4 morphological information as possible, since the language is virtually undescribed
elsewhere in the literature. In the remainder of this introductory chapter, I introduce the Ikoma people and
their language §1.1, previous descriptions of Ikoma §1.2 and Ikoma’s neighbors §1.3. I then review some issues in the typology of African vowel systems in order to
help us to evaluate Ikoma’s vowel harmony in terms of typological expectations §1.4 and then give a preview of the major results of the thesis §1.5. I end the chapter with a
description of the methodology used for vowel formant analysis §1.6 and an overview of the remainder of the thesis §1.7.
1.1 The Ikoma people and their language
Ikoma, classified as Bantu JE45 Maho 2003, is a language of the Serengeti District of the Mara Region of Tanzania. In Ikoma, the name of the language is Egiik ma
pronounced [e íik ma], and the Ikoma people are known as the Abiik ma pronounced [a íik ma], formed with the class 7 and class 2 prefixes, respectively. The language is
spoken in several villages bordering the Serengeti National Park. The cultural center of the language is widely considered to be the village of Robanda, but a number of other
villages e.g. Bwitengi, Park Nyigoti, and Fort Ikoma are inhabited nearly entirely of Ikoma speakers as well Smith et al. 2008. Other villages have combinations of Ikoma
and Nata speakers, such as Burunga and Nyichoka. Many Ikoma also live in Mugumu, the capital of the Serengeti District. A map of the language area is shown in 1 below.
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Many thanks to the Survey Department of SIL’s Uganda-Tanzania Branch for providing me with these maps.
5 1
Map of Ikoma, Nata and Isenye language areas
In the Ethnologue, Ikoma is listed with the related language varieties Nata and Isenye. The three varieties together are estimated to be spoken by 35,000 people Lewis
2009. Muzale and Rugemalira 2008 similarly estimate 34,000 speakers in total, which are broken down as follows: 19,000 Ikoma, 7,000 Nata and 8,000 Isenye. The
approximate demarcations of the Ikoma, Nata and Isenye languages areas are shown in the map above.
The Ikoma, Nata and Isenye peoples recognize a close historical relationship with one another, and there are still close ties between these groups, both culturally and
linguistically Hill et al. 2007; Smith et al. 2008; Shetler 2003. Nata and Ikoma are linguistically more similar to one another than to Isenye. Preliminary linguistic research
concerning these differences was carried out in 2008 during an SIL dialect survey, of which I was a part Smith et al. 2008. Our findings were that Ikoma and Nata share the
same consonant inventory and seven-vowel system, and only minor differences in the
6 vowel harmony processes were observed. The most notable difference is what appears to
be an iterative application of vowel harmony in Nata prefixes, whereas in Ikoma only prefixes directly adjacent to the root alternate. Isenye, on the other hand, shows notable
differences in the vowel system, but more work is needed before confidently positing the language’s vowel inventory or the type of vowel harmony processes at work.
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Ikoma and Nata are also more similar in terms of tense and aspect marking and phrase-level phenomena, whereas Isenye generally showed more differences. There is,
nonetheless, a high degree of mutual intelligibility between all three varieties. An SIL survey report Hill et al. 2007 notes the results of a lexicostatistical comparison between
a number of languages in the Mara Region. Concerning the three language varieties in question, the percentages of lexical similarity based on an elicited wordlist are shown in
2 below. 2
Lexical Similarity
Ikoma
89 Nata
85 88
Isenye
As the table shows, Nata has a slightly higher degree of lexical similarity to both Ikoma 89 and Isenye 88 than Ikoma does to Isenye 85, but these percentage
differences are minimal. This thesis intends to describe the Ikoma language variety. Though Nata
especially seems to agree with Ikoma to a large degree, I do not attempt to deal fully with Nata here, and few references to Isenye are made.
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There are at least seven vowels on the surface in Isenye. Vowel alternations appear to be somewhat irregular, with seemingly different prefix harmony patterns in different noun classes.
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1.2 Previous descriptions of Ikoma and Nata
