| Murle | |
|---|---|
| Spoken in | South Sudan, Ethiopia |
| Ethnicity | Murle people |
| Native speakers | 60,000 in South Sudan,[1] 470 in Ethiopia[2] (date missing) |
| Language family |
Nilo-Saharan?
|
| Writing system | Latin (in South Sudan) |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | mur |
Murle (also Ajibba, Beir, Merule, Mourle, Murele, Murule) is a Nilo-Saharan Eastern Sudanic language spoken by the Murle people, spoken in the southeast of South Sudan, near the Ethiopian border. A very small number of Murle live across the border in southwestern Ethiopia.
They speak the Murle language, which belongs to the Southwestern branch of the Surmic languages group, within the larger Nilo-Saharan family.
The basic word order for Murle clauses is VSO (verb–subject–object) (Arensen 1982). The morphology of the verb agrees with the person and number of the subject, and can also indicate that of the object.
Marking of number on nouns in Murle is complex, with no single suffix being generally productive. Some nouns are marked with a singulative suffix, some with a plural suffix, some with both, and a few with irregular stems for the each number. Arensen has proposed a set of semantically based categories (such as association with men, or with weather and seasons) to try to predict which suffixes will be used (1992, 1998). Payne has proposed analyzing some cases as examples of subtractive morphology (2006:44,45).
The New Testament has been translated into the Murle language.