[5] There has been very little research on Dongotono, but some tentative phonological and morphological observations can be found in Vossen (1982), based on wordlist data collected in the 1970s.
According to Vossen, Dongotono has two sets of five vowels, distinguished by the phonological feature advanced tongue root ([ATR]).
[page needed] Vossen finds no examples of vowel length being contrastive in Dongotono.
He observes that vowel harmony plays an important role, but does not describe the process.
[8] Vossen observes that on the surface there are four tones in Dongotono: High, Low, Mid, and High-Falling.
[8] Word order in Dongotono is generally Verb-Subject-Object, as is typical for most Eastern Nilotic languages.
[citation needed] Like other languages in the Lotuko group, Dongotono has two grammatical genders, masculine and feminine.