| Daatsʼiin | |
|---|---|
| Native to | Ethiopia |
| Region | Benishangul-Gumuz Region |
| Ethnicity | Daats'iin |
Native speakers | 300-1000 (2015)[1] |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | dtn |
| Glottolog | daat1234 |
Daatsʼiin is aB'aga language of westernEthiopia. There are two communities of speakers in western Ethiopia, one inMahadid, on the northeast border ofAlitash National Park, and one inInashemsh on theSudan border, south of the park where theRahad River crosses from Ethiopia into Sudan.[2]
Daatsʼiin was first reported in 2013 and described by Colleen Ahland in 2014. Ahland has described it further in 2016. A comparative word list of Daatsʼiin, Northern Gumuz, and Southern Gumuz is available in Ahland & Kelly (2014).[3]
Of the other B'aga languages, Daatsʼíin has the greatest lexical similarity to Southern Gumuz, but the two groups communicate inArabic orAmharic.[4]
The consonant inventory of Daatsʼíin:[5]
| Labial | Alveolar | Postalveolar / palatal | Velar | Glottal / pharyngeal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stops | voiceless | p | t | c | k | ʔ |
| voiced | b | d | ɟ | g | ||
| ejective | pʼ | t' | cʼ | kʼ | ||
| implosive | ɓ | ɗ | ||||
| Affricates | voiceless | ts | tʃ | |||
| ejective | tsʼ | tʃʼ | ||||
| Fricatives | voiceless | f | s | ʃ | h | |
| voiced | v | z | (ʒ) | (ʕ) | ||
| Nasals | m | n | ŋ | |||
| Approximants | w | l | j | |||
| Rhotic | r | |||||
The palatal stops/c/,/ɟ/,/cʼ/ can be also realized aspalatalized velar stops[kʲ],[gʲ],[kʲʼ] infree variation.
[v] and[ʒ] are rare, both recorded only from one word so far. The former appears to be phonemic, but the latter might be anallophone of/z/.
Thevoiced pharyngeal fricative[ʕ] only occurs when following/l/ or/r/ and preceding/a/, and it can be analyzed as an allophone of the glottal stop/ʔ/.
Daatsʼíin has eight vowel phonemes:[6]
| front | central | back | diphthong | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| close | i(ː) | ɨ | u(ː) | u ~ wɨ |
| mid | e(ː) | ə | o(ː) | |
| open | a(ː) |
Ahland analyzes[i],[e],[a],[o],[u] as phonemicallylong, and[ɨ],[wɨ],[ə] as phonemically short/i/,/u/,/a/ respectively.
Daatsʼíin is also atonal language: vowels can bear high and low tone. Some examples ofdownstep occur.
Daatsʼíin has several grammatical differences from other Gumuz languages. Verbs inflect foraspect (perfective–imperfective) rather than for tense (future–non-future). Verbs arepolysynthetic in all languages, but the order of the morphemes differs in Daatsʼiin, and some morphemes that occur in one language do not occur in the other(s).[4] "The major constituent order in Daatsʼíin clauses tend to be AVO/SV."[7]
