Capstone project: Language journal
Sample language profile: Nandi
Case, word order, and topicalization in Nandi
Nandi, also known as Cemual or Naandi, is a Nilo-Saharan language spoken in Kenya, near the border with Uganda (Eberhard et al. 2025). It belongs to the macrolanguage Kalenjin. It is mutually intelligible with the other Kalenjin varieties when spoken slowly and carefully (Toweett 1975). There are just under 100,000 Nandi people and the language is classified as 5 (developing) on the EGIDS scale, which means that the language is in vigorous use and that there is some literature with a standardized form, but that the use of literature is not widespread or used in a sustainable fashion (Eberhard et al. 2025).
Prior to British colonization, the Nandi people were a sovereign nation, who were forcibly removed from their land and isolated in reserves in the first half of the 20th century (Mutai 2014). Access to English was restricted in the colonial era in order to enforce colonial social structures. Despite gaining independence in 1963, English is still the official language of Kenya, although it is only spoken by about a quarter of the population, while Swahili is used as a lingua franca. Use of local languages was forbidden in some schools, enforced through corporal punishment, fines, or shaming of students, reinforcing the social stigma of local languages even after British colonialism ended (Nabea 2009). As an Indigenous minority language of Kenya, Nandi is a good choice for a language profile.
In this language profile, I will describe the tonal case marking system of Nandi and its word order. I will begin by describing how Nandi distinguishes between two cases with tone: the nominative case used for subjects, and the oblique case, which is used for all other nouns. Then, I will describe the basic word order of Nandi, which is Verb-Subject-Object. Nandi has several word order alternations, some that are morphologically marked and some that are not. I will describe one of these alternations, how Verb-Subject-Object word order is used to indicate topicalization. The topicalization word order is not ambiguous, as the tonal case marking indicates which noun is the subject.
Nandi has lexical tone, which means that the tone patterns are not normally predictable, but instead must be learned as part of the word. In addition to lexical tone, Nandi has tonal case marking. To form the nominative case, these lexical tones are removed and a fixed tonal pattern is superimposed. There are two classes of nouns, primary and secondary forms, which follow different patterns. We follow Creider and Creider’s (1989) notation for tone, as shown in Table 1. The high level tone and the rising tone are allotones with the high level tone used only with short vowels and the rising tone used with long vowels.
| Symbol | Tonal contour | Example word (short vowel) | Example word (long vowel) |
| V | low level tone | sot ‘gourd’ | mo:y ‘wound’ |
| V́ | high level tone | kér ‘shut!’ | — |
| V́: | rising tone | — | ló:ng ‘shield’ |
| V̂ | high falling tone | yâ ‘bad’ | mâ:t ‘fire’ |
| V̀ | low falling tone | lù ‘war’ | kà:t ‘neck’ |
To form the nominative case for primary forms (with a few exceptions), the lexical tone is removed and a high tone is added to the final syllable of the word. All of the examples in Table 2 are primary forms, and they all have high tones on the final syllable, while all other tones revert to a default low tone. For example, ro:p ‘rain’ in Table 2 has a high tone when it is the subject but a low falling tone when it is not the subject.
| Nominative case form | Oblique case form | English gloss |
| inta:r-á | íntá:r-a | ‘snake’ |
| ke:l-tá | kè:l-ta | ‘foot’ |
| ró:p | rò:p | ‘rain’ |
To form the nominative case for secondary forms, the initial and final syllables become low while all internal syllables take high tone, as shown in Table 3, where L stands for low and H for high.
| Nominative case form | Tone pattern | English gloss |
| inkókyet | LHL | ‘chicken’ |
| ke:mpá:ú:syek | LHHL | ‘nights’ |
| sikíró:ynó:syek | LHHHL | ‘bachelors’ houses’ |
As we will see later, these tonal patterns are important for distinguishing the subject and object in sentences with topicalization.
The basic word order of Nandi is Verb-Subject-Object, as shown in (1) and (2). For example, in (1), the subject kípe:t ‘Kibet’ appears after the verb kè:r-éy ‘looking’ and is followed by the object la:kwé:t ‘child’.
| (1) | Nandi | ||
| kè:r-éy | kípe:t | la:kwé:t | |
| look-IPFV | Kibet.NOM | child.OBL | |
| ‘Kibet is looking at the child.’ | |||
| (2) | Nandi | ||
| tínyey | kípe:t | kâ:t | |
| has | Kibet.NOM | horse.OBL | |
| ‘Kibet has a horse.’ | |||
(Creider & Creider 1989: 124)
If there is an indirect object, it intercedes in between the subject and object, as shown in (3), where the indirect object la:kwét ‘child’ intervenes between the subject kípe:t ‘Kibet’ and the direct object ce:kà ‘milk’.
| (3) | Nandi | |||
| kí:-ka:c-ì | kípe:t | la:kwét | ce:kà | |
| PAST-give-cut | Kibet.NOM | child.OBL | milk.OBL | |
| ‘Kibet gave the child milk.’ | ||||
(Creider & Creider 1989: 124)
If the subject is also the topic, it can switch positions with the object and appear at the end of the sentence, as in (4). This sentence is not ambiguous because the tone markings indicate which noun is the subject. For example, in (1)-(3), Kibet is the subject and so has a high tone on the initial syllable. In (4), it is the object, so it has a low tone on the initial syllable.
| (4) | Nandi | ||
| kè:r-éy | kipe:t | kípro:no | |
| see-IPFV | Kibet.OBL | Kiprono.NOM | |
| ‘Kiprono sees Kibet.’ | |||
(Creider & Creider 1989: 124)
A noun may appear in a topicalized position if it is already mentioned in the conversation. This can be seen in the question answer pairs shown in (5)-(6), where the noun included in the question appears in the sentence-final topicalized position in the answer.
| (5) | Nandi | ||||
| a. | Q: | ‘Who watched the lamb?’ | |||
| (5) | a. | A: | ki:-rì:p | la:kwe:t | a:rtê:t |
| PAST-watch | child.NOM | lamb.OBL | |||
| ‘The child watched the lamb.’ | |||||
| (5) | b. | Q: | ‘What did the child watch?’ | ||
| (5) | b. | A: | ki:-rì:p | a:rtê:t | la:kwe:t |
| PAST-watch | lamb.OBL | child.NOM | |||
| ‘The child watched the lamb.’ | |||||
(Creider & Creider 1989: 161-162)
| (6) | Nandi | ||||
| a. | Q: | ‘Is anyone going to Kapsabet?’ | |||
| (5) | a. | A: | wè:ntí: | kípe:t | kâ:psá:pît |
| 3-go | Kibet.NOM | Kapsabet.OBL | |||
| ‘Kibet is going to Kapsabet.’ | |||||
| (5) | b. | Q: | ‘Where is Kibet going?’ | ||
| (5) | b. | A: | wè:ntí: | kâ:psá:pît | kípe:t |
| 3-go | Kapsabet.OBL | Kibet.NOM | |||
| ‘Kibet is going to Kapsabet.’ | |||||
(Creider & Creider 1989: 162)
In sum, Nandi’s basic word order is Verb-Subject-Object order, but if the subject is already mentioned in the discourse, it can appear in final position. This word order alternation is not ambiguous, as the subject is marked with nominative tonal case marking. Nandi also has other word order alternations, some marked morphologically and some not, which are beyond the scope of this paper.
Abbreviations
Glossing abbreviations used in this paper are as follows:
3 = 3rd person
IPFV = imperfective aspect
NOM = nominative case
OBL = oblique case
References
Creider, Chet and Jane Tapsubei Creider. 1989. A Grammar of Nandi. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag.
Eberhard, David M., Gary F. Simons, and Charles D. Fennig (eds.). 2025. Ethnologue: Languages of the World. Twenty-eighth edition. Dallas, Texas: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com.uml.idm.oclc.org
Mutai, Fredrick. 2014. Ethnicity and political participation in Kenya: A case study of the Nandi 1962-2012. Post-graduate thesis, University of Nairobi. https://erepository.uonbi.ac.ke/handle/11295/71733
Nabea, Wendo. 2009. Language policy in Kenya: Negotiation with hegemony. The Journal of Pan African Studies 3 (1): 121-138. https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=c07f5483d5f5fa9c84cb09b16c3dbd1781301627
Toweett, Taaitta. 1975. Kalenjin nouns and their classification. Masters thesis, University of Nairobi. https://erepository.uonbi.ac.ke/handle/11295/42264
