Informants: Gabriel Lociyo, Hillary Lokwang, and Paul Opuwa
Elsewhere published:
Comments:
• Ik is a tone language. Some linguists posit two contrastive tones, while others posit three. The tone marked in this wordlist is phonetic. IPA level and contour tones (à, ā, á, ǎ, â, a᷄, a᷅, a᷈) have been used, as well as several non-IPA diacritics (a᷆, a᷇, a᷉). The tone markings are intended to mirror the rise and fall of phonetic pitch as represented by Speech Analyzer software. In some of the longer wordlist items, downstep or downdrift appears to be operative. In these cases, the tone diacritics are meant to reflect actual phonetic pitch and not phonemic tone. • Ik has been claimed to have an ATR contrast in vowels and vowel harmony. Given this assumption, it is not hard to posit +ATR and –ATR vowels in the data. But without this assumption, the situation becomes much less certain. The vocal quality of some words is clearly of a different timbre than of others, but occasionally both types of vowels seem to show up in the same word, with no discernible pattern. Vowel quality also varies with speakers and with the speed of articulation. It is possible that Ik is being unevenly influenced by neighboring languages (Karamojong, Toposa, Turkana) that have well-defined ATR vowel systems. In any case, an attempt has been made to transcribe the vowels in all their variety. • Ik has a number of glottalized consonants like ejectives and implosives. The implosives are not strong and at times are very difficult to distinguish from their plosive counterparts. Moreover, implosivity seems to vary from speaker to speaker. The velar /k’/ and post-velar /q’/ ejectives appear to have several interesting variants, including voiced and voiceless implosives, glottal stops, and possibly the glottalization of surrounding vowels. The status of this apparent free variation is far from well-understood. • Ik also exhibits word-final voiceless vowels. These vowels are thought to be voiced underlyingly and are here represented as full vowels with a circle underneath (ḁ, e̥, i̥, o̥, u̥). The underlying voiced vowels seem to have aspiration or a shortened vowel (ə) as additional variants. Voiced plosives and implosives that precede these voiceless vowels are devocalized. For the voiceless implosives, ex-IPA symbols have been utilized (ƥ, ƭ, ƈ, ƙ, ʠ) in place of the IPA symbols (ɓ̥, ɗ̥, ʄ̥, ɠ̥, ʛ̥). Auditorily, these pre-voiceless-vowel plosives and implosives often sound voiced. Upon close examination though, it becomes clear that the voicing ceases just before the articulator reaches the place of articulation. That is, toward the end of the pronunciation of the preceding voiced vowel, the active articulator begins moving toward the passive articulator, but by the time it arrives, the vocal chords have stopped vibrating. One might say that these segments are 40% voiced and 60% voiceless. • Following the convention of other linguists, morphemes in some compound nouns have been separated out by a hyphen. • The Ik numbers (#1590-1622) have been transcribed using only IPA level tones to increase their usefulness for another documentary project. • As with the transcription of any difficult sound system, this wordlist represents a layered series of tentative hypotheses that remain open to correction and improvement. In order to preserve the rawness of the data, not all transcriptional inconsistencies have been weeded out. • Approximately 12% of the words in the list are cognates with English, Karamojong, and Swahili. Ik’s placement in the Nilo-Saharan language family is still controversial. It is hoped that this wordlist can contribute insights into this problem.
