The Reconstruction of Proto-Nilotic

FAIN: FA-11648-76

R.M.R. Hall
CUNY Research Foundation, Queens College (Flushing, NY 11367-1575)

The goal of this research is the reconstruction of Proto-Nilotic and the rigorous statement of the processes of sound change and innovation which will relate the actually occurring words and grammatical forms of the present day languages (there are some twenty of them) to the protolanguage and thus to one another. Nilotic languages are spoken in East Africa, specifically in Sudan and Kenya. This is an important study (1) because it will provide additional data for a theory of general linguistic change; 2) because the whole question of the inter-relationship of the Nilotic languages has been a vexed one and the choice of competing theories cannot be resolved on the basis of available data.