DOGON LANGUAGES
1. General Introduction
INTRODUCTION
The languages
spoken on the Dogon Plateau and adjacent areas are generally known to outsiders
as ‘Dogon’, but this term is
not used by individual groups. For a long time, research on the Dogon was
dominated by the work of Marcel Griaule and his successors, which focused on a
very specific group, the Dogon of Sangha. Bertho published short comparative
wordlists of some Dogon lects but these made little impression. Calame-Griaule
(1956) published a dialect map of Dogon, the relationship between the named
communities and the Tr-S represented in her
dictionary remained unclear in the absence of data. Until recently, Dogon was
treated in reference books as if it were a single language (e.g. Bendor-Samuel et al. 1989), but Hochstetler et al. (2004) estimated there are no less
than 17 languages under the Dogon rubric and that the family is highly
internally divided.
The classification
of the Dogon languages is a matter of considerable dispute. They have always
been considered part of Niger-Congo, but their place in that family is difficult
to determine. Hochstetler et al.
(2004) review the various theories that have been advanced, which are
essentially either Gur, Mande or an independent branch. Conventional wisdom now
treat Dogon as its own branch of Niger-Congo (Williamson & Blench 2000).
Another major
question is the place of Dogon within Niger-Congo. Dogon is both lexically and
structurally very different from most other families. It lacks the noun-classes
usually regarded as typical of Niger-Congo and has a word order (SOV) that resembles
Mande and Ịjọ, but not the other
branches. The system of verbal inflections, resembling French is quite unlike
any surrounding languages. As a consequence, the ancestor of Dogon is likely to
have diverged very early, although the present-day languages probably reflect
an origin some 3-4000 years ago. Dogon languages
are territorially coherent, suggesting that, despite local migration histories,
the Dogon have been in this area of
One language in the
Dogon-speaking area is apparently not Dogon but which is difficult to classify,
Baŋgi me. This language
contains some Niger-Congo roots but is lexically very remote from all other
languages in
In terms of data
collection, the surveys in February and March 2005 focused strongly on;
a) collecting basic lexical data on so far undescribed
varieties of Dogon (and other languages of the Dogon Plateau)
b) collecting terminology of cultural and
historical significance, such names of crops, domestic animals, fauna and flora
and blacksmithing terms
The
results from historical linguistics are still being analysed, but preliminary
findings suggest some rather surpising results. For example, speakers of the
proto-Dogon language were already farmers, growing sorghum, millet and fonio,
keping cattle but not sheep and goats. They did not use hoes, but planting
sticks, and were experienced arboriculturalists. Further analysis will be
reported here as it becoems available.
Data collected in 2005 field surveys
Linguistic materials were collected on and preliminary
documents can be downloaded here;
Four languages,
Ana, Bunoge, Tebul Ure and Walo, are reported here for the first time. A
previously undocumented sign language was discovered among the Tebul people and
a video record of sample sentences and narratives in sign language, Tebul Ure
and French was made.
An introduction to
the status of endangered languages was published in Ogmios, for April
2005. A PDF version is available at;
1. Photos
|
Instrument |
Download |
|
Shaken gourd |
|
|
Whistle |
|
|
Cylindrical drum |
|
|
Small gourd drum |
|
|
Log gongs |
|
|
Kettle-drums |
|
|
Slit bell |
|
|
Slide
show |
|
|
|
|
2. Videos
References
Bendor-Samuel, J., E. J. Olsen, and A.
R. White, 1989. Dogon. In: Bendor-Samuel, J. (ed). The Niger-Congo
Languages—a classification
and description of
Bertho, J. 1953. La place des dialectes dogon de la falaise de Bandiagara parmi
les autres groupes linguistiques de la zone soudanaise. Bulletin de l’IFAN 15: 405-41.
Calame-Griaule, G. 1956. Les dialectes
Dogon.
Hochstetler, J. Lee, Durieux, J.A. & E.I.K.
Durieux-Boon 2004. Sociolinguistic Survey of
the Dogon Language Area. SIL International. Available at: http://www.sil.org/silesr/2004/silesr2004-004.pdf
Williamson, Kay
& R.M. Blench 2000. Niger-Congo. In: African
languages: an introduction. B. Heine & D. Nurse eds. 11-42.
