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The Dogon languages are a small, close-knit language family spoken by the Dogon of Mali, which are generally believed to belong to the larger Niger–Congo family. There are about 600,000 speakers of a dozen languages. They are tonal languages, most like Dogul having two tones, some like Donno So having three. The basic word order is subject–object–verb. ==Classification== The evidence linking Dogon to the Niger–Congo family is weak, and their place within the family, assuming they do belong, is not clear. Various theories have been proposed, placing them in Gur, Mande, or as an independent branch, the last now being the preferred approach. The Dogon languages show no remnants of the noun class system characteristic of much of Niger–Congo, leading linguists to conclude that they likely diverged from Niger–Congo very early. Roger Blench comments,〔(Dogon Languages ) Retrieved May 19, 2013〕 :''Dogon is both lexically and structurally very different from most other () families. It lacks the noun-classes usually regarded as typical of Niger–Congo and has a word order (SOV) that resembles Mande and Ịjọ, but not the other branches. The system of verbal inflections, resembling French is quite unlike any surrounding languages. As a consequence, the ancestor of Dogon is likely to have diverged very early, although the present-day languages probably reflect an origin some 3–4000 years ago. Dogon languages are territorially coherent, suggesting that, despite local migration histories, the Dogon have been in this area of Mali from their origin.'' and,〔Roger Blench, (Niger-Congo: an alternative view )〕 :''Dogon is certainly a well-founded and coherent group. But it has no characteristic Niger–Congo features (noun-classes, verbal extensions, labial-velars) and very few lexical cognates. It could equally well be an independent language family.'' The Bamana and Fula languages have exerted significant influence on Dogon, due to their close cultural and geographical ties. Blench (2015) suggests that Bangime and Dogon languages may have a substratum from a "missing" branch of Nilo-Saharan that had split off relatively early from Proto-Nilo-Saharan, and tentatively calls that branch "Plateau."〔Blench, Roger. 2015. (Was there a now-vanished branch of Nilo-Saharan on the Dogon Plateau? Evidence from substrate vocabulary in Bangime and Dogon ).〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Dogon languages」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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