nàꜝ / -nâꜝ -nàꜝ-ǹ / -náꜝ-ǹ -nàꜝ-sì / -náꜝ-sì -nàꜝ-tì / -náꜝ-tì Pl.

-ngè -ngè-n -ngè-sí -ngè-tí -Finally the citation form of names is clearly equivalent to their absolute, unmarked form. However, since proper names may function as common nouns when they are used with a generic value (see Section 4 below), one may wonder whether names are still names in the true sense of the term when used in the function of a citation. 19

The specificity of names

To sum up, Sinyar clearly differentiates proper names from common nouns by the way it marks them for case. Not only the marker forms are different for each category but also the two case (sub)systems differ since names differentiate four cases against only two for the nouns. However the functions taken on by the two common cases, Nominative and Adverbial, are essentially the same, the proper names using, in addition, a Genitive and an Accusative for signaling functions (chiefly associative and objects) that are left morphologically unmarked with common nouns.

It is noteworthy that locative names are unmarked (37-40), a situation that is well attested cross-linguistically (Stolz, Lestrade & Stolz 2014, Dammel, Helmbrecht, Nübling, Schlücker, & Stolz 2017: 1, Haspelmath [2018]). This construction could act as a model and explain the tendency to drop the adverbial marker when the common noun ꜝdì 'place' is modified by an associative personal name marked with the Genitive ('place of N'), which makes the reference definite and unique (15-16) and links it with toponyms.

Table 4 recapitulates the different case marker forms for nouns and names respectively (note the similarity of the Nominative sg. allomorphs -n / (ꜝ)-ǹ for both categories).

Nouns Names

Nominative

Sg.

-n / (ꜝ)-ǹ / -Ní / (ꜝ)-Nì -n / (ꜝ)-ǹ / -lè Pl.

-sí / (ꜝ)-sì -ngè (= GEN)

Genitive

Sg.

--nàꜝ / -nâꜝ Pl.

--ngè (= NOM)

Accusative

Sg.

--(y)àà Pl.

--ngàá

Adverbial

Sg.

-tí / (ꜝ)-tì °-lèè Pl.

°-ngèèr Table 4: Compared case markers

Names used as common nouns

Van Langendonck & Van de Velde (2016: 20) state that "Proprial lemmas [a notion including that of name] always allow common noun uses, albeit marginally, as in I was thinking of a different Mary." Indeed the principle applies for Sinyar. Thus throughout (41-45), the personal name ꜝBàkíìtꜝ is used with the generic value of an appellative. In (41-42) it is modified by an adjective or a quantifier and the noun phrase, working as a subject, is marked with the Nominative forms of the common noun. In (43) it represents an object that is modified by the optional Plural -ŋa and by a cardinal; just as for a common noun the whole phrase is unmarked for case. Finally, as a common noun again, the name ꜝBàkíìtꜝ is modified by a demonstrative in both functions of subject (44) and object (45). ( 41 On the other hand, as already illustrated in (26), the identification of a name is expressed by a predicate that requires the Nominative marker of proper names. In (46) even the question about the identity of a person's name has to use the partial interrogative ɗèꜝèꜝ 'who?' that also receives the same markers like proper names (see Section 5 below). ( 46)

-èèrè núꜝ-ǹ ɗèꜝèꜝ-lè name 2S.GEN.NOM.SG who?-NOM.SG -èèrè ándáꜝ-ǹ ꜝBàkíítꜝ-lè name 1S.GEN-NOM.SG Bakiit-NOM.SG '-What is your name? (lit. your name is who?) -My name is Bakiit.'

The interpretation of a last case is somewhat problematic: in (47) the name ꜝBàkíìtꜝ is unmarked but what is its function here? The corresponding question, which contains the partial interrogative náá 'how?', suggests that we have to deal with an adverbial adjunct. Should one then consider that this represents, beside unmarked toponyms (see [37-40] above), another case of unmarked names in an adverbial function?

(47) -náá kùù-n-nà how? 3.IPFV.call-PL-3S.ACC -kùù-n-nà ꜝBàkíìt 3.IPFV.call-PL-3S.ACC Bakiit '-How is he called? (lit. how do they call him?) -He is called (lit. they call him) Bakiit.'

Subsets of names

If individual names of people and places represent, from a semantic point of view, the most prototypical members of the category of names, other units share -or may share -the grammatical properties of proper names as they have been exposed in Section 3.2 above. I will now review and comment on the different semantic subsets that constitute the category of names in a wider sense. -the designations of the points of the compass borrowed from Arabic (but not the Sinyar ones that behave as common nouns): Kárìbꜝ (Ar.) 'west', Ríìꜝ (Ar.) 'north', Sàbáàꜝ (Ar.) 'east', Sèyîdꜝ (Ar.) or Jùnûbꜝ (Ar.) 'south '. Examples (48-49) ii.) A second subset contains items -primarily referring to animals -that seem to be more likely to function as names but, for most of them, may also behave as common nouns (c.n.) although the possible contextual or semantic implications of this choice or variation have not been clarified.

- (2016: 36-37) write the following: "As we move further away from the most prototypical types of names, we encounter categories for which only some members receive a name, whereas other members are designated by means of an appellative. The distinction is not random. Phenomena that are familiar tend to be treated as one of a kind, that is, categories of their own, and they are not designated by means of a name. On the other hand, unfamiliar phenomena tend to be treated as belonging to a category of which the individual members receive a name. […] From a grammatical point of view, names of subspecies low on the biological taxonomy are sometimes Names in Bantu languages."

In other words, languages would have a tendency to treat as names the less typical, most marginal or unexpected notions of a semantic domain.

On another issue, commenting on the semantics and grammatical behavior of Bambara phrasal compounds, Dumestre (1983: 4) remarks: "If these complexes [i.e. phrasal compounds] may fulfil every nominal function, in practice, the longest of them are mainly used 'in citation' or topicalized, their formal complexity being a barrier to their integration into an utterance." (my translation) 23 In my opinion Dumestre's 'formal complexity' could have a similar effect like a low degree of semantic typicality on the actual use and nature of units that would be essentially restricted to functions of identification and labelling, and preferably considered as names.

Such an explanation could be relevant here, in particular for the designation of several kinds of locusts and (small?) birds, as well as for different remarkable, 'non-standard' animals such as dragonfly, chameleon, bat, praying mantis, spider, stork, woodpecker, etc. Moreover, it is certainly not fortuitous that these names display unusual, expressive phonological structures (involving length and reduplication, see the above list).

iii.) A third and last subset contains most terms referring to social relations (in a wide sense, including titles) that normally function as common nouns but may also be used -both as terms of reference or terms of address -as names, with an absolute value referring to specific people whose identity is unequivocal in a certain discourse context (cp. English Mother has made a cake or Is the director in his office?). Although it does not refer to a human being, I also count here the term bîsꜝ '(home) cat' (Ar.?) that seems to be a pet name and shares a similar feature of 'familiarity' (see below For these terms the uniqueness of the reference correlates with a feature of familiarity and emotional closeness: using the terms as names underlines the specific relations the speaker shares, within a precise social circle, with the individuals referred to. By contrast (some of) the terms below, which are always treated as nouns only, might by themselves imply relations that are emotionally more neutral, if not distant or even unfriendly (?):

Absolute locatives

So far Sections 3.2-3 and 5 considered units that may constitute more or less typical proper names but are all characterised by their common ability to combine with the specific set of case markers identified in 3.2. We now turn to the case of terms that are not names but nevertheless share with these obvious formal and, to some extent, even semantic features: absolute locatives (this Section 6) are marked in a way that reminds the Adverbial marking of singular proper names while demonstratives and personal pronouns (Section 7) display a fourcase structure that is parallel to that of names, although the marking processes are different.

As seen in Section 3.1 above, common nouns referring to spaces, places, containers or landmarks may be marked with the Adverbial -tí / (ꜝ)-tì and constitute, either alone or expanded with (a) modifier(s), locative phrases such as (61b-d): Beside these syntactically open constructions involving nouns that may be characterized as 'relative locatives', a limited, closed set of the same nouns may appear, with an absolute value -i.e. with no further modifier but with an implicit reference to the context or to the speaker -, in a specific, frozen form suffixed with -(V́V̀r)è. 25 These terms are listed in the right column of Table 6 Obviously, the absolute locatives have something to do with names: beside their incompatibility with a modifier, the same features of uniqueness and familiarity/closeness that have been identified for certain social relations (see preceding section) are clearly present at least in the case of ɓéèrè '(at) home', probably also ꜝkìdìkáàrè 'in the doorway, at the door', kòllóòrè 'in the home garden', kùbàráàrè 'on the drying/meeting ground', màsàláàrè 'in the Masalit country', and ꜝʃàmɲáàrè 'in the Sinyar country'. As for the suffix -(V́V̀r)è, it is most probably connected with the singular Adverbial marker of names °-lèè (see also the suffix -rèè of the Adverbial personal pronouns ꜝmàárèè 'with me', ꜝlàárèè 'with you (sg.), and ꜝnìyáàrèè 'with him/her' in Section 7.2 below).

Demonstratives and personal pronouns

As was already mentioned, names do not represent the only grammatical category that shows a four-case system: demonstratives and personal pronouns are organised according to paradigms that reveal a similar structure, despite the fact that the case marking is formally much more amalgamated here. Nevertheless personal pronouns show, with the case markers of names, limited but obvious similarities that cannot be mere coincidence (in the case of demonstratives, the similarities are much questionable, and they would rather point to the case markers of nouns). In addition, demonstratives and personal pronouns lack absolute, unmarked forms: they are always combined with the expression of one of the four cases, Nominative, Genitive, Accusative, or Adverbial.

Demonstratives

Demonstratives -pronouns and modifiers -are illustrated in

Table 7a. Demonstrative pronouns and modifiers

The demonstratives distinguish three degrees of remoteness in relation to the speaker/situation: near, distant ('far'), and very distant ('far+').

Some nominative forms ('near' and 'far' only) show tonal variations corresponding to syntactic or pragmatic environments: the LH pattern is reserved for the subject that is normally topicalized while the 'detopicalized' LL pattern applies to focalized subjects and nominal predicates.

The genitive forms of demonstratives result from a combination of the accusative demonstrative plus the 3S/3P genitive (associative) form of the personal pronoun (-náàꜝ/-níngè, see 7.2 below);

The adverbial forms of plural demonstratives (è)kígí.tí, (è)wísí.tí, and áwísí.tí combine the accusative demonstrative with the ADV marker of common nouns (-ti);

We may remark -a formal similarity (and historical relationship?) between the 'near' demonstrative èní 'this (Nominative sg.)' and the nominative marker of nouns NOM.SG -n/-Ni; 29 -a formal similarity between the 'far' demonstrative (è)wísí 'these (Accusative pl.)' and the nominative marker of nouns NOM.PL -si (!) 30 ;

-formal similarities between the singular demonstratives íngèr, (è)wísèr, and áwísèr (Adverbial sg.) and the plural marker of names ADV.PL °-ngèèr (!).

When modifying a head noun, the demonstrative takes on the case marking and forces its own four-case system to the whole noun phrase. The following examples illustrate the different constructions a. without demonstrative, b. with a demonstrative modifier, and c. with a demonstrative pronoun alone in the different functions of subject (65), object (66), adjunct (67), and associative ( 68 Just as is the case for names (see 3.2 above), the form of a genitive demonstrative may be directly followed by another marker that is controlled by the head noun. In the example below the Adverbial -tì is suffixed to the genitive demonstrative (è)kín.náàꜝ that functions as modifier (69a) or as pronoun ( 69b The system of personal pronouns is more complex and calls for specific comments. Nevertheless, it clearly has to be interpreted in the terms of a contrast between four cases (here also without unmarked form). These pronouns are displayed in Table 8a.

[Table 8a to be inserted about here (lanscape format)] As is the case for demonstratives (see 7.1 above), the independent forms of the Nominative show tonal variations corresponding to different syntactic or pragmatic environments: the most frequent form by far applies to the subject that is normally topicalized while the second one is specialised in focalized subjects and nominal predicates. The nominative indices are attached to the verb (the suffixes -sà and -(i)n express a plural affecting the subject index).

The genitive (associative) pronouns represent the so called 'possessives'. The independent forms of the Accusative are non-bound pronouns that are mainly used as topics. The indices are clitics suffixed to the verb. Most of them have a tonal variant that signals the Applicative when this is not expressed by the verb stem itself.

Finally the adverbial forms chiefly express a comitative value (but see ex.

[80] below for a locative meaning).

The following similarities with the case markers of names may be observed: -the final segments of personal pronouns -le/-nge in the Nominative (sg./pl.) independent form with the nominative markers of names NOM (sg./pl.) -n/-lè / -ngè;

-the final segments of personal pronouns -aa/-ngáá in the Accusative (sg./pl.) independent form with the accusative markers of names ACC (sg./pl.) -(y)àà/-ngàá;

-the final segments of personal pronouns -rèè/-ngèèr in the Adverbial (sg./pl.) form with the adverbial markers of names ADV (sg./pl.) °-lèè/°-ngèèr.

Examples (70-73) illustrate some of these pronouns in different contexts and functions.

( Just as for names (3.2) and demonstratives (7.1), an associative personal pronoun marked as Genitive may be immediately followed by the case marker controlled by the head, e.g. ( 74 8b. Genitive of personal pronouns + Nominative (sg./pl.) or Adverbial of nouns Demonstratives and pronouns are both characterised by features of monoreferentiality, definiteness and specificity that link them to some degree with the category of proper names. This affinity is emphasized by their common organization regarding the marking of case: under this respect the three categories jointly differ from that of common nouns that are reduced to two cases only, Nominative and Adverbial.

1S -ándàꜝ -ándáꜝ-ǹ -ándáꜝ-sì -ándáꜝ-tì 2S -nûnꜝ -núꜝ-ǹ -núnꜝ-sì -núnꜝ-tì 3S -náàꜝ -náꜝ-ǹ -náàꜝ-sì -náàꜝ-tì 1PE -náákú -náákú-n -náákú-sí -náákú-tí 1PD/I -násà -násà-n -násà-sí -násà-tí 2P -núkú -núkú-n -núkú-sí -núkú-tí 3P -níngè -níngè-n -níngè-sí -níngè-tí Table

Conclusion

To sum up, Sinyar is characterised by two complementary case systems that clearly differentiate common nouns on one hand, and proper names on the other hand. The difference affects not only the form of the grammatical markers but also their number and structure. However, except for the fact that locative proper names (toponyms) are not marked, the two common cases, Nominative and Adverbial, assume the same functions in both categories. The difference simply results from the fact that the supplementary cases of proper names, Genitive and Accusative, are used for marking functions that are left unmarked in the case of nouns. In other words, there is no significant difference in the way the same cases are assigned to functions but there is a noticeable contrast concerning the extent and nature of the functions that are overtly marked for case in either category.

Beside the core of proper names, chiefly consisting of individual names of persons and places that are only seldom used as nouns, there are essentially two sets of terms that usually may act as both names and nouns. In the first case, essentially consisting of names of animals, as well as a few diseases and brand marks, the conditions of choice between either category are still unexplained. But most if not all terms share a low degree of semantic prototypicality together with a strong formal expressivity that probably explain their possible individuation through their treatment as names. The second set includes terms referring to social relations that act as names when they are used, in reference to the speaker and/or the situation, with an absolute value implying familiarity and emotional closeness. In addition, a limited group of absolute locatives contains specific, frozen forms of adverbial nouns that suggest a similar feature of familiarity/intimacy like in the latter set.

Lastly, the four-case system of names has its exact parallel in the two categories of demonstratives and personal pronouns, even if the formal means to mark case are different there. In this respect names, demonstratives and personal pronouns face together the two-case system of nouns. If we now consider the high degree of animacy that characterizes both the proper names and personal pronouns, we guess how beneficial it can be for a language to explicitly signal the less prototypical object -the 'animate patient' -by the means of an overt accusative marking. But if this 'explanation' has a sense, how can we extend it to the demonstratives that are not particularly animacy-oriented? And finally we are not even thinking of a hypothesis that could justify the existence of a Genitive marker in the only categories of names, demonstratives, and pronouns.

Glosses and abbreviations

ꜝ

  i.) As just said, a first subset contains what I would call proper or individual names in the narrow sense. Except for the possible use of personal names as common nouns (see Section 4 above), they are normally restricted to modifications by the markers of the second subsystem identified above and contain -the personal names, e.g. 'Bóccó (male), ꜝKùɲáàꜝ (male/female), ꜝGìnáàꜝ (m.), ꜝCèèlcélèꜝ (fem.), including names of Arabic origin (e.g. Ásànꜝ [m.], ꜝZàkàríyàꜝ [m.], Àrbáàꜝbàꜝ [fem.], Fánnèꜝ [fem.]) or else (Póòlꜝ 'Paul' [Paul Dornboos, a former researcher on Sinyar], Kóózìꜝ 'Sarkozy [French president]'), and also personified animals (e.g. Míndéèꜝlè 'Rat, Mouse [character]'); -the individual names of places (ꜝFòrɓáráŋá 'Foro Boranga [town]', Fùrgúl 'Firgul [village]', Cáárú 'confluence of Azoum and Kaja rivers'), rivers (Kájàꜝ, ꜝSààlé), mountains (Ngèyré, Bùùrú), and countries (Cáàdꜝ 'Chad', ꜝÌngìltáràꜝ 'England') or regions (ꜝDààrfóòrꜝ 'Darfur');

  field father 1S.GEN-ADV 'in my father's field'

  PST.go-PL.PFV dog-ADV 'S/he has gone with a/the dog.' (lit. s/he, they have gone with a/the dog)

		'The spear has stabbed him/her in (his/her) right arm.'
	(10)	nààlé ámbí-nnàꜝà	ɓìsìꜝ-tì
		s/he 3.
					) are
	coded in the Nominative:
	(6)	kàjjà-n	ámbí-ꜝyà
		sun-NOM.SG 3.PST.go-PFV
		'The time is over.' (lit. the sun has gone)	(on the spot)
	(7)	gì	ándà céccétí-n	ɲíìꜝ-nì
		SUBJECT		P REDICATE
		child my first-NOM.SG girl-NOM.SG
		'My first child is a girl.'
	(8)	wírjí.wàà-sà	ɗìkààr-sí
		IMP.remain.PERM-PL relative.PL-NOM.PL
		'Goodbye (lit. stay waiting), relatives!'	(from a song)
	-The adjuncts are marked with the Adverbial, which covers the different values of
	locative (9), temporal, instrumental, and comitative (10):
	(9)	mààsì-n	wìsìꜝ-nàꜝà	ìllì ꜝkwààl-tí
		spear-NOM.SG 3.PST.stab-3S.ACC.PFV arm right-ADV

  PST.borrow[Ar.]-PFV place Maamat[Ar.]-GEN.SG money 'I have borrowed money from Maamat.' -The simple object (17), the applicative object (18), the two objects of a ditransitive verb (19), the associative or genitive (20) as well as the adjunct introduced by the preposition kándááká 'like, as' (21) are not marked but appear in the absolute form: The citation form of a common noun normally appears as unmarked although former lexical lists sometimes give them in the Nominative as shown in Table2:

	(16)	mì-dèyìn-ꜝyà		ꜝdì	Máámàtꜝ-nà	kùcúl
	1S-(17) ndùbààr-sí	wíɲí-nnàꜝà	ꜝkùrjù
		sheep-NOM.PL 1S.PST.eat-PL.PFV flour
		'The sheep have eaten the flour.'
	(18)	àkkù nûn	k-ìmbì-yáá-tá	ádù
		back your[sg.] PRHB-give-APPL-NEG enemy
		'Don't offer your back to the enemy!'	(on the spot)
	(19)	ndóólúùꜝ	ꜝgì	tààr	ꜝʃàmɲà ( ndóólúùꜝ tààr ꜝʃàmɲà ꜝgì) 10
		3S.IPFV.teach child language Sinyar
		'S/he is teaching the child the Sinyar language'
	(20)	m-ìgààꜝkà		ꜝʃìkà	kùjá
		1S-IPFV-not_know road[Ar.] water
		'I don't know the way of/to the water.'
	(21)	èrfì	kándááká ʃêk
		3.IPFV.speak like	chief[Ar.]
		'S/he speaks like a/the chief.'
	-Sinyar	Formona 11	Sinyar	Sinyar	Sinyar
		(Grossard		(Haaland	(R. Thelwall)	(Doornbos &	(Boyeldieu,
		1925)		1978)	(Haaland 1978)	Bender 1983)	pers. doc.)
	'dog'					bisi	ɓìsìꜝ
				bisin	bisin	ɓìsìꜝ-ǹ (+ NOM.SG)
	'sun'	kadia		kaddya		kajʌ	ꜝkàjjà
					kaɟan	ꜝkàjjà-n (+ NOM.SG)
	'eye'	kour [sic]		kom		koom	kwòmꜝ
					komni	kwòmꜝ-nì (+ NOM.SG)
						): 9
	(15)	céèꜝ-sì	wírnjín-nàꜝà	ꜝdì	Zàkàríyàꜝ-nà(ꜝ-tì)
		person-NOM.PL 3.PST.sit_down-PL.PFV place Zakariya[Ar.]-GEN.SG(-ADV)
		'People have met at Zakariya's.'

Table 2 .

 2 A selection of citation forms of nouns in lexical listsMost probably, however, the Nominative forms where triggered, during the surveys, by using elicitation frames similar to (22) -nominal predicate -or (23) -subject:

	(22)	èní	ɓìsìꜝ-ǹ
		this.NOM.SG dog-NOM.SG
		'This is a dog.'

  IPFV.live-PL house Ɓocco-GEN.SG-ADV 'They are living in Ɓocco's house.'

	(27)	ʃékꜝ-nì 'Sudanese girls are very reserved.' (lit. the girls of Sudan have a lot of modesty) ándáá ꜝgì ꜝBàkíìtꜝ, c-àbì náà : ꜝı llé, chief[Ar.]-NOM.SG 3.PST.say.APPL child his 2S.NOM Bakiit 1P.IPFV.go (on the spot)
		mààrà-tí
	(35)	hunting-ADV èɓì-n	ꜝìngè Ɓóccó-náꜝ-tì
		'The chief said to his son: "you, Bakiit, let's go hunting!"' 3.
	(28)	ʃékꜝ-nì	ándáá	nìngá : ꜝsìngé, ꜝBàkíítꜝ-ngè, c-àbì
		chief[Ar.]-NOM.SG 3.PST.say.APPL them 2P.NOM Bakiit-NOM.PL 1P.IPFV.go
		mààrà-tí
		hunting-ADV
		'The chief said to them: "you, Bakiit's people, let's go hunting!"'
	-The simple object (29), the applicative object (30), each of both objects of a ditransitive
	verb (31), and the adjunct introduced by the preposition kándááká 'like, as' (32) are marked
	with the Accusative:
	(29)	láál-tá	ꜝBàkíítꜝ-yàà
	3.IPFV.resemble-NEG Bakiit-ACC.SG Nominative: 'He does not resemble Bakiit.'	) are coded in the
	(24) (30)	Gìnáàꜝ-lè Jìmméézàꜝ-ǹ Jimmeeeza[Ar.]-NOM.SG they (ꜝnìngé) Tàmár-lèè wèèɲꜝà Tamar-ADV.SG 3.be_near-PL.APPL káyꜝ-ìnnáá Ginaa-NOM.SG 3.PST.come.PFV ꜝFòrɓáráŋáà 'Ginaa [proper name of man] has come.' Foro_Boranga.ACC.SG
	(25)	Bàkíítꜝ-lè 'Jimmeeza [locality] and Tamar [locality] are close to Foro Boranga [locality].' (lit. cé.kíjjáꜝ-ǹ Bakiit[Ar.]-NOM.SG accountant-NOM.SG Jimmeeza (they) with Tamar are close to Foro Boranga)
	(31)	'Bakiit [proper name of man] is the accountant.' tààr ꜝʃàmɲà-n wìccà.bîꜝ	ꜝBàkíítꜝ-yàà	(on the spot) ꜝDàkkwàsí-yàà
	(26)	èèrè ándáꜝ-ǹ language Sinyar-NOM.SG 3.IPFV.concern.pass Bakiit-ACC.SG Dakkawasi-ACC.SG ꜝBàkíítꜝ-lè name my-NOM.SG Bakiit-NOM.SG 'The Sinyar language concerns Bakiit more than Dakkwasi [proper name of man].'
	(32)	'My name is Bakiit.' kándááká Sùdánꜝ-yàà	sáàr
	like -The few available illustrations of a vocative are not consistent: the reference to a single Sudan-ACC.SG nowadays 'like Sudan today' (on the spot) individual appears in the unmarked form (27) while the associative plural ('N and his/her mates/relatives/etc.') is coded in the nominative (28): 17 -The associative (name modifying a head noun) is marked as Genitive (33):
	(33)	ìngè Ɓóccó-nà
		house Ɓocco-GEN.SG
		'Ɓocco's [proper name of man] house'
	If the full noun phrase itself requires a case marker, the common noun marker controlled
	by the head -Nominative (34) or Adverbial (35) -is directly suffixed to the Genitive marker of the name: 18
	(34)	ɲèggè Sùdánꜝ-nàꜝ-sì	ꜝàmàꜝ-ǹ	núú lòòl
		girl.PL Sudan-GEN.SG-NOM.PL 3.IPFV.have-PL much modesty

Table 3b .

 3b Genitive of names + Nominative (sg./pl.) or Adverbial of nouns -The adjunct is marked with the Adverbial if expressing a comitative value (36): 1S-FUT.go Eli[Ar.]-ADV.PL market[Ar.]-ADV 'I'll go to the market with Eli's people.'On the other hand locative proper names (i.e. toponyms referring to remarkable places, localities, mountains, rivers, regions, and countries, see Section 5 below) are not marked but appear in their absolute form only (37-38):So far we have no illustration available of proper names used with a temporal or instrumental value, although such uses probably exist, at least for the latter.

	(36)	m-ábì	Élì-ngèèr	súk-tì	(~ m-ábì súk-tì Élì-ngèèr)
	(37)	ꜝFòrɓáráŋá 3.PST.bear-PL-1S.ACC.PFV Foro_Boranga wìɲèꜝ-m ̀-màꜝà
		'I was born (lit. they have borne me) in Foro Boranga [locality].'
	(38)	nààlé ꜝwìndéɲ	ꜝSàalé
		s/he 3.PST.bathe Saale
		'S/he bathed in Saale [river].'
	In (39) the toponym is also unmarked but introduced by the elative preposition mín 'from,
	out of, since' of Arabic origin:
	(39)	ùmmà àní	mín	Kódòrò
		woman this.NOM.SG from[Ar.] Kodoro [village name]
		'This woman is from Kodoro.'
	The same principle of zero-marking further applies for orientatives in the case of names
	borrowed from Arabic and referring to cardinal points (see Section 5 below):
	(40)	ámbí-ꜝyà	Ríìꜝ
		3.PST.go-PFV north[Ar.]
		'He has gone to the north.'

Proper names and case markers in Sinyar / 12

Table 5

 5 summarises the alignments of case with the main functions commented above.20

	Nouns	Names

Table 5 :

 5 Alignments of main functions and cases

  display Nominative and Genitive marking. An illustration of the unmarked use with a locative/orientative value has been given earlier in (40).To this group we can also add -the 'joker' name ꜝƝàkwà 'What's-his/her-name, So-and-So [animate]' that is ambivalent since it also behaves as a common noun(ꜝɲàkwà 'thing, thingie, thingummy, what-do-you- call-it') when referring to inanimates. Compare (50) and (51):

	(50)	Ɲàkwà-lèè
		What's_his_name-ADV.SG
		'with What's-his-name'
	(51)	ɲàkwà-tí
		what_do_you_call_it-ADV
		'with what-do-you-call-it'
	-the partial interrogative ɗèꜝèꜝ 'who?' that may be contrasted with ꜝìngá 'what?', the latter
	receiving the case markers of a common noun. Compare the marking of subject and object of both terms in (52-53) and (54-55): 21
	(52)	ɗèꜝèꜝ-lè	k-òòɲꜝà
		who?-NOM.SG FOC-3.PST.come.PFV
		'Who has come?'
	(53)	ìngá-n	k-ùɲꜝ-là
		what?-NOM.SG FOC-IPFV.hurt-2S.ACC
		'What does hurt you?'
	(54)	n-ánɖì	ɗèꜝèꜝ-yàà	(~ ɗèꜝèꜝ-yàà n-ánɖì)
		2-FUT.see who?-ACC.SG
		'Whom will you see?'
	(55)	n-ànɖíɲɲáꜝ` ꜝìngá (~ ìngá n-ànɖíɲɲáꜝ`)
		2-PST.see.PFV what?
		'What have you seen?'
	(48)	Sèídꜝ-lè	ꜝàmàꜝ	ìnjìꜝ
		south[Ar.].NOM.SG 3.IPFV.have rain
		'The south is rainy.'
	(49)	céè	Sèídꜝ-nàꜝ-ǹ
		person South[Ar.]-GEN.SG-NOM.SG
		'person from (lit. of) the south, southerner (Nominative)'

  Two approaches may be suggested in order to explain this particular situation. With reference to names of diseases and biological species, Van Langendonck & Van de Velde

	kócòlꜝ		'locust sp. (edible)'
	ꜝmàdààlíyé	'stork (bird sp.; = Ar. kundji, simbiríya)' (also c.n.)
	ꜝmàgúròòró	'locust sp. (yellow)'
	mbèèbírmbèèbìrꜝ 'bat' (also c.n.)
	ꜝnɖèɗè		'bird sp. (small)' (also c.n.)
	njàráŋnjàrâŋꜝ	'locust sp.'
	ꜝnjèdnjèdꜝ	'locust sp. (given as male of sòlósòlóòꜝ)'
	njìkíɲnjìkîɲꜝ	'bird sp. (small coloured budgerigar?)'
	ɲàmúròꜝ	'spider' (also c.n.)
	ɲíìɲàngàrꜝ	'locust sp. (used as a bait on the fishing line)'
	sìyásìyâyꜝ	'locust sp. (often on excrement, hence his name)' (cp. sìyá 'excrement,
			faeces; need for defecating')
	sòlósòlóòꜝ	'locust sp. (given as female of ꜝnjèdnjèdꜝ)'
	táàtàꜝ		'woodpecker' (also c.n.)
	ꜝtòngwóòꜝ	'chameleon'
	tóòtòꜝ		'duck'
	tóòtò bísbìsꜝ	'bird sp. (kind of duck)'
	wèʃʃìɲììrꜝ	'fish sp.'
	wííwíìꜝ		'dragonfly' (also c.n.)
	ꜝwìyááyèꜝ	'bird sp.' (also c.n.)
	Some examples are:
	(56)	láál	ꜝìngè ɲàmúròꜝ-nà
		3.IPFV.resemble house spider-GEN.SG
		[The assistant, speaking of the complexity of the language:]
		'It looks like a spider's nest.'	(on the spot)
	(57)	úwààꜝ-lè	k-íká-nàꜝà
		measles-NOM.SG FOC-3.catch-3S.ACC.PFV
	Animals: 'S/he has measles. (lit. MEASLES has caught him/her)'
	ꜝàbtándàrꜝ	'marabou stork (bird sp.) (also c.n.)
	ꜝàjíkòɗókòɗóòꜝ 'praying mantis'
	àlímègíyá	'bird sp. (lives on the water, eats fish)' (also c.n.)
	bàjàbájàꜝ	'cattle egret' (also c.n.)
	bórɲòꜝ		'fox'
	ꜝbùrgù		'locust sp. (flying in clouds, goes out in the night, attracted by fire,
			annihilates vegetables, edible and appreciated)' (also c.n.)
	gómsìꜝ		'owl sp. (= Ar. búma)' (name? also c.n.)
	gúúgùmꜝ	'owl sp. (= Ar. amgúgum)' (also c.n.)
	gùrààngú	'crowned crane (?)' (also c.n.)
	kèrékèrêwꜝ	'bird sp.' (also c.n.)

-Diseases: ꜝkàrmbà 'cold (disease)' (also c.n.)

22

, kìrrá 'malaria' (also c.n.), úwàꜝ / úwààꜝ 'measles' (also c.n.)

-Brand marks of medicines: ꜝBànàdôlꜝ 'Panadol [medicine containing paracetamol]' (also c.n.), ꜝKòmòkînꜝ 'Camoquin [antimalarial medicine]' (also c.n.)

-One plant name: ꜝàmùɲóòꜝ 'kind of edible squash or marrow' (also c.n.) -One artefact (?): ꜝgòmbótìꜝ 'fish trap' (name or c.n.?)

  ).

	íyàꜝ / íyààꜝ		'mother, mummy'
	jàárùꜝ			'brother-in-law'
	káàlàꜝ			'maternal aunt, auntie'
	kèffè			'slave'
	mààmáàꜝ		'maternal uncle' (as c.n.: mààmá)
	móólàꜝ (Ar.?)		'god/God' (Ar.?)
	ngáàrꜝ			'headman of village (= Ar. sheekh)'
	ɲíìlétí			'sister-in-law'
	sémìꜝ			'namesake'
	ʃíìmìnjí			'brother-in-law'
	ùmmàmàkì /irr. pl. ꜝmòmmòmàkì 'mother-in-law'
	úwàꜝ / úwààꜝ		'grandfather, grandpa'
	yàkwáàꜝ (Ar.)		'brother' (no c.n.?)
	Some illustrations are as follows:
	(58)	àkímꜝ-lè	èɓ(ì)	làꜝà
		doctor[Ar.]-NOM.SG 3.be_present INTERR
		'Is the doctor here?'
	(59)	gíyààꜝ-ngè	m-úlláꜝà	ꜝm-ìgààꜝkà
		brother-NOM.PL 1S-PST.die.PFV 1S-IPFV.not_know
		'Brothers! I have died, I don't know.'	(from a song)
	(60)	n-ànɖíɲɲáꜝ` bísꜝ-yàà	làꜝà
		2-PST.see.PFV cat-ACC.SG INTERR
		'Did you see the/our cat?'
	ꜝàbbá			'father, daddy' (term of address + name, no c.n.)
	ꜝàbbó / ꜝàbbóòꜝ		'grandmother, grandma'
	ꜝàbbó			'chief (of tribe) (= Ar. naazir)'
	ꜝàddá / ꜝàddáàꜝ		'paternal aunt, auntie'
	àkîmꜝ (Ar.)		'doctor'
	ꜝàtìnè			'grandchild, grandson, granddaughter'
	bîsꜝ (Ar.?)		'(home) cat' (also c.n.)
	ɓáàꜝ			'father'
	ɓáàꜝbàꜝ ꜝɓìryá			'father, daddy' (term of address + name, no c.n.) 'master' 24
	cékàmmíyá		'father/son-in-law'
	cé.ꜝkùbbòꜝ /irr. pl. cé.ꜝmìrdàꜝ	(lit. person.big) 'respectable person, elder, chief, president'
	gíyàꜝ / gíyààꜝ		'brother'

  below.

	nɖìbìꜝ 'land, country'	nɖìbì (...) -ti 'in the country
	màsàlàꜝ 'Masalit' 26		(of)' nɖìbì màsàlàꜝ-tì 'in the	màsàláàrè 'in the Masalit
					Masalit country'	country'
	ꜝʃàmɲà 'Sinyar'		nɖìbì ꜝʃàmɲà-tí 'in the	ꜝʃàmɲáàrè 'in the Sinyar
					Sinyar country'	country'
	njànná 'middle of'		njànnà (...) -ti 'in the middle	njànnáàrè 'in/until the middle
	(ꜝùbbà 'river')? 27		(of)' ùbbà (...) -ti 'in the river	(of it)' báàrè 'in the river'
					(of)'
	Table 6. Relative and absolute locatives
	Some of these locatives are illustrated in context with examples (62-64) below: 28
	(62)	-ámbíꜝyà	î	káàrè
		3.PST.go-PFV INTERR inside.LOC
		-lóòꜝlò àbbì.ʄà		èɓì.wàà	ꜝkìdìkáàrè
		no!	3.IPFV.enter.PASTNEG 3.IPFV.be.PERM door.LOC
		'-Has he gone inside?
		-No, he did not enter, he is still at the door.'
	(63)	[…] wò	c-àb	kùjáàrè	[…]
		and[Ar.] 1PE/D-IPFV.go water.LOC
		[A woman tells about women's traditional activities in the Sinyar country:]
		' … and we go to the water (place) [to fetch water] ...'	(Text B-3)
	(64)	nààlé ndésíꜝyà		mín	ɓéèrè
		s/he 3.PAST.go/come_out.PFV from[Ar.] house.LOC
		Noun 'S/he has gone out of the house.' Relative locative	Absolute locative
				(Adverbial case marker -ti)	(frozen suffix -(V́V̀r)è)
	ɓéér 'family compound,	ɓéér (...) -ti 'ín the	ɓéèrè '(at) home'
	house'			compound/house (of)'
	káár 'inside of (building)' káár (...) -ti 'ínside (...)'	káàrè 'inside (it)'
	ꜝkìdìká 'door, doorway'	ꜝkìdìká (...) -ti 'at the door	ꜝkìdìkáàrè 'in the doorway, at
					(of)'	the door'
	kòlló 'home garden'	kòllò (...) -ti 'in the home	kòllóòrè 'in the home garden'
					garden (of)'
	kùbàrà 'flat area used as	kùbàrà (...) -ti 'on the	kùbàráàrè 'on the
	drying ground or			drying/meeting ground'	drying/meeting ground'
	meeting place'
	kùjá 'water'		kùjà (...) -ti 'in the water	kùjáàrè 'in/into/ to/at the water
					(of)'	(place)'
	móór 'inside of		móór (...) -ti 'inside (...)	móòrè 'inside (it) (from an
	(container)'			(from an external point	internal point of view?)'
					of view?)'

Table 7a :

 7a Variants with LL tone pattern (right of the slash) are detopicalized, i.e. characteristic of focalized personal subject or personal predicate.

			Nominative*	Genitive	Accusative	Adverbial
	'near'	Sg. Pl.	èní / ènì ègí / ègì	(è)kín.náàꜝ (è)kígí.níngè	(è)kín (è)kígí	íngèr (è)kígí.tí
	'far'	Sg. Pl.	àná / ànà àgá / àgà	(è)wín.náàꜝ (è)wísí.níngè	(è)wín (è)wísí	(è)wísèr (è)wísí.tí
	'far+'	Sg. Pl.	áná ágá	áwín.náàꜝ áwísí.níngè	áwín áwísí	áwísèr áwísí.tí

*

Table 7b .

 7b Genitive of demonstratives + Nominative (sg./pl.) or Adverbial of nouns 7.2. Personal pronouns

					):
	(69)	a.	ábí	ꜝtòllò ꜝʃìkà	(è)kín.náàꜝ-tì
			2.IMP.walk side road[Ar.] this.GEN.SG-ADV
			'Walk on the side of this road!'
		b.	ábí	ꜝtòllò (è)kín.náàꜝ-tì
			2.IMP.walk side this.GEN.SG-ADV
			'Walk on the side of this one!'
	Table 7b displays all such possible combinations:
			GEN		G EN + NOM.SG	GEN + NOM.PL	GEN + ADV
	'near'	Sg. Pl.	(è)kín.náàꜝ (è)kígí.níngè	(è)kín.náꜝ-ǹ (è)kígí.níngè-n	(è)kín.náàꜝ-sì (è)kígí.níngè-sí	(è)kín.náàꜝ-tì (è)kígí.níngè-tí
	'far'	Sg. Pl.	(è)wín.náàꜝ (è)wísí.níngè	(è)wín.náꜝ-ǹ (è)wísí.níngè-n	(è)wín.náàꜝ-sì (è)wísí.níngè-sí	(è)wín.náàꜝ-tì (è)wísí.níngè-tí
	'+far'	Sg. Pl.	áwín.náàꜝ áwísí.níngè	áwín.náꜝ-ǹ áwísí.níngè-n	áwín.náàꜝ-sì áwísí.níngè-sí	áwín.náàꜝ-tì áwísí.níngè-tí

  Appl. -sí) ꜝnìngàángèèr 1PD = 1 st person plural (dual), 1PE = 1 st person plural (exclusive), 1PI = 1 st person plural (inclusive). * Variants with final low tone (right of the slash) are detopicalized, i.e. characteristic of focalized personal subject or personal predicate.

		Nominative Independent*	Indices	Genitive (Associative)	Independent	Accusative Indices**	Adverbial
	1S	ꜝmààlé / mààlè ~ màà	m(V)-VERB	-ándàꜝ	màá	-má / (ꜝ)-mà (Appl. -má)	ꜝmàárèè
	2S	ꜝìllé / ìllè	n(V)-VERB	-nûnꜝ	làá	-lá / (ꜝ)-là (Appl. -lá)	ꜝlàárèè
	3S	ꜝnààlé / nààlè ~ nàà	Ø-VERB		-náàꜝ	nìyáà	-nà	ꜝnìyáàrèè
	1PE 1PD 1PI	ꜝcìngé / cìngè ꜝcìyé / cìyè ꜝcèèsá / cèèsà	c(V)-VERB c(V)-VERB-sà	-náákú -násà	cìngáá cìyáá cèèsáá	-ꜝsìngà (Appl. -síngà) -ꜝsìyà (Appl. -síyà) -ꜝsààsà (Appl. -sáàsà)	ꜝcìngàángèèr ꜝcìyàángèèr ꜝcèèsáángèèr
	2P	ꜝsìngé / sìngè ꜝsèèsá / sèèsà	n(V)-VERB-sà	-núkú	sìngáá sèèsáá	-sìngá (Appl. -síngá) -sìyá (Appl. -síyá)	ꜝsìngàángèèr ꜝsèèsáángèèr
	3P	ꜝnìngé / nìngè	Ø-VERB-(i)n	-níngè	nìngáá	-nìngá (~
		Tonal downstep (tonology)	fem.	Female
	°-	Neutralisation of preceding tonal	FOC	Focalizer (of subject)
		downstep (see p. 9, footn. 14)	FUT	Future
	= 1/2/3	Equivalent/similar to 1 st /2 nd /3 rd person		GEN	Genitive (names, demonstratives, and personal pronouns)
	ACC	Accusative (names,		IMP	Imperative
		demonstratives, and personal	INTERR	Interrogative
		pronouns)		IPFV	Imperfective
	ADV	Adverbial (nouns)		irr. pl.	Irregular plural
	ADV	Adverbial (names, demonstratives,	LOC	Locative suffix
		and personal pronouns)		m.	Male
	APPL	Applicative		NEG	Negative, Negation
	Ar.	Arabic		NOM	Nominative (names,
	c.n.	Common noun			demonstratives, and personal
	D	Dual			pronouns)
	DETOP	Detopicalized form

NOM Nominative (nouns) Map 1. Sinyar and the Central Sudanic languages in central Africa (Sudan borders as before the 2011 partition) Proper names and case markers in Sinyar / 28 ** Appl.: forms of pronouns specific of the applicative verb form.

Table 8a .

 8a Personal pronouns

* CNRS (UMR 8135, CNRS-INALCO, France) -pascal.boyeldieu@cnrs.fr

For a more detailed presentation of the Sinyar people, see[START_REF] Doornbos | A Sinyar Tale of Friendship[END_REF][START_REF] Doornbos | Muslim Peoples: A World Ethnographic Survey[END_REF].

For a general presentation of the SBB languages, seeBoyeldieu (2000: 15-45 & 166-175).

A list of Glosses and abbreviations is provided at the end, after Section 8. For the use of an initial capital in the gloss ACC(USATIVE) (2a-c), see more precisely p. 9, footn. 13 below.

I hereby express my gratitude to my different assistants, translators from Arabic or Sinyar speakers, Messrs Zakaria Abdulkerim, Sheekheddin Osman, Mahammat Suleyman Baabikir, Hassan Sale, and, above all, Mr Bakheet Abdulkerim.

Except if the head noun is modified by a demonstrative that imposes its own case marking (see

7.1 below).7 Allomorphs depend on the final of the term the clitic is suffixed to: -n is suffixed to a final short vowel (-V-n), -li to a final -l (-l-li), -ri to a final -r (-r-ri), and -ni to any other final consonant (-C-ni) or to a final long vowel (-VV-ni). Tonal variants are conditioned as indicated above before example (3).

This also applies to the Nominative markers, see (34) and Table3bbelow.

This ability to drop the Adverbial marker after an associative proper name is clearly limited to the choice of the head noun ꜝdì 'place'. Compare, for instance, with (35) below ('... in Ɓocco's house'), where the Adverbial marker is compulsory.

Note the formal similarity of Nominative and Genitive in the plural.

In order to avoid confusion between the markers of common nouns (NOM, ADV) and those of proper names (NOM, GEN, ACC, ADV), the latter are glossed with an initial uppercase letter. The same convention applies to demonstratives and personal pronouns that show a similar case system (see Section 7 below).

The sign ° indicates that the markers neutralise the effect of the preceding downstep if any, e.g. Kájjèꜝ 'Kajje (proper name of woman)' > Kájjè-lèè (and not *Kájjèꜝ-lèè) 'with Kajje'.

Allomorphs depend on the last syllable of the term the clitic is suffixed to: -V-n, -VV-le, -C-le. Tonal variants are conditioned as indicated above before example (3).

The conditioning of the two variants -nàꜝ / -nâꜝ is somewhat complex: 1. If the Genitive marker is final, its form is -nàꜝ in every case. 2. If it is covered by a second marker (NOM or ADV) relating to the preceding head noun, its form is -nàꜝ when suffixed to a proper name ending with Lꜝ, and -nâꜝ in the other cases (name ending with H or L). See examples (13) above, as well as(34)(35) and Table3bbelow.

Strictly speaking the form ꜝBàkíítꜝ-ngè could also represent a Plural Genitive. The Nominative interpretation is preferred by analogy with the behaviour of the common nouns (cp. [8] above) as well as with the personal pronoun ꜝsìngé 'you [pl.], which appears in the same example (27) and is marked as a Nominative itself (see Section 7.2 below).

See also ex. (11) above. Concerning the construction in (35), remember the tendency to drop the Adverbial marker in the sole case of ꜝdì 'place' modified by a proper name with the meaning of 'at (N)'s, to/from (N)' (see3.1 above, ex. [15-16] and introducing comments).

In relation with this question, see also ex. (46-47) commented below.

For a more detailed presentation of case alignment(s) in Sinyar, see[START_REF] Boyeldieu | Case alignment(s) in Sinyar[END_REF]

Note that both partial interrogatives require to be focalized (subject-focalizing verb prefix k(V)-) when they function as subject. For ɗèꜝèꜝ 'who?', see also example (46) above.

I am indebted to Denis Creissels for having drawn my attention to this article by Gérard Dumestre. The original citation reads: "Si ces complexes peuvent apparaître dans toutes les fonctions du nominal, en pratique les plus longs d'entre eux sont essentiellement utilisés 'en citation' ou topicalisés, la complexité de leur forme étant un obstacle à leur intégration dans un énoncé."

To be contrasted with ꜝɓìr 'owner' (c.n. only), see end of this section below.

If probably not exhaustive, the present list of absolute locatives is nevertheless clearly limited and the suffix not (any more) productive, hence the qualification of 'frozen forms'. As for the suffixation, it follows the two main patterns CVCV+-(V́V̀r)è > CVCV́V̀rè and CVVr+-(V́V̀r)è > CV́V̀rè.

The Masalit are close neighbours of the Sinyar people.

The formal link between ꜝùbbà 'river' and báàrè 'in the river' is uncertain.

See also(41) and (43) above. Note that 'locative' is used here in a wide sense, as a cover term for location without motion (62), as well as motion to (62-63), and motion from (64) (equivalent, for instance, to the three locative, allative, and ablative in[START_REF] Haspelmath | Differential place marking and differential object marking[END_REF] : 3-4). Despite the possibly limited translations, the three values seem to be valid for every term in Table6.

The same link has been observed for certain Bantu languages(König 2008: 252).

Note that there is an accusative or object marker -si in Fur(Tucker & Bryan 1966: 223; Jakobi 1990: 96).


Pascal Boyeldieu

CASE ALIGNMENT(S) IN SINYAR

come

Case alignment(s) in Sinyar

Introduction

The Sinyar language (tàar ʃàmɲà) is spoken in an area that is shared between Chad (main settlement: Mongororo, Waddai province) and Sudan (main settlement: Foro Boranga, South to Darfur). For Chad only the number of speakers was estimated 12,300 in the year 2000 (Lewis, Simons & Fennig 2013). A roughly similar amount may be suggested for Sudan. Their closest neighbours are Daju of Sila (Chad) and Fur (Sudan).

Up to now Sinyar has been classified within the (Sara-)Bongo-Bagirmi (henceforth SBB) subbranch of Central Sudanic (Tucker & Bryan 1956: 14;[START_REF] Haaland | Ethnic groups and language use in Darfur[END_REF]Doornbos undated;[START_REF] Doornbos | Languages of Wadai-Darfur[END_REF][START_REF] Bender | Central Sudanic segmental and lexical reconstructions[END_REF]. However this position relied on very limited data and recent fieldwork of my own revealed that things are not so straightforward. Sinyar does indeed share many lexical and morphosyntactic features with SBB languages but, as shown in table 1 below, it also differs from them in other features of the same domains, the origin or relationship of which remains undetermined, so that the social and historical genesis of Sinyar still represents an open question in the present state of research. • part of the lexicon (including 'basic') • no tonal alternation on verbs • some double (related) radicals for verbs • intensive verbs in -r-• factitive verbs suffixed with -oo/-uu • noun plural in (-ŋà) • some noun plurals in -àar (animates) • case marker system The aim of this paper is to give an account of Sinyar's (double) case marker system, probably the most original and striking feature in comparison with the SBB language group. After displaying the markers and their complementarity (section 3), and commenting on morphosyntactic principles (section 4), I will review the way cases are involved in the expression of the different functions1 that may be assumed by noun phrases (section 5), summarize the relations between function and case (section 6), and finally give concluding remarks (section 7).

Preliminary remarks

Sinyar contrasts two level tones (Low/High) and has frequent downstepped Lows (the tonal transcriptions should not be considered as definitive). Kind of 'floating' tones -symbolised by (L) / (H) put after the term -condition the tonal realisation of subsequent toneless suffixes (or clitics), a property which is, among others, the case of certain case markers. Contrast for instance the behaviour of the Nominative Singular -Ni after bís (L) 'cat' (1) and lél (H) 'donkey' ( 2):

(1) bís-nì cat-NOM:SG 'cat' (Nominative)

(2) lél-lí donkey-NOM:SG 'donkey' (Nominative)

The nominal Plural -ŋà however is transparent in the sense that the 'floating' tone 'jumps' it and shifts its effect onto the following unit (-ŋà may be dropped, especially when it is followed by a case marker whose plural number is explicit). Compare the behaviour of the Nominative Plural -si after the two nouns ìngà (L) 'mountain' (3) and màasì (H) 'spear' (4).

(3) ìngà(-ŋà)-sì mountain(-PL)-NOM:PL 'mountains' (Nominative)

(4) màasì(-ŋà)-sí spear(-PL)-NOM:PL 'spears' (Nominative)

Basic syntactic order is SVO with great freedom as to the main constituents (pragmatic effects are likely but not well known). Numerous examples have been elicited. 2

Case markers

Sinyar is characterized by two sets of case markers according to the nature of the head of the noun phrase. i.) The first set concerns phrases whose head is a common noun, except if modified by a deictic (see below). This set, that includes the dummy noun ɲàkwà (H) 'thingy, thingummy, what-do-youcall-it' and the partial interrogative ìngá (H) 'what?', contrasts an unmarked form ('Absolute'), a Nominative, and an Adverbial (a label that covers all values of 'locative', 'instrumental', and 'comitative').

The specific markers of set i. are illustrated in table 2 below: This second set contrasts an unmarked, 'Absolute' form (restricted to proper names stricto sensu), a Nominative, a Genitive, an Accusative, and an Adverbial.

The specific markers and specific forms of set ii. are illustrated in tables 3. to 5. below: As can be seen from tables 1 and 2, case markers are usually but not always distinct for number. Deictics (table 4) and personal pronouns (table 5) have their own, usually irreducible forms. Note however the genitive forms of the Deictics that combine the accusative forms plus the genitive of the Personal Pronouns 3S and 3P. Several other formal links may be observed between the three tables 3 to 5.

As a general rule case markers appear at the end of the phrase and may be considered as postpositions.

Thus the Nominative is suffixed to the sole head noun representing the subject in (5) but to the last modifier (adjective) following the head noun in (6) (as a convention, italics will highlight illustrated head and case marker, if any):

(5) kàjjà-n àmbíy ↓ à sun-NOM:SG 3:go:PST2 'The time is over' (lit. the sun has gone) (6) kàndìnè-ŋà-náà kíccí-sì àm ↓ àn írrí cloth-PL-3S:GEN old-NOM:PL 3:have:PRS:PL dirt 'His old clothes are dirty.' Since common nouns do not know any accusative markers, objects represented by common nouns appear in the unmarked (absolute) form (7a) unless they are modified by a deictic that must appear in the accusative (7b) in the same way as the deictic pronoun (7c):

(7) a. ngùbbò-n tèll ↓ è kwàrjà old_woman-NOM:SG 3:twist:PST1 polenta 'The old woman prepared polenta.' b. ngùbbò-n tèll ↓ è kwàrjà kín old_woman-NOM:SG 3:twist:PST1 polenta this:ACC:SG 'The old woman prepared this polenta.' c. ngùbbò-n tèll ↓ è èkín old_woman-NOM:SG 3:twist:PST1 this_one:ACC:SG 'The old woman prepared this one.' Finally genitive case markers (8) or specific forms (9-10) of set ii. may appear within a noun phrase as modifiers of a common noun and be followed by the last case marker governed by the head:

(8) ɓáà-ŋà Kùɲáà-nà-sì wèeɲìnn ↓ àa fìràangà father-PL Kunyaa-GEN:SG-NOM:PL 3:come:PST2:PL yesterday 'Kunyaa's fathers (i.e. father and/or uncles) have come yesterday.' (9) kàndìnè-ŋà-náà kíccí-sì àm ↓ àn írrí (= (6) above) cloth-PL-3S:GEN old-NOM:PL 3:have:PRS:PL dirt 'His old clothes are dirty.' (10) ɓáà céè wín.nâ-n úwè father person that:GEN:SG-NOM:SG 3:FUT:come 'The father of that person will come.' Such are the main principles along which case markers function. Further situations and contexts will be illustrated throughout section 5.

Function and case

This section will review and comment the use of case along the main functions noun phrases may assume in the Sinyar utterance.

a. Subject of any predicate and focussed subject of verb predicate

The subject is normally marked as nominative. illustrate subjects of a verbal predicate (with focussed subject in ( 12)). ( 15) is an adverbial utterance with an adverbial noun phrase as predicate while ( 16) is an equative utterance resulting from the mere juxtaposition of both subject and predicate represented by noun phrases in the nominative (see b. below). ( 11 ùmmù kàanà-tí snake-NOM:SG inside grass-ADV 'There is a snake in the grass' (16) Bàkíit-lè cé-k-íjjá ↓ `-n Bakheet-NOM:SG person-REL-3:count-NOM:SG 'Bakheet is the accountant.'

In rare cases subjects have been noted as unmarked, i.e. without any nominative. Although not well understood this behaviour could be restricted to nouns referring to inanimate, maybe non-countable notions whose unmarked form would then express indefiniteness. Contrast ( 17) and ( 18):

(17) kùcúl úngw ↓ à money 3:not_be:PRS 'There is no money (money doesn't exist, e.g. 'I/we have no money.').'

(18) kùcúl-lí úngw ↓ à money-NOM:SG 3:not_be:PRS 'The money is not here (the money is absent, e.g. 'The money is somewhere else.').'

b. Nominal predicate

As already mentioned in connection with example (16) above, the nominal predicate of a simply juxtaposed equative utterance is itself marked as nominative. Examples ( 19) and (20) illustrate phrases whose head is a common noun or a proper name respectively. In (21) the nominal predicate is modified by a relative clause. The complements of two verbs referring -positively or negatively -to class membership, presence, or existence of an entity may themselves be or not be marked as nominative. This difference of behaviour involves a semantic contrast that has not been clearly identified but seems to have something to do with an opposition of temporary or circumstantial (-nominative) vs. permanent or essential (+ nominative). Compare ( 22a) and ( 23a) with ( 22b) and (23b) respectively:

(22) a. nàalé èɓì ʃàmɲà 3S:NOM 3:be:PRS Sinyar 'He is still a Sinyar (but could change [?]).' b. nàalé èɓì ʃàmɲà-n 3S:NOM 3:be:PRS Sinyar:NOM:SG 'He is a Sinyar (and will ever be [?]).' (23) a. nàalé úngw ↓ à gì 3S:NOM 3:not_be:PRS child 'He is not a child.' b. nàalé úngw ↓ à gì-n 3S:NOM 3:not_be:PRS child:NOM:SG 'He is not a child (i.e. he behaves like an adult [?]).'

d. Complement of ùbà 'become'

Complements of the verb ùbà 'become' always behave as objects and appear either unmarked (in the 'absolute' form) for common nouns (24-25) or in the accusative, at least in the uncertain example of a personal pronoun (26).

e. Object (patient)

The object (patient) of a verbal predicate is unmarked when represented by a common noun (27)(28) or also by a proper name used with a generic value (29). On the other hand the object is marked as accusative in (30) (proper name of personified animals with specific value) and in (31) (deictic modifying a common noun).

f. Object of ditransitive or applicative verbs

Objects of ditransitive verbs both behave in the same way like patients: common nouns are unmarked (32) while proper names and assimilated are marked with accusative (33). Note that the order of objects is free.

(32) a. nàalé ndóolú ↓ ù gì tàar ʃàmɲà 3S:NOM 3:teach:PRS child language Sinyar 'S/he teaches the child the Sinyar language.' b. nàalé ndóolú ↓ ù tàar ʃàmɲà gì 3S:NOM 3:teach:PRS language Sinyar child 'S/he teaches the child the Sinyar language.' (33) a. nàalé ínjóoy ↓ à kùcúl Bàkíit-yàa 3S:NOM 3:let_count:PST2 money Bakheet-ACC:SG 'S/he let Bakheet count the money.' b. nàalé ínjóoy ↓ à Bàkíit-yàa kùcúl 3S:NOM 3:let_count:PST2 Bakheet-ACC:SG money 'S/he let Bakheet count the money.' Several verbs may receive an applicative extension that increases the number of their arguments. In such cases the 'applicative' object may refer to different values (namely benefactive, locative, or instrumental) and is again unmarked in the case of common nouns (34) or marked in the accusative in the case of proper names (35-36).

h. Complement of preposition kándáaká 'like'

Noun phrases governed by the preposition kándáaká 'like, as' behave like objects, i.e. they appear complementarily as unmarked (47) or as accusative ( 48). This fact might suggest a verbal origin for the preposition.

i. Associative=Genitive (modifying a noun, including complex adpositions)

Modifying nouns, i.e. nouns functioning as the associative (genitive) expansion of a head remain unmarked if they are common nouns (49-51). They are marked as genitive in the case of proper names (52-53) and assimilated, e.g. partial interrogative 'who?' (54) or deictics (55-56). (56) nàalé úwèn ɓáà céè wísí.níngè-tí 3S:NOM 3:FUT:come:PL father person those:GEN:PL-ADV 'He will come (lit. he, they will come) with the father of those people.'

j. Topicalized subject

Sinyar has the ability to strengthen the topicalization of the subject -or making it a frame -by duplicating it with a subject pronoun that appears after a light pause. The extraposed subject itself appears in the nominative. Contrast (57a) and (58a) (subject) with (57b) and (58b) (strengthened topicalization):

(57) a. wèrʃì kíccí-n jùwè-t ↓ à jàmmá ↓ `l knife old-NOM:SG 3:cut:PRS-NEG 3:be_nice 'The old knife does not cut well.' b. wèrʃì kíccí-n nàalé jùwè-t ↓ à jàmmá ↓ `l knife old-NOM:SG 3S:NOM 3:cut:PRS-NEG 3:be_nice 'The old knife, it does not cut well.' (58) a. Kùmúlà-ngè ámbínn ↓ àa nùnnúù Kumula:NOM:PL 3:go:PST2:PL far_away 'Kumula's people have gone away.' b. Kùmúlà-ngè nìngé ámbínn ↓ àa nùnnúù Kumula:NOM:PL 3P:NOM 3:go:PST2:PL far_away 'Kumula's people, they have gone away.' Another process -that might be characterized as 'contrastive topicalization' -consists of embedding the extraposed noun phrase in the frozen formula tùbà… cè(n) 'as for… (also)'. The extraposed subject is again marked as a nominative (59).

(59) tùbà Élì-n cè(n) ámbíy ↓ à fìràangà as_for Ali:NOM:SG also 3:go:PST2 yesterday 'As for Ali, he has gone yesterday.'

The term tùbà obviously derives from the verb ùbà 'to become' (t-ùbà = dependent form?); cè 'also' is attested elsewhere but it may appear here with an additional n according to conditions that are not understood. All instances of this specific construction (see also k. and m. below) concern human proper names.

These cases should not be assimilated to the behaviour of ùbà as a plain verb (see section d. above) since the topicalized noun phrase may be marked at least as a nominative, an accusative or an adverbial according to the function copied by the topic (see sections k. and m. below).

k. Topicalized object (patient)

The object may be topicalized through extraposition to the beginning of the clause. It is unmarked in the case of common nouns (60-61) and marked as accusative in the case of proper names (62) or personal pronouns (63). Note that the inanimate object is not necessarily represented by a pronoun in situ: compare (60) (no pronoun) and (63) (object pronoun present).

(60) wèrʃì kíccí ɓáandâ-n ìndéɲɲ ↓ à fàfèré knife old father:1S:GEN-NOM:SG 3:take:PST2 this_morning 'The old knife, my father has taken (it) this morning.' (61) márʄá-náà m-ànɖíɲ-nà súk-tì husband-3S:GEN 1S-see:PST1-3S:ACC yesterday 'Her husband, I saw him on the market.' (62) Kùmúlàa m-ànɖíɲ-nà súk-tì Kumula:ACC:SG 1S-see:PST1-3S:ACC market[Ar.]-ADV 'Kumula, I saw her on the market.' (63) kàggà-kín náa kùun-nà tree-this:ACC:SG how? 3:call:PRS:PL-3S:ACC 'This tree, how is it called? (lit. how do they call it?)'

The topicalized noun phrase (here a personal pronoun) may sometimes be marked either as accusative or as nominative: compare (64a) and ( 65a) with ( 64b) and (65b) respectively. In these cases the animate feature of the object (patient or experiencer) seems to explain the attraction of a more 'active' or 'controlling' case -the nominative -although the control is non-existent in both examples ('be born', 'be hungry').7 (64) a. nìyáà wìɲèn-n ↓ àa Fòrɓáráŋá 3S:ACC 3:beget-3S:ACC:PST2 F_B 'He, he was born (lit. they have begotten him) in Foro Boranga.' b. nàalé wìɲèn-n ↓ àa Fòrɓáráŋá 3S:NOM 3:beget-3S:ACC:PST2 F_B 'He, he was born (lit. they have begotten him) in Foro Boranga.' (65) a. nìyáà mùsù-n k-ùɲ-n ↓ à 3S:ACC hunger-NOM FOC-3:pain:PRS-3S:ACC 'He, he is hungry (lit. hunger pains him).' b. nàalé mùsù-n k-ùɲ-n ↓ à 3S:NOM hunger-NOM FOC-3:pain:PRS-3S:ACC 'He, he is hungry (lit. hunger pains him).' Finally a contrastive topicalization may appear in a similar way like with the subject (see j. above). The topicalized noun phrase (here a proper name) is marked in the accusative (66).

(66) tùbà Élì-yàa cè m-ànɖíɲ-nà fìràangà as_for Ali:NOM:SG also 1S-see:PST1-3S:ACC yesterday 'As for Ali, I saw him yesterday.'

l. Topicalized object of ditransitive or applicative verbs?

Sinyar's ability of topicalizing the supplementary object of a ditransitive or applicative verb is not clear in the present state of the data. Most probably there is a possibility of moving some arguments with pragmatic effects. Contrast for instance (67), where the second object (instrumental) of an applicative verb is put in front of the sentence, with (68), where a similar object appears after the verb predicate (as expected the common noun object is unmarked in either case).

n. Topicalized associative

The associative (genitive) modifier of a head noun may be extraposed and duplicated by a personal pronoun in situ with an effect of topicalization. As illustrated below a common strategy is to mark the topicalized modifier as a nominative in both cases of a common noun (72-73) or a proper name (74-75).

(72) wèrʃì kíccí-n tàar-nâ-n áffá-tá knife old-NOM:SG edge-3S:GEN-NOM:SG 3:be_sharp:PRS-NEG 'The old knife, its edge is not sharp.' 76) with (73) above) or genitive (77) may also be choosen in this context, at least for noun phrases (proper name, interrogative 'who?')9 that make it possible.

(76) Bàkíit-yàa nìngé káalítìn tòor-náà-tì Bakheet-ACC:SG 3P:NOM 3:quarrel:PRS:PL top-3S:GEN-ADV 'Bakheet, they quarrel concerning (lit. at the top of) him.' (77) ɗè ↓ e-nà èɓì àd ↓ àn tádá-náà who?-GEN:SG 3:PRGR 3:say:PRS:PL matter-3S:GEN 'Who are they discussing the matter of?' (lit. of whom, they are discussing his matter?)

A last example (78) illustrates again the free variation of a nominative with an accusative in marking a proper name.

o. Citation

Considering the lexical lists that have been previously published as well as my own data, the behaviour of nouns in isolation is not really conclusive: according to their nature (common noun or proper name) they may appear as unmarked, accusative or nominative, without obvious link with a feature of animacy. Citation form should therefore not be taken as decisive evidence in Sinyar.

Summary of function and case

The different relations between function and case that have been inspected in the preceding section are summarized in Table 6.:

Concluding remarks

In order to conclude this presentation of Sinyar's case marking system(s), several remarks can be made.

1. From a typological point of view [START_REF] König | The marked-nominative languages of eastern Africa[END_REF] makes the following observation concerning African languages:

"[…] two types of marked-nominative languages are to be distinguished with regard to the morphological markedness of nominative and accusative: Type 1 (the most common one), in which the [nominative] is the morphologically marked form and the [accusative] the morphologically unmarked form, and Type 2, in which both case forms, nominative and accusative, are morphologically marked." (König 2008:254).

If so, Sinyar results from an interesting combination of the two types: the first one is valid for common nouns and the second one is valid for proper names and assimilated (deictics and personal pronouns). They both contribute to establish the specificity of the language under this respect.

Table 1 :

 1 Sinyar features converging with/diverging from SBB features SBB-like SBB-unlike • part of the lexicon (including 'basic') • part of the personal pronouns • personal indices 2 & 3 distinguished for number by plural suffixes on the verb • infinitive in t-(vowel-initial verbs) • relative verb forms in k(V)-• adjectives in k-(vowel-initial verbs)

  (19) Bàkíit-lè cé-k-íjjá ↓ `-n (= (16) above) Bakheet:NOM:SG person-REL-3:count-NOM:SG 'Bakheet is the accountant.' (20) èerà-ándâ-n Bàkíit-lè name-1S:GEN-NOM:SG Bakheet-NOM:SG 'My name is Bakheet.' (21) ángá-sí kàndìnè-ŋà k-íngíllé-sí which_one?:NOM:PL cloth-PL REL-3:get_lost:PST1-NOM:PL 'Which clothes were lost?' (lit. which ones (are) the clothes that were lost?) c. Complement of èɓì 'be, exist, live' and úngw ↓ à 'not be, be absent, not exist'

  3:PRGR 3:become:PRS man 'He is becoming a man (of a boy or young man).' (25) m-ùbòwàaʄà cé.kúbbò 1S-become:wait:PRS:NEG elder[person.big] 'I have not become an elder yet.' (26) nàalé úbà màá 3S:NOM 3:FUT:become 1S:ACC 'He will become me.' [meaning unclear]

(

  27) nìngé mbàràn ɲàfá 3P:NOM 3:love:PRS:PL each_other 'They love each other.' (28) nàalé ámá ↓ à ɲíì ɗè ↓ e-nà 3S:NOM 3:marry:PST2 daughter who?-GEN:SG 'Whose daughter has he married (he has married the daughter of whom)?' (29) Bàkíìt mùʈʈà c-àmà ɓéerè Bakheet three 1P-have:PRS at_home 'We have three Bakheet at home.' (30) Ɲàmúrò-n ámbóngá ↓ à Míndéelè-ngàá Spider-NOM:SG 3:visit:PST2 Rat-ACC:PL 'Spider has paid a visit to Rat's family.' (31) màalé m-ìgàakà céè-kín 1S:NOM 1S-ignore:PRS person-this:ACC:SG 'I don't know this person.'

(

  34) ìngá áarìnnáa wèrʃì dúkùm what? 3:FUTdo:APPL:PL knife blunt 'What will they do with the blunt knife?' (35) màalé m-èɓì kâyyáa Fòrɓáráŋáà 1S:NOM 1S-PRGR be_near:PRS:APPL F_B:ACC:SG 'I am living close to Foro Boranga.' (36) k-ìkàlmbìyáa-tá Zàkàríyà-ngè ngàar 2:PRHB-cook:APPL-NEG Zakariya-ACC:PL polenta 'Don't cook polenta for Zakariya's people!' g. Adverbial (locative, instrumental, and comitative) Adverbial adjuncts are usually marked as such, the same markers expressing all the values of locative, instrumental and comitative. Common nouns are illustrated in (37-42) and proper names or assimilated in (43-45). (40-42) exemplify cases of complex adpositions resulting from modified nouns (kùbàl…ADV 'near, close to', tà… ADV 'because of, according to'). (37) wèeɲ ↓ à kàndìnè-ŋà kwíi-tí 3S:come:PST2 cloth-PL other-ADV 'S/he has come with other clothes.' (38) nàalé sùɗò-tí górnú ↓ ` 3S:NOM sleep-ADV 3:snore:PRS 'S/he snores while sleeping.' (39) mùʈʈà-níngè-tí wèeɲìnnà ↓ a three-3P:GEN:ADV 3:come:PST2:PL 'They have come in a group of three.' (lit. with the three of them) (40) cìjjì kùbàl-ándá-tì 2:put:IMP nearness-1S:GEN-ADV 'Put (it) beside me!' (lit. in my nearness) (41) tà céè-sì t-àd ↓ àn-tí … matter person:PL-NOM:PL DEP-3:say:PRS:PL-ADV 'according to what people say…' (42) màalé m-èɓì kùbàl Fòrɓáráŋá-ná-tì 1S:NOM 1S-live:PRS nearness F_B-GEN:SG-ADV 'I live near Foro Boranga.' (lit. in the nearness of F.B.) (43) m-ábì Élì-lèe súk-tì 1S-FUT:go Ali-ADV:SG market[Ar.]-ADV 'I'll go to the market with Ali.' (44) ìllé tàb ↓ à-là cìyáangèer 2S-NOM 2:leave:IMP-2S:NOM 1P[?]:ADV 'Stay with us!' (lit. you (sg.) leave yourself with us!) (45) wèeɲngònnà ↓ aɗè ↓ e-lèe kwíi-tí 3:come:again:PST2 who?-ADV:SG other-ADV 'With whom else has he come?' However toponyms remain unmarked when used as absolute locatives (46).

  3:bathe:PST1 Salih[river] 'S/he bathed in Salih (river).'

( 49 )

 49 nìngé álánn ↓ àa kàndìnè ɲàfá 3P:NOM 3:put:PST2:PL cloth each_other 'They have put on each other's cloth.' (50) nìngé èɓì àd ↓ àn tádá ɓáa-ndà 3P:NOM 3:PRGR 3:say:PRS:PL matter father-1S:GEN 'They are discussing the matter of my father.' (51) káalítìn tà ùmmà-tì 3:quarrel:PRS:PL matter woman-ADV 'They quarrel concerning (with the matter of) a/the woman.' (52) érɓí térɓí Bórɲò-nà 3:run:PRS running fox-GEN:SG 'He runs like a fox.' (lit. he runs a running of fox, i.e. very fast) (53) nìngé èɓìn íllè Sàbáà-nà-tì 3P:NOM 3:live:PRS:PL village[Ar.] East-GEN:SG-ADV 'They live in a village of the East.' (54) ègí ìngè(-ŋà) ɗè ↓ e-ngè-sí this:NOM:PL house(-PL) who?-GEN:PL-NOM:PL 'Whose (pl.) houses are these?' (lit. these (are) the houses of whom (pl.)?) (55) ɓáà céè kín.nâ-n úwè (= (9) above) father person this:GEN:SG-NOM:SG 3:FUT:come 'The father of this person will come.'

( 67 )

 67 wèrʃì kíccí ìngá n-áaryáa knife old what? 2-do:PST1:APPL 'The old knife, what did you do with (it)?'

( 73 )

 73 ùmmà-n nìngé káalítìn tòor-náà-tì woman:NOM:SG 3P:NOM 3:quarrel:PRS:PL top-3S:GEN-ADV 'The woman, they quarrel concerning (lit. at the top of) her.' (74) Kùmúlà-n ɓáa-nâ-n ámbíy ↓ à nùnnúù Kumula-NOM:SG father-3S:GEN-NOM:SG 3:go:PST2 far_away 'Kumula, her father has gone away.' (75) Máamàt-lè màalé c-ámbí gì-náà-tì màarà-tí Maamat-NOM:SG 1S:NOM 1P-go:PST1 child-3S:GEN-ADV hunting-ADV 'Maamat, I went hunting with his son.' But accusative (compare (

(

  78) a. Bàkíit-ngè màalé m-èrf ↓ ì ɓáa-níngè-tí fìràangà Bakheet-NOM:PL 1S:NOM 1S-speak:PST1 father-3P:GEN-ADV yesterday 'Bakheet's people, I spoke with their father yesterday.' b. Bàkíit-ngàá màalé m-èrf ↓ ì ɓáa-níngè-tí fìràangà Bakheet-ACC:PL 1S:NOM 1S-speak:PST1 father-3P:GEN-ADV yesterday 'Bakheet's people, I spoke with their father yesterday.'

Table 2 : Case markers for phrases whose head is a common noun

 2

		Absolute form	Nominative	Adverbial
	Sg. Pl.	Ø	-n / -Ni 3 -si	-ti
	ii.) The second set concerns phrases whose head is a proper name, a deictic or a personal pronoun, as
	well as cases where a common noun is modified by a deictic modifier. 'Proper names' include
	personal names -and names of personified animals -, 'God', 'chief', 'grandmother', names of places,
	rivers, mountains, and countries, the dummy noun Ɲàkwà 'what's-his/her-name, So-and-So' and the partial interrogative ɗè ↓ e-(L) 'who?', some animal names: '(home) cat', '(home) duck', 'fox', 'owl
	2 Data were collected on the occasion of two recent fieldworks in Khartoum (2010, 2011) with the kind
	assistance of MM. Bakheet Abdulkerim and Zakaria Abdulkerim. The research was supported by the Llacan
	(UMR 8135), a joint research unit of the CNRS and Inalco (France). I am especially grateful to the Department
	of Linguistics of the University of Khartoum for its warm welcome and help. 3 These two complementary variants are respectively suffixed to nouns ending in a short vowel vs. nouns ending
	in a long vowel or a consonant.

Table 3 : Case markers for phrases whose head is a proper name (and assimilated)

 3

		Absolute form	Nominative	Genitive	Accusative	Adverbial
	Sg. Pl.	Ø	-n / -lè 4	-ngè (H) 5	-na (L)	-(y)àa (H) -ngàá (H)	-lèe (H) -ngèer (H)

Table 4 : Deictic modifiers (and pronouns) 6

 4

			Nominative	Genitive	Accusative	Adverbial
	'near'	Sg. Pl.	-àní -àgí	kín.náà (L) kígí.níngè (H)	kín kígí	(ʔ)íngèr kígí.tí
	'far'	Sg. Pl.	-àná -àgá	wín.náà (L) wísí.níngè (H)	wín wísí	wísèr wísí.tí

Table 5 : Personal pronouns

 5

		Nominative	Genitive	Accusative	Adverbial
			(Associative)	Independent	Indices
	1S	màalé, màalè, (màá)	-ándà (L)	màá	-má/-mà	màárèe
	2S	ìllé, ìllè	-nûn (L)	làá	-lá/-là	làárèe
	3S	nàalé, (nàá)	-náà (L)	nìyáà	-nà	nìyáàrèe
	1Pd 1P[?]	cìngé cìyé	-náakú (H)	cìngáa cìyáa	-sìngà/-síngà	cìngáangèer cìyáangèer
	1Pp	cèesá	-násà (H)	cèsáa	-sàasà/-sáàsà	cèesáangèer
	2P 2P[?]	sìngé sèesá	-núkú (H)	sìngáa sèesáa	-sìngá/-síngá	sìngáangèer sèesáangèer
	3P	nìngé	-níngè (H)	nìngáa	-nìngá	nìngáangèer

Table 6 : Summary of function and case

 6 Complement of èɓì 'be, exist, live' and úngw ↓ à 'not be, be absent, not exist'

	head =	head =
	common nouns	proper names & al.

NOM

c.

In doing so I was appreciably inspired by an article of[START_REF] Kießling | The 'marked nominative' in Datooga[END_REF] on the marked nominative in Datooga.

These two complementary variants are respectively suffixed to nouns ending in a short vowel vs. nouns ending in a long vowel or a consonant.

Note that the plural markers of proper names do not refer to several individuals bearing the same name (see comment on (29) below) but to the group of people associated to a single individual ('associative plural'), e.g. Gìnáà-ngè 'Ginaa (man's name) and his mates/his friends/his family/his clan/etc.' (Nominative and Genitive) or, in Arabic, nas Ginaa.

Deictic pronouns, the Genitive forms of which have not been systematically registered, are very similar to the deictic modifiers.

In English and French however the experiencer is treated as a subject in these precise cases.

The plural c-ámbí 'we went' (71b-c) is preferred to the singular m-ámbí 'I went' as in (71a). Shouldn't it be the case also in (71a)? As mentioned before (see note 12 above) the possible variants of cè(n) 'also' are not well understood.

If the analysis is right, the topicalization of a partial interrogative is rather unexpected.

(68) ìngá áarìnnáa wèrʃì dúkùm (= (34) above) what? 3:FUTDO:APPL:PL knife blunt 'What will they do with the blunt knife?'

But other examples, involving both ditransitive and applicative verbs, are contradictory as to the actual possibility to duplicate the presumed topicalized noun phrase -even referring to an animate -with a personal pronoun in situ. On the other hand we lack examples of embedded contrastive topicalization (as in j. and k. above) for this type of argument.

m. Topicalized adverbial

Here again Sinyar may move some adjuncts with a likely pragmatic effect, although this does not appear clearly in the translation. Compare (69a) and (70a) with (69b) and (70b) respectively where adverbial phrases are marked as such in either case. Pronominal duplication seems to be excluded in such cases, even with animate nouns (proper names). ]-ADV 'I (lit. we) will go to the market with Kumula.' (or better Kumula, I will go to the market with (her)'?)

Here however the embedding construction of the contrastive topicalization may apply and, as shown in example (71), the extraposed proper name may appear in the nominative, in the accusative, or in the adverbial case. Despite some slight variations in these three sentences, 8 the three choices of case marking are clearly possible here.