Dogon languages back to home page
Much fuller information, including geography, flora-fauna, images, and documentary videos, is available on the project website www.dogonlanguages.org.
Dogon is a family of languages that occur in a single geographical block centered on the Bandiagara (or Dogon) plateau in east central Mali. On the north, east, and west, the plateau is bounded by steep cliffs or rocky slopes that lead down to the sandy plains. The plains stretch out for long distances to the north, (south-)east, and west. In the south, the plateau is less sharply separated from plains.
Many Dogon villages are (or were until recently) located on the rocky slopes or atop the cliffs or slopes at the edge of the plateau. This location provided safety, while permitting daily access to cultivated fields at the base. North of the main plateau, additional Dogon villages were located on (the slopes of) inselbergs near the cities of Douentza and Boni. Over the last hundred years, many Dogon have relocated to villages out in the sandy plains, or have built new dwellings at the base of the slopes in the shadows of the older villages.
There are some 80 locally named varieties that linguists tend to group into about twenty languages, though further study may break up some of the “languages.” An approximate genetic classification follows (Glottocodes and ISO-639-3 codes from the Glottolog site viewed Oct 2017). Indented varieties are here treated (in some cases provisionally) as dialects of the unindented languages above them. I am treating Donno So as a language distinct from Tommo So (as does Ethnologue, but not Glottolog).
Glottocode ISO-639-3
western Dogon
languages along the western cliffs/slopes of the main plateau
Najamba-Kindige (or Bondu group) bond1248 dbu
Najamba nadj1238
Kindige kind1242
Bondu (in narrow sense)
Tiranige tira1258 tde
Dogul Dom dogu1235 dbg
Bunoge buno1241 dgb
Mombo (or Kolu) momb1254 dmb
Ampari ampa1238 aqd
Penange pena1270 —
eastern offshoot (separated from main group by intervening Tommo So)
Yanda Dom yand1257 dym
Ana Tinga anat1248
Tebul Ure tebu1239 dtu
eastern Dogon
Toro Tegu toro1253 dtt
Ben Tey
Bankan Tey bank1259 dbw
Nanga nang1261 nzz
Jamsay jams1239 djm
mainstream Jamsay
Perge Tegu perg1234
Gourou (~ Guru) guru1265
Tommo So donn1238 dto
Donno So (=Tommo So) dds
Kamma So
Toro So group toro1252 dts
Yorno So yorn1234
Ibi So ibis1234
Sangha So sang1342
(and others)
southeastern (Tengou/Togo) group tene1248 dtk
Togo Kan togo1254
Gimri Kan guim1240
Woru Kan (~ Wolu Kan) woru1234
Tene Kan tenu1234
Tengou Kan teng1266
Tomo Kan tomo1243 dtm
Our project was the first to produce professional reference grammars including tonal markings and tonologies, which are very important in Dogon grammar. The most important works by junior project members are the Tommo So grammar by Laura E. McPherson (Mouton Grammar Library), and (hopefully) grammars to appear in the near future by Vadim Dyachkov on Tomo Kan and Steve Moran on Sangha So. My publications on Dogon languages are the following. Abbreviation: LDH = Language Description Heritage library (online, Max Planck Gesellschaft) as official publisher (pdf’s downloadable), in most cases with backup copies at Deep Blue (University of Michigan libraries).
Funding for the fieldwork was initially from National Endowment for the Humanities (focusing on Jamsay), then as a group project working on the overall language family from National Science Foundation, Documenting Endangered Languages program.
books
@2017a A grammar of Najamba (Dogon, Mali). Language Description Heritage Library (MPI). Electronic publication.
http://ldh.clld.org/2017/02/01/escidoc2397771/
http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/139022
DOI: 10.17617/2.2397771
@2017b A grammar of Yanda Dom (Dogon, Mali). Language Description Heritage Library (MPI). Electronic publication.
http://ldh.clld.org/2017/02/01/escidoc2399122/
http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/139020
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17617/2.2399122
@2017c A grammar of Bunoge (Dogon, Mali). Language Description Heritage Library (MPI). Electronic publication.
http://ldh.clld.org/2017/03/01/escidoc2417511/
http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/139023
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17617/2.2417511
@2017d A grammar of Yorno So (Toro So subgroup of Dogon, Mali). Language Description Heritage Library (MPI). Electronic publication.
http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/139021
(ldh url to be added)
DOI: 10.17617/2.2326768
@2016a A grammar of Dogul Dom (Dogon language family, Mali). Language Description Heritage Library (MPI). Electronic publication.
http://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-002B-16CC-2
http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/123061
DOI: 10.17617/2.2326691
@2016b A grammar of Donno So or Kamma So (Dogon language family, Mali). Language Description Heritage Library (MPI). Electronic publication.
http://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-002B-1745-A
(best to use the following url until a glitch is fixed)
http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/123062
DOI: 10.17617/2.2326768
@2016c A grammar of Nanga (Dogon language family, Mali). Language Description Heritage Library (MPI). Electronic publication.
http://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-002B-1748-4
http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/123063
DOI: 10.17617/2.2326771
@2016d A grammar of Penange (Dogon, Mali). Language Description Heritage Library (MPI). Electronic publication.
http://ldh.clld.org/2016/09/01/escidoc2378134/
http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/133639
DOI: 10.17617/2.2378134
@2015a A grammar of Toro Tegu (Dogon), Tabi Mountain dialect. Language Description Heritage Library (MPI). Electronic publication.
http://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-0027-7643-7
http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/123064
@2015b Toro Tegu texts. Language Description Heritage Library (MPI). Electronic publication.
http://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-0028-1B47-A
http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/123065
@2015c A grammar of Togo Kan (Dogon language family, Mali). Language Description Heritage Library (MPI). Electronic publication.
http://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-0028-1B41-5
http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/123066
DOI: 10.17617/2.2176494
@2015d Togo Kan (Dogon) texts. Language Description Heritage Library (MPI). Electronic publication.
http://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-0028-1B3D-2
http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/123067
@2015e A grammar of Ben Tey (Dogon of Beni). Language Description Heritage Library (MPI). Electronic publication.
http://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-0028-1AEF-7
http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/117644
DOI: 10.17617/2.2176483
@2015f Texts in Bey Tey, Dogon of Béni village, Mali. Language Description Heritage Library (MPI). Electronic publication.
http://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-0028-1B38-C
http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/117645
2008 A grammar of Jamsay. Mouton de Gruyter (Mouton Grammar Series). pp. 735.
ISBN 978-3-11-020722-4
articles
*2016 Dogon adjective-numeral inversion. Linguistics 54(1):189-214.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/ling-2015-0040
*2016 Laura McPherson & J. Heath. Phrasal grammatical tone in the Dogon languages: The role of constraint interaction. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 34(2):593–639.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11049-015-9309-5
*2015 J. Heath & Vadim Dyachkov. Subject versus addressee in Dogon imperatives and hortatives. Studies in Language 39(3):555-593.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/sl.39.3.02hea
*2015 Dogon noncompositional constructional tonosyntax. Journal of African Languages and Linguistics 36(2):233–252.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/jall-2015-0010
*2013 (J. Heath & Laura McPherson) Tonosyntax and reference restriction in Dogon NPs. Language 89(2):265-96.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/lan.2013.0020
Project Muse: http://muse.jhu.edu/article/510294
*2009 (J. Heath & Laura McPherson) Cognitive set and lexicalization strategy in Dogon action verbs. Anthropological Linguistics 51(1):38-63.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/40730831.pdf
[last update Oct 2017]