Moro language

Moro is a Kordofanian language spoken in the Nuba Mountains of South Kordofan, Sudan. It is part of the Western group of West Central Heiban Kordofonian languages and belongs to the Niger-Congo phylum. In 1982 there were an estimated 30,000 Moro-speakers. This was before the second Sudan civil war and therefore the recent number of speakers might differ. There can be noted an influence of Arabic and it is suspected that today approximately a fourth of all Moro vocabulary has a relation or an origin in the Arabic language.

Phonology

There are different intonations in the Moro language. Usually the vowels "e", "a" and "o" have a lower tone, while the vowels "i", "u" and "ʌ" have a higher tone. The vowel "ə" is a Schwa vowel and therefore neutral.
One can find vowel harmony, palatalization of dental stops, resistance to deletion in vowel hiatus resolution and imposition of a partially replaceable tone patterns within the language. However it is important to note that the latter two are unique to the causative in Moro.

Segment Inventory

Moro has a seven vowel inventory, schematized in the table below. can be epenthetic or a reduced version of the peripheral vowels /i e o u/; it also appears in roots with no obvious source of reduction. The behaviour of the schwa in Moro vowel harmony has been taken as a reason to posit two vowels in Moro - a higher one that raises vowels, and a lower one that does not.
In addition, light diphthongs such as , , , and are also attested. Light diphthongs count as a single tone-bearing unit. Vowel length is not contrastive, but lengthening is often observed in open penultimate or root-initial syllable.
The consonantal inventory of Moro is given below.

	Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar
Stop	p b	t̪ d̪	t d			k g
Affricate					tʃ dʒ
Fricative	f v	ð	s
Nasal	m		n		ɲ	ŋ
Trill			r
Flap			ɾ	ɽ
Lateral			l
Glide		w			j

Consonants can be geminated, with the exception of . Voiced stops and /v/ are realized as voiceless when geminate.

Vowel Harmony

Moro has a 'one-step' height vowel harmony system, in which the lower vowels /e a o/ of affixes are raised to their high counterparts if the root vowel is high. In addition to root- or stem-controlled harmony, Moro also exhibits a dominant-recessive harmony pattern in which certain extension suffixes trigger raising of preceding prefixes and root vowels, and a following suffix; these harmony-triggering suffixes are the causative -i, applicative -ət̪, and passive -ən.

Schwa in Moro Vowel Harmony

Some Moro roots containing trigger vowel harmony, while others do not; similarly, while the applicative and passive suffix both contain and trigger vowel harmony, Moro exhibits other suffixes containing , such as the antipassive -əđ, which do not. Acoustic studies confirm that the schwas which trigger vowel harmony in Moro show a significantly lower F1 formant than those which do not, and that schwas in raised vowel contexts in Moro also exhibit significantly lower F1 formants than those in non-raised contexts. As such, some scholars argue that Moro includes two schwa vowels: a high schwa, which triggers vowel harmony, and a low schwa, which does not.

Tone

Grammar

Nouns and Noun Phrases

Noun Classes

Moro can be categorized into 18 noun classes: 8 major, 5 minor and 5 unpaired. Most of these classes have their individual class prefix, singular prefix and concord as well as plural prefix and concord.

Semantic ID	Class prefix	Singular prefix	Singular concord	Plural prefix	Plural concord
people	g/l	?/w	G	L	L
animals/body parts	l/ŋ	L	L	Ñ	Ñ
trees	đ/g	Đ	Đ	W	G
common things	g/n	?	Đ	N	N
Things of shapes	l/ŋ	l/ɽ/ɽr	l/ɽ/ɽr	Ŋ	Ŋ
Long things	đ/r	Đ	Đ	R	R
/	g/n	Đ	Đ	?	G
Large and harmful things	đ/j	Đ	Đ	y	y
Domestic/small animals	ŋ/ŋ	Ŋ-	Ŋ-	Ñ	Ñ
Liquids and abstract nouns	ŋ	Ŋ-	Ŋ-
Emotions	đ	đ	Đ
Cow, goat, irregular nouns	r/j		r		Y
Foreign words	j/j		Y		y

There are some identified rules for the construction of the plural according to its noun class:

If the noun starts with either "e, i, o" or "u" and the following is a "đ", those to letters in the plural will form "nđ-"
If the noun starts with either "e, i, o" or "u" and the following is a "r" or "ɽ", in the plural the vowel will be discarded
If the noun starts with "ɽ, ɽr" or "lɽr", the first "ɽ" is dropped and the vowel that is inserted in the plural will most likely be "ə"
Adjectives

Moro language has many compound adjectives, that have their origin in the same root. One can find comparative adjectives as well as superlatives however, these are normally translated in "very, very".
Compound adjectives are formed with a suffix as following:
To construct the comparative of a simple adjective, one must change the last vowel of the adjective into "-ə -" and then add the suffix "-tu":
To form the comparative of compound adjectives one must first form the comparative of the first part of the adjective and then add the suffix:
To construct the superlative there are several opportunities:

Repeat one or two syllables of the word
: Example: "geđe" turns into "geđeđe"
: Example: "gapa" turns into "gapapeđ"
Double a consonant or vowel
: Example: "gafalo" turns into "gaffalo"
Pronouns and agreement

There are eight Subject pronouns in Moro but each in two different variations. The exact meaning of these variations have not yet been determined.

	Variation 1	Variation 2
I	ñi	Igënəñi
You	ŋa	Aganəŋa
He/she/it	ŋu	Gënəŋu
We	Ləŋ	Lëləŋ
We	Nëndr/lëndr	Nëndr
We	Nanda/landa	ñagananda
You	ñaŋ	ñaganəñaŋ
They	ŋulu	lënəŋulu

Each subject pronoun has its own agreement prefix. These prefixes can vary in accordance to the tense or the aspect of the verb.
In the present and past tense they are attached to the particle "ga" and used as following:

I	i-	Ñi igatu	I was drinking
You	a-	Ŋa agatu	You were drinking
He/she/it	/	Ŋu gatu	He was drinking
We	La-/lə-	Ləŋ lagatu	We were drinking
We	La-/lə-	Nëndr lagatr	We were drinking
We	ña-	Nanda ñagatu	We were drinking
You	ña-	ñan ñagatu	You were drinking
They	/	Ŋulu latu	They were drinking

The morphophonology changes when the suffix "-r" is added to the end of a verb:

A verb ending in either "o" or "u" in the past tense will have its vowel replaced by "-r"
A verb ending in either "e", "a" or "i" will add "-r" to its end

For the future tense the subject prefixes that are mentioned above will are added to the auxiliary of the future verb. The main verb of the future tense has different subject prefixes.
There have been identified following rules:

The vowel of the subject prefix is dropped if a verb starts with a vowel
The prefixes for "we dual" and "we inclusive" become "aɽ-" if the verb starts with a "r-" or "ɽ-"
Compound verbs are handled differently

The subject prefix of the future tense is exemplified in the following using the auxiliary "-gidi" and the verb "tu" :

	Future tense SP	Example	Translation
I	ñi-/ ñe-	Igiđi ñiti	I will drink
You	ŋa-	Agiđi nati	You will drink
He/she/it	Aŋə-	Giđi aŋəti	He will drink
We	Alə-	Lagiđi aləti	We will drink
We	Alə + r-	Lagiđr alətr	We will drink
We	ña-	ñagiđi ñati	We will drink
You	ña-	ñagiđi ñati	You will drink
They	Alə-	Liđi aləti	They will drink

Moro also has a set of eight object pronouns for each tense: In case of the past tense, the object infix will be added to the end of the verb, while in case of the present tense it is inserted between the tense marker "ga" and the verb stem.

	OP Present	OP Past	OP Future
I	Iña	ñe/ ñ i	ñə
You	ŋa	Aŋa	ŋa
He/she/it	Ma	Ma	Ma
We	Ndə	Nde	Ndə
We	Ndə	Ndr	Ndə
We	Ndə	Nde	Ndə
You	Ndə	Nde	Ndə
They	lə	Lo	lə

Also with object pronouns there are some morphophonemic changes:

Verbs ending in "u" will turn their vowel into "i"
Verbs ending in "o" or "e" will turn their vowel into "ə"
Verbs ending in "a" will also drop their vowel in case of "aŋa"

In case of the past tense, the object infix will be added to the end of the verb, while in case of the present tense it is inserted between the tense marker "ga" and the verb stem:
Again, compound verbs are handled slightly differently. While in the present and future tense they can take the same agreements as simple verbs, in the past tense the object pronoun is inserted before the "-alo" or "-ano".