Browsing by Author "Asferaw, Samuel"

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    Word Formation in a Wngi
    (Addis Ababa University, 2006-05) Asferaw, Samuel
    This thesis attempts to investigate and explain the word- formation processes of A wngi, one of the Central Cushitic (Agew) languages. Derivation and Compounding have been dealt as the word formation processes. The derivational process included noun, verb, adjective and adverb derivations. These largely represent the non-inflectional aspects of morphology. The section on derivation describes the different lexical categories that are derived by adding various suffixes to bases, stems or roots belonging to different lexical categories. The addition of the suffixes shows different phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic properties of the language. The section on compounding describes the different lexical categories that are formed by combining two words. The gaps exhibited in the process of combining different lexical categories are also shown. The process of compounding also shows the different phonological, syntactic and semantic properties operating in the language. The study also attempts to describe the position of the head of derived and compound words. In both derivation and compounding, the head is detem1ined by its syntactic and semantic features. The head is considered to be the constituent, which has either the same syntactic feature as the whole word or the one, which determine the central meaning of the derived and compound word.