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Papers by Ronny Meyer
The first section of the volume consists of two articles on interrogativity in Amharic and Baskeet. Their main concern is the morphosyntax and use of yes/no and content questions, and the morphology of interrogative pronouns. The second section assembles four chapters dealing with complex predicates in Amharic, Koorete, Zargulla and Xamtanga. They point out the semantic/pragmatic differences between complex predicates and their monoverbal counterparts, the morphosyntactic properties of the component verbs, and the differences between complex predicates and multi-clausal constructions. The six contributions of the third section are dedicated to issues of finiteness in Libido and various Ethiosemitic languages including Amharic, Gəʿəz, Gurage languages and Tigrinya. The studies show that a high degree of linguistic variability occurs in finiteness marking in these languages. In discussing verb forms that are neither fully finite nor fully infinite they provide further support for the hypothesis that finiteness should be considered a relational–scalar rather than an absolute–binary category.
Most articles are based on presentations made at the 18th International Conference of Ethiopian Studies held on 29 October – 02 November 2012 in Dire Dawa, Ethiopia, and, thus, reflect recent research trends in the description of Ethiopian languages.
The six contributions in the present volume, which developed out of the workshop on Contact-Induced Language Change in Ethiopia, held at Mainz University on December 13-14, 2007, represent the diversity of current research on linguistic contacts and on language change in Ethiopia and offers plenty examples confirming the assumption that Ethiopian languages regardless of their genetic affiliation deliberately display areal patterns by sharing a number of conceptual and structural similarities.
Binyam Sisay investigates whether the morpheme -(k)ko in Koorete and Haro (East Ometo) functions as a copula or as a focus marker. Ronny Meyer discusses distinctive features of the quotative verb in comparison with other verbs of utterance illustrated with data mainly from Amharic, Muher (Ethiosemitic), and Oromo (Lowland East Cushitic). Ongaye Oda’s contribution accounts for the spread of the punctual derivation from Dullay to Konsoid, two distinct sub-groups of Lowland East Cushitic. Christian Rapold and Silvia Zaugg-Coretti present new data from two Omotic languages, Yemsa and Benchnon, regarding the areal features proposed by Crass and Meyer (2008) for the Highland East Cushitic/Gurage sub-area. The findings of Rapold and Zaugg-Coretti reveal that the formation of the experiential perfect and the grammaticalization from a similative marker to a complementizer occur in all three branches of Afroasiatic spoken in central Ethiopia. Sascha Völlmin investigates linguistic differences between Gumer and Chaha, two closely related varieties of Western Gurage (South Ethiosemitic). Silvia Zaugg-Coretti’s contribution describes the distribution and function of the focus marker =tu in Yemsa (Omotic) and compares it with the focus marker -tu in Oromo (Cushitic). "
It is commonly assumed that the languages of Ethiopia form a linguistic area (Sprachbund) which probably consists of several sub-area. Recently, Bisang (2006) introduced the concept of zones of (contact-induced structural) convergence. In contrast to the concept of linguistic area, for which a clear-cut definition seems to be almost impossible, zones of convergence are characterized by the geographic diffusion of certain features or clusters of features which evolved due to linguistic contacts.
It was observed that morphemes based on k (including h), n and t occur frequently in the function of demonstratives, copulas and focus markers in Ethiopian languages.
The interrelation between demonstratives, copulas and focus markers was proposed hitherto as a general cross-linguistic grammaticalization process for individual Ethiopian languages. The peculiarity in the Ethiopian convergence area is that the grammaticalization from demonstrative to a copula can be observed in genetically not closely related languages, namely Cushitic and Semitic. This situation evolved not by chance but occurred due to language contact. The majority of articles in this volume clearly show that there is a connection between demonstrative and copula. The connection between copula and focus marker, however, is not as obvious as the connection between demonstrative and copula.
The Wolane grammar is based on the speech of elders from Wolane-Jimma. The text corpus consists of seven tales, six reports on cultural activities and oral traditions, one discussion of oral traditions, and approximately 60 riddles and sayings. All of the texts represent free speech of elders which was recorded in Wolane-Jimma. Afterwards the texts were transcribed, edited and translated with the help of language consultants. Mainly based on these texts, a lexicon of more than 1,300 lemmas (approximately 400 verbs and 900 nominals) was built. All verbal lemmas contain additional information on their inflection and derivation, and nominal lemmas include information on plural formation.
The presentation of the data is not based on a single linguistic model or theory but is deliberately descriptive. The structural approach was used for identifying phonemes and morphemes. Morphosyntactic and discourse-pragmatic phenomena, like aspect and tense, definiteness, focus, etc. were analyzed using typological or functional models. Although the focus throughout the grammar is on the synchronic description of Wolane, particularly noteworthy linguistic phenomena and comparisons to related languages have been discussed in footnotes. For the sake of a maximally precise and user-friendly presentation the data are often presented in an interlinear version containing four lines. The first line represents the actual utterance of the data and the fourth line an English translation, most often in a literary style. The second line contains underlying or hypothetical morphemes or morpheme
combinations, which are glossed in the third line.
Die dargelegten linguistischen Daten zum Zay hinterfragen bisherige klassifikatorische Arbeiten zu den südäthiosemitischen Sprachen. Das Hauptkriterium zur Unterscheidung zwischen Transversal und Outer South Ethio-Semitic ist die Art und Weise wie deklarative Hauptsätze morphologisch markiert werden. Das Vorhandensein eines speziellen Deklarativmarkers konstituiert das Outer South Ethio-Semitic. Im Transversal Ethio-Semitic soll er dagegen durch ein temporales Auxiliar ersetzt worden sein. Das Zay, eine Sprache der transversal Gruppe, verwendet sowohl den Deklarativmarker als auch temporale Auxiliare. Das ist ein Indiz dafür, dass entweder dieses klassifikatorische Merkmal noch einmal überdacht werden muss oder dass das Zay eine andere Position innerhalb des Südäthiosemitischen inne hat.
Dadurch, dass die Zay-Sprechergemeinschaft multilingual in den Sprachen Amharisch und Oromo ist, lassen sich in der Grammatik Phänomene beobachten, die wahrscheinlich auf kontaktinduzierten Sprachwandel zurückgehen. Hierher gehören die Existenz von Kurz- und Langvokalen, die Tilgung des Finalvokals -ɛ im verbalen Bereich, die Entwicklung spezieller Stützverbkonstruktionen zur Integration von Lehnwörtern, der Singulativmarker und zahlreiche lexikalische Entlehnungen.
Neben diesen kontakt-bedingten Merkmalen, findet man im Zay auch grammatische Erscheinungen, die bisher noch nicht für äthiosemitische Sprachen beschrieben wurden. Hier ist insbesondere die Existenz der phonemischen Merkmale [+rund] und [+vorn] von Relevanz. Darüber hinaus ist die Syntax des Zay komplexer als in den verwandten äthiosemitischen Sprachen. Das Zay bewahrte oder entwickelte ein System bestehend aus obligatorischer Fokus- und Deklarativmarkierung, das in dieser Form weder für kuschitische noch für äthiosemitische Sprachen beschrieben wurde. Während in den Gunnän-Guragesprachen der Deklarativmarker weit verbreitet ist, findet man in kuschitischen Sprachen Fokusmarker, die obligatorisch sind, um einen Hauptsatz zu bilden. Im Zay sind beide Strategien miteinander verknüpft.
The manifold social and cultural contacts among the Ethiopian people are seen in the widespread bi- and multilingualism which has become an important factor in language development in the country. The choice of language in specific contexts depends on many objective and subjective factors. This book intends to discover the underlying incentive controlling language knowledge and language use and to expose the factors which support the development and spread of languages and their usage as a common means of communication in contact situations.
The role of cultural and linguistic contact in various multi-ethnic regions of the Federal Republic of Ethiopian is examined. The study focuses on the interrelationship between language knowledge, the use of languages and language change over several generations. It analyses the conditions and factors which can hinder or promote the development of certain languages as an inter-ethnic, a regional or even a national means of communication.
This study is based on field research aimed at collecting the relevant data on language use as well as on an investigation of the related literature on this topic.
The tense opposition past vs. non-past originated in nominal main clauses, which functionally distinguish between equative clauses and existential clauses. Morphologically, they are differentiated only for non-past situations by suppletive forms for affirmative and negative clauses. With past situations, the paucity of functional and formal distinctions is reduced to one or two auxiliary verbs. This lack of variance indicates that past tense was the first category to be morphologically marked in order to distinguish between present and past situations. The past marker was then extended to imperfective verbs. Consequently, a secondary tense system was established in main clauses, in which past tense is always morphologically marked while the non-past tense can be marked by copular morphemes (Amharic) or zero (Muher).
The past marker acquired an additional function as marker of counterfactual and hypothetical clauses, and replaced other constructions in this function. The cognitive association between past tense and unreal situations in the past and future seems to result in a further grammaticalization of the past marker into an epistemic modality marker for non-actuality, i.e. for situations which are not or no longer valid at the moment of speech.
This paper is concerned with marking of core cases in Muher, which is a member of Gunnän Gurage. Nouns lacking any case prefix can function as subject, direct object or adverb, whereas nouns marked by the prefix jä- could be direct or indirect object (i.e. arguments), beneficiary adjunct, attribute of a head noun, or adverb. Subjects and direct objects can be distinguished from each other by word order and verb indexes. Separate verb indexes are also used to differentiate between indirect objects (arguments of ditransitive verbs) and beneficiary adjuncts. Furthermore, pragmatic constraints influence the use of the prefix jä- as marker direct objects and adverbs.
After a detailed description of the intricate interaction between the prefix jä-, verb indexing, word order and pragmatic constraints to distinguish between various grammatical relations and semantic roles, a hypothesis on the origin of the prefix is forwarded which relates it to an early Semitic demonstrative element *j(ä), rather than to the Gǝʿǝz case prefix *lä- for dative and *zä- for genitive.