The Morphosyntactic Structure of the Zaghawa language in Sudan

Abstract

The present study is a descriptive research on one of the famous, Nilo- Saharan, Saharan languages spoken in western Sudan specifically in the Darfur region- Zaghawa. The study limits itself to the area of morphology studying all the morphological features associated with all the category of words found in the language. It also investigates the basic sentence structure in the language with regard to simple and complex sentence structures. The data was collected from native speakers of the Zaghawa living in Khartoum. The researcher supported this information with published sources. A descriptive method was used in analyzing the data of the study. The study aims at fulfilling basic objectives; analyzing the morphological structure of the different parts of speech found in the language. Distinguishing four verb classes, which in the previous linguistic research of the language were distinguished as only three classes. The study also indirectly aims at showing the differences between the Wegi dialect and the Kube dialect, i.e one of the dialects of Zaghawa spoken in other areas of Africa, during the process of analyzing the data for this study. The present study and other descriptive studies i.e. phonology, morphology, dialectology and orthography, will help in designing an orthographic system for the language which enables the Zaghawa people to write their language and hence document their literature which reflects their culture. The researcher managed to reach several findings that fulfill the above mentioned objectives.