@ -398,12 +398,34 @@ The trill thus fuses with certain vowels that behave like theme vowels for creat
A late addition to Ama’s pluractional portfolio is its unique dual suffix *-ɛ̄n*.[^58] The older form of the Ama dual suffix is *-ɪn,*[^59] which has been noted to resemble reciprocal suffixes in other Eastern Sudanic languages, such as Kordofan Nubian *-in*, Daju *-din*, Temein *-ɛ*, and also Ik *-in* of the Kuliak group.[^60] In Ama, its function has evolved to dual reciprocal and other dual participant readings, so for example *wʊ̀s-ɛ̄n* “greet (du.)” can refer to when two people greeted each other, or someone greeted two people, or two people greeted someone.[^61] The dual suffix is regularly used in Ama folktales to link two primary characters.[^62] Although such dual participant marking is extremely rare globally, it becomes possible in Nyima languages in particular where the incremental-distributive pluractional leaves a paradigmatic gap for dual subjects, as still seen in Afitti in **table 13** above, which Ama has filled in.
[^58]:
[^59]:
[^60]:
[^61]:
[^62]:
[^58]: Norton, “Number in Ama Verbs,” §3.
[^59]: Stevenson, Rottland & Jakobi, “The Verb in Nyimang and Dinik,” p. 28.
[^60]: Norton, “The Ama Dual Suffix," p. 121.
[^61]: Ibid., p. 120.
[^62]: Norton, “Number in Ama Verbs,” pp. 84, 87.
# Conclusion: Ama as a Matured North Eastern Sudanic Language
Ama verbs show a number of connections to Nubian and other Eastern Sudanic languages in their clause-final syntax, CVC root shape, and certain affixes. However, these connections are more in form than meaning, as the semantics is highly innovative in such notable shifts as plural → pluractional → progressive and reciprocal → dual, and in the drive towards concretization that has moved the expression of both relative clauses and number out of noun phrases to after the verb. In addition, the movement of low-tone suffixes to the final suffix slot, while itself a formal development, has further advanced the morphologization of aspect, so that stem selection, affix selection, and affix order all vary with aspect in Ama verbs. Next to these considerable changes, Ama’s stable distributive pluractional stands out as indicative of a wider Eastern Sudanic verbal category.
An explanation for the innovations found in Ama will not be found in influence from other languages of Sudan, because several of its innovations are extremely rare (adjoined relative clauses, dual verbal number, tone-driven affix order alternation). Instead of an influx of new forms, we have unusual internal evolution of existing forms, implying relative isolation. Ama then exemplifies what both Dahl and Trudgill call “mature phenomena,”[^63] found in languages of isolated small communities where the language has time to evolve based on an abundance of specific shared information in a closed society of intimates. Languages spoken by isolated societies of intimates are more likely to conventionalize complex morphological paradigms, unusual categories, and unusual syntax (maturation), whereas larger, multilingual social networks encourage simpler grammars in the sense of smaller paradigms, and pragmatically well-motivated categories and syntax that are found widely in language (pidginization). Aforementioned verbal features in Ama of dual number, irregular allomorphy (in suppletive roots and in the use of a second distributive suffix), fusion (in affixes like passive and ventive that mark aspect as well), polyfunctionality (of the progressive suffix *-ar* for mirativity or long stem formation), and multiple exponence (of aspect by stem selection, affix selection, and affix order), plus the unusual syntax of adjoined relative clauses, all look like mature language phenomena.[^64]
[^63]: Dahl, *The Growth and Maintenance of Linguistic Complexity*; Trudgill, *Sociolinguistic Typology*.
[^64]: Maturity could also describe further properties of Ama verbs whose description is in preparation by the author, including further instances of allomorphy, fusion, polyfunctionality, and several kinds of tonal morphology.
Ama nominals, similarly, are known for their relatively rich case systems, but similar case paradigms are found in Nubian and other Northern East Sudanic languages, implying that the case system largely matured at an earlier stage and the resulting complexity is retained in all these languages. Thus, it is the verb system rather than the nominal system that provides evidence of maturation in the Nyima branch in particular.
The conclusion that Ama verbs (and post-verbal syntax) have matured as a result of Nyima’s isolated position, away from the river systems that hosted speakers of other languages in the Sudan region in the past, faces the possible difficulty that contacts have in fact been proposed between Nyima and other Nuba Mountain groups. Thus, it is proposed that the Niger-Congo Nuba Mountain group Heiban borrowed accusative marking and basic vocabulary from Nyima.[^65] Such contact would have put a brake on maturation in Nyima, because the use of proto-Nyima for inter-group communication between first-language Nyima users and second-language Heiban users would not have supported further growth in complexity.[^66] However, it is not realistic that such contacts lasted for a large proportion of Nyima history, but rather were fairly temporary periods punctuating Nyima’s longer isolation. Thus, the Heiban group has now developed separately in the eastern Nuba Mountains for something approaching two millennia (given the internal diversity of the ten Heiban languages found there) since its contact with Nyima.
[^65]: Norton, “Classifying the Non-Eastern-Sudanic Nuba Mountain Languages.”
[^66]: Stevenson, “A Survey of the Phonetics and Grammatical Structure of the Nuba Mountain Languages,” 41: p. 175, notes the similarity of Ama’s nominal plural *ŋi* to a similar plural clitic *ŋi* [sic] in Heiban, which here might be interpreted as a pidginization effect in which the universally well-motivated category of nominal plurality was renewed in Nyima during inter-group communication after the earlier loss of number affixes. However, Stevenson is unusually in error in this passage as the Heiban form is actually *-ŋa* as he himself documented (ibid, p. 28). Subsequent lowering to a in Heiban cannot be ruled out (he notes Heiban’s relative Talodi has *ɛ* here), but it is also quite possible that *ŋi* was sourced internally, as the high front vowel is also the common element in the plural pronouns *ə̀ŋí/ɲí/ə̀ní* 1pl/2pl/3pl).
Some time after the contact with Heiban, Rottland and Jakobi note the likelihood of contact of Kordofan Nubian with Ama and Afitti in the north-west Nuba Mountains before the arrival of Arabic as a *lingua franca* in the Nuba Mountains.[^67] Ama and Afitti are more lexically divergent than Kordofan Nubian and therefore were probably already separate communities when the Kordofan Nubians arrived. However, the innovation of dual marking on Ama verbs in the period after separation from Afitti still shows the hallmarks of maturation. It adds an extremely rare category, increases the occurrence of morphologically complex verbs by using a verbal marker in dual participant contexts that were not previously marked, and adds redundancy when agreeing with noun phrases containing two referents. This mature feature of Ama again suggests that any language contact with Kordofan Nubian occurred for only part of the time since Ama separated from Afitti.
[^67]: Rottland & Jakobi, “Loan Word Evidence from the Nuba Mountains.”
This period nevertheless also reveals one significant example of simplification in Ama verbs that supports the idea that language contact occurred. Afitti has pronominal subject markers on the verb, seen earlier in **table 13**, which are absent in Ama. The pronominal prefixes are not the same in form as personal pronoun words in Afitti (1sg *oi* but 1sg prefix *kə-*),[^68] therefore they are not incorporated versions of the current pronoun words, but rather predate them. Some of the Afitti pronoun words (1sg *oi,* 2sg *i*)[^69] are similar to Ama (1sg *àɪ̀,* 2sg *ī*) and must be retentions from proto-Nyima, hence the older pronominal prefixes must also be retentions in Afitti, but lost in Ama. Their loss in Ama is remarkable against the larger trend of growth in complexity of Ama verbs that we have examined in this paper. The predicted cause of this surprising reversal is pidginization under contact. That is, their loss is evidence that the Ama language was used for inter-group communication, presumably with the Kordofan Nubians, during which (and for which) Ama SOV sentences were simplified by dropping verbal subject marking. If Kordofan Nubians spoke Ama, then borrowing from Ama into Kordofan Nubian is also likely. In verbs, the obvious candidate for borrowing into Kordofan Nubian is the reciprocal suffix *-in*, as this is not attested elsewhere in Nubian.[^70] The following two-step scenario would then account for the facts: Ama was learned and used by Kordofan Nubians, during which Ama dropped verbal subject marking and its reciprocal suffix was borrowed into Kordofan Nubian; next, Ama returned to isolation in which the reciprocal suffix developed its dual function that is unique to Ama today.
[^68]: Stevenson, Rottland & Jakobi, “The Verb in Nyimang and Dinik,” pp. 34-38.
[^69]: Stevenson, “A Survey of the Phonetics and Grammatical Structure of the Nuba Mountain Languages,” 41: p. 177.
