8 Guthrie’s observations on these class 910 prefixes are also in line with my data from
Nata and Ikoma. The only other previous work on Ikoma or Nata of which I am aware is Mekacha
1985, which is an M.A. thesis from the University of Dar es Salaam entitled “Phonological processes affecting Ki-Nata vowels.” Mekacha’s work is primarily a
description of instances of vowel hiatus resolution and only briefly mentions matters related to vowel harmony. I disagree, however, with some of the basic facts which he
presents. He explicitly argues for only five vowels in the language, whereas I argue that there are seven in both Nata and Ikoma. Mekacha also concludes that vowel length is not
phonemic in Nata, but again I argue that Nata as well as Ikoma not only has seven vowels, but that it does have phonemic vowel length as well, as is described in §3.3
below. Mekacha’s analysis of vowel harmony is also quite different and much more
limited than the analysis which I adopt. Furthermore, since the prefix alternations which Guthrie 1971 presented are consistent with the basic claims I make here, I conclude that
Mekacha either missed the two additional vowel phonemes or that his data is from a 5- vowel dialect which is not representative of the Ikoma and Nata languages as a whole.
Though I do not attempt to make a direct or lengthy argument against Mekacha’s claims, I do discuss some of his analysis in more detail in §3.4 after the presentation of the seven-
vowel inventory which I am proposing.
1.3 Ikoma’s Neighbors
The Ikoma, Nata and Isenye peoples are only three of approximately twenty language varieties in the very diverse Mara Region. The Nilotic languages Luo and Datooga are
9 spoken in Mara indicated with dashed circles in the map below, but the majority of
languages in the region are Bantu. The map below shows the approximate language areas of around eighteen Bantu language varieties in Mara.
4 Map of Mara Region with language areas
Classifications of the Mara languages have been included in work by Guthrie 1971, Nurse and Philippson 1980: 42, 49, and Nurse 1999. The languages split into two
main groups, which Guthrie classified as the E.20 “Haya-Jita Group” and the E.40 “Ragoli-Kuria Group.” The two E20 languages in the region Jita and Kwaya are
indicated with circles around the language name. All other languages are E40 languages. JE20
languages Nilotic
Nilotic
10 Ikoma with Nata is classified as E.45, within the E.40 group, which Guthrie organized
as shown in 5 below. 5
Guthrie’s E.40 Ragoli-Kuria Group E.41 Log l Ragoli
E.42 G s Kisii E.43 Kor a
E.44 Zanak E.45 Nata Ikoma
E.46 S nj Sonyo
Maho’s 2003 updated list moves all of the languages above, except for S nj , to JE40, now called the “Logooli-Kuria Group” and expanded to include more Mara languages
such as Ngoreme, Ikizu, Kabwa, and Simbiti. S nj properly called Temi is still classified as E40, which is now known as the “Temi Group.”
7
Note, however, that Nurse 1999, in his evaluation of the evidence for and accuracy of the classification of Great
Lakes Bantu languages, notes that there is still much work to be done before we can know for sure whether or not classifications such as Guthrie’s are simply geographic or if
they are genetic as well. Aside from Ikoma’s close relationship with Nata and Isenye, the next closest
languages in the region in terms of both linguistic similarity and geographical proximity are Ngoreme, Zanaki and Ikizu, as well as Kuria and Simbiti. Throughout this paper, I
occasionally refer to relevant data from these other languages, especially Zanaki and Kuria, in order to demonstrate Ikoma’s distinctiveness, or else its uniformity, within its
7
It is also interesting to note that there are possible historical connections between Ikoma and the Temi language on the eastern side of the Serengeti Park. Shetler 2003 mentions this connection, noting that
many local oral traditions claim that the Ikoma and Temi came from a single group on the eastern side of the Serengeti Plain and that the Ikoma broke off and traveled west across the Serengeti Plain toward the
present-day Mara Region. That group later was further divided into the present-day Ikoma, Nata, Isenye and Ngoreme tribes. Shetler notes that there are, however, discrepancies between this view and other
historical and linguistic evidence which suggests that the Ikoma and the other South Mara groups all came together to Mara from the Great Lakes area in the west.
11 geographical and to an unknown extent genetic context. See especially §7.3 in which I
give more details about some of the vowel harmony differences between these languages and also discuss some possible histories of these language groups and how they might
have influenced the present state of Ikoma’s vowel system.
1.4 Theoretical and typological background
