Browsing by Author "Dumessa, Alemayehu"

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    Word formation in diddessa mao
    (Addis Ababa University, 2007-07) Dumessa, Alemayehu; Leyew, Zelealem (PhD)
    This thesis has attempted to investigate and describe the word formation processes in Diddessa Mao, the variety of Northern Mao of Omotic family spoken around Diddessa River Valley. Derivation, compounding and reduplication have been dealt with as the major word formation processes. The derivational processes in this variety of Mao included nominalization, verbalization, and adjectivalization. Derived nominals such as: manner nominals suffix /-ä/ to action verbs. Abstract nominals suffix/-iyä/ to adjectival and nominal bases. Action nominals suffix /-i/ to verb roots, and result nominals suffix /-e/ to verb bases. In verb derivation causatives are derived from verb roots, adjectivals and nominal bases by suffixing /-sisa/. Passives suffix /-ek’-/ to transitive verb roots. Reflexives suffix /-inke/to simple verb roots, causative verbal stems and intensive verbal stems. Statives attach the morpheme /-inke/ to adjectives. The reflexive /-inke/ is homophones with the stative /-inke/. Adjectivals are derived from nominals by suffixing the morpheme /-itä/. Compounding in this variety of Mao is formed through the combination of two or more words from the same or different word-classes. Compound nominals are formed from verbals and nominals or from two nominals. Compound adjectives are formed from two adjectivals, or nominals and adjectivals, adjectives and nominals and number with nominals. Compound adpositions are formed from two adpositions. Intensive verbal stems are formed from verb roots through complete reduplication process. Adverbials are derived from nouns that refer to time with the suffix /-at/. Some phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic characters of the derivatives and compounds are considered in this study. For all kinds of word formation processes, word formation rules (WFRs) have been proposed and their positions are also described.