Ekoka !Kung
| Ekoka !Kung | |
|---|---|
| Kung-Ekoka | |
| Western !Xuun North-Central Ju |
|
| Native to | South Africa, Namibia, Angola |
| Dialects |
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | kung1261 |
Western !Xuun (North-Central Ju) or Ekoka !Kung (Ekoka !Xuun, Ekoka-!Xû, Kung-Ekoka) is a variety of the !Kung dialect cluster, spoken originally in the area of the central Namibian–Angolan border, west of the Okavango River, but since the Angolan civil war also in South Africa.
Heine & Honken (2010) place Ekoka in the Northern–Western branch of ǃXuun (ǃKung), where Ekoka is equivalent to the Western branch. They distinguish three varieties:
Sands et al. place it in its own branch, which they call North-Central Ju:
Ekoka ǃKung has a similar sound system to Juǀʼhoansi. However, the series of palatal clicks, [ǂ] etc, have a fricated lateral release (see fricated alveolar clicks). These are provisionally transcribed [ǃ͡s], etc., and behave similarly to palatal (rather than alveolar) clicks in terms of not following the back-vowel constraint.
In addition to the twelve 'accompaniments' of clicks in Juǀʼhoansi, Ekoka has preglottalized nasal clicks, such as /ʔᵑǃ/. These are not common cross-linguistically, but are also found in Taa and ǂHoan.
König & Heine (2001) report the following inventory, with the clicks as analyzed by Miller (2011). One of the click series, called 'fortis' in König & Heine, is only attested at two places of articulation; it is not clear which this corresponds to in the table below. There are also prenasalized /mb, nd, ŋɡ/ in Bantu loans.
More recently, Heine & König find that Ekoka !Kung also has a series of preglottalized nasal consonants, including preglottalized nasal clicks:
Ekoka has a full set of modal and murmured (breathy) vowels, as well as pharyngealized back vowels, and a reduced set of modal, murmured, and pharyngealized nasal vowels:
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