Case inflection and nominal head marking in Dinka

Abstract

Dinka, a largely monosyllabic Western Nilotic language, exhibits two types of case inflection. Firstly, there are case forms that indicate the grammatical relation of a noun phrase to the verb. These cases include the absolutive, which is morphologically unmarked, the oblique, and two locatives. The oblique is the case of, among others, a postverbal subject, while an object and a preverbal subject have the absolutive case. Secondly, there are case forms that indicate the relation between the head and the modifier in a complex noun phrase. A modifier follows the head, and Dinka is head-marking in the sense that a noun takes a special (case ) form when modified by, for instance, a demonstrative, a possessor noun phrase or a relative clause, a form that I label construct state. There are two different construct states, and the choice between them depends on the type of the modifier. Moreover, a possessor noun phrase has the oblique case. Case inflection is almost exclusively root-internal, i.e. non-linear, the inflections being expressed by alternations in vowel length, vowel quality, tone, and the root-final consonant. The same means are used in number inflection. Nevertheless, nouns have a clearly stratified morphology.