Ebook: A Grammar of Tommo So. Dogon Language Family Mali

UCLA, 2011. - 574 p.The Dogon language family is made up of around 20 languages, and it is currently thought to constitute its own branch of the Niger-Congo phylum (Blench XXX). The languages are spoken on the plains and mountains in the eastern part of Mali’s Région de Mopti, with small crossover into Burkina Faso. The internal classification of the language family is not yet clear, for there are not yet enough detailed grammars of the constituent languages; the Dogon Language Project, under whose auspices I have prepared this grammar, aims to fill this gap.
Tommo So /tɔmmɔ sɔɔ/ is a Central Dogon language spoken on the plateau between Douentza and Bandiagara by an estimated 40,000-60,000 people (Hochstedtler et al. 2007). The name itself is made up of the name of the ethnic group Tommo /tɔmmɔ/ and the word for language /sɔɔ/. The communes of Ningari /niŋari/, Mory /mori/, Tédié /teeʥe/, Dè /dɛ/, Ondogu /óndógú/, Kani Goguna /kànì gógúná/ and Kéndié /kèɲʥé/ constitute the heart of Tommo territory. Each of these communes have a market whose lingua franca is Tommo So. Other nearby languages include Bɔndu-Sɔ (made up of Najamba and Kindige) to the northwest, Nanga and Jamsay to the east, and Dulɔ-Sɔ to the west. Donno So, Dogulu Dom…. Tommo So’s closest relative is Donno So, spoken in and around the major market town of Bandiagara. In fact, until recently, Tommo So has not been listed as a separate language in Ethnologue, simply due to the fact that Donno So was documented earlier by Catholic missionaries (CITE). While the two languages are mutually intelligible, particularly those dialects of Tommo So closest to Bandiagara (e.g. Kani Gogouna), the data I have seen suggest that Donno So is an intermediate step between two poles formed by Tommo So and Sangha So (Toro So). Furthermore, Tommo So is a culturally important language to the Dogon people, seen as one of the main or original varieties of spoken Dogon, and many Dogon songs are in Tommo So regardless of the language of the village where they are sung (Hochstedtler et al. 2007).