Browsing by Author "Yimam, Baye (PhD)"
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Item Female Disempowerment: Some Expressions in Amharic(Addis Ababa University, 2012-11) Bililigne, Aschalew; Yimam, Baye (PhD)By examining various language expressions about women one can see to some extent how women are perceived in a certain culture. This thesis is conducted in order to examine Amharic proverbs and literal expressions that refer to females. Although there are expressions that empower women, they are not the concern of this study. The data are collected through participant observation and introspection since the researcher is a native speaker of the language. Besides, different books have also been consulted as secondary sources of data. Since the Amhara society is patriarchal the expressions are analyzed based on the “dominance” theory which assumes that social norms are established dominantly by men and because of this the social and political systems see and treat women as not equal to men. The expressions which are analyzed under various themes illustrate that women are inferior, talkative, ill-natured, dependent, etc. In some contexts, women themselves accept the superiority of men. They are marginalized and systematically forced to be powerless. As a result, they have little political, social, economic, etc. participation in the society. Key words: gender, sex, dominance, gender-ideology, patriarchy, disempowerment, socialization, gender-segregationItem Functional Categories in Afaan Oromo A Minimalist Approach(Addis Ababa University, 2006-07) Hunde, Gemeda; Yimam, Baye (PhD)This thesis is on the func tional categories of Afaan Oromo based on Chomsky's recent theory ( 1993) to ( 1995b). the Minimalist Programme and its subsequent de\elopments . In the thesis an attempt is made to identify different functi onal categories in Afaan Oromo and sho'" their structures in simple clause structures. The thesis cons ists of four chapters. Chapter one deals ,,'ith a brief introduction to the language and the people. Statement of the problem. objecti"es of the study, the methodology used and the significance of the study are also included in this chapter. The effo rts made so far to study the language and the a,ailable records of lingui stic information on the language ha"e been discussed. The theoretical frame,,'ork employed for the study is introduced. The o,en'iew of the )\!inimali st Programme and the difference bet"'een the GO\'ernment-Binding (GB) and :vlinimali st Programme (MP) Models are presented. CllJpter t"'o is about the functional categori es of Afaan Oromo, The major functional categorie s such as Pronouns. Determiners. Tense . . -\greemenl. :\egation. FocLis and Modal . .!..u:\iliaries ha\e been ident ified and the ir reali zations are discussed. Chapter th ree deals " 'ith case, The morphologically realized cases in the language are identiti ed, The differen t case markers and case forms are presented , The case markers are sutti:\es such as -ni for nominati"e case, I-f for datie. -nl for instrumental and 1-01 for accus3 ti" e case . In this language. the case markers may appear on both the noun and the adjecti,'e Which modities them. Structural case is also discussed, Finally. in chapter four the summary and conclusion are gien.Item The Morphology of Endegan(Addis Ababa University, 2003-06) Nega, Eyassu; Yimam, Baye (PhD)Item Morphology of Eža(Addis Ababa University, 2002-05) Menuta, Fekede; Yimam, Baye (PhD)Eža is one of the least studied ‘Gurage Languages’ of the Ethio-Semitic family. This study aims to provide descriptive account of its morphology. Thus, the inflection and derivation of nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, and numerals are considered. Some compound nouns and adjectives are also identified. It is shown that nouns are inflected for number, gender, definite article, and different types of cases. Affixes deriving nominals such as abstract, gerundive, result, group identity, agent and instrument are identified. Forms of pronouns and their inflections are discussed. Subject and object agreement pronominal affixes are shown. Verbs are grouped based on their radical and stem patterns. It is found that the verbs are inflected for person, gender, number, aspect, tense, and mood. Affixes and stem patterns that derive verbs including passive, reflexive, causative, frequentative, reciprocal, reciprocal causative, frequentative passive, frequentative of the reciprocal, and causative of the frequentative reciprocal are shown. Types of adverbs and their derivations are discussed. It is claimed that some time adverb deriving affixes show past and future time. Adjectives are grouped into seven semantic fields and four ways of deriving them is shown. It is found that adjectives are not inflected for number and person but can be inflected for definite article. Numerals that have simple lexical representation are found to be only twelve. The other numerals of the language are derived from the simple numeral sets. Finally, summary of the main findings of the studyItem Nominal Functional Categories in Tigrinya(Addis Ababa University, 2003-06) Tajebe, Esayas; Yimam, Baye (PhD)Key Words: Nominal Syntactic features: Determiners, Definite, Agreement, and other related Nominal Functional Categories; their Syntactic Projections inside DPs. The study is devoted to nominal functional categories in Tigrinya within the theory of the minimalist program. It centers on identifying the status and syntactic projections of the constituents in the internal structure of noun phrases in Tigrinya, and tries to give a unified account which links the following properties of Tigriny nominal phrases. • Most determiner phrases of Tigrinya have two synonymous forms. These forms can be determined by an overt or covert features of the functional heads checked by head noun. • Definiteness which is marked by a deictic or Agrs morpheme and not by a lexical article, acts like a syntactic feature on a par with the -feature, whereas indefiniteness in is not marked at all. • Certain determiners with overt -features are strong and occur in different syntactic positions in the extended functional projection. • Possessive forms are derived from an overt genitive case assigner or from head spec agreement in Tigrinya. Under the framework of Chomsky’s, (1995) Minimalist Program, and Kayne, (1994) Linear Constraint Axiom (LCA) a unifying account is given by assuming three functional head projections. The functional heads have independent projections where different features are checked and licensed. Thus, Do of DP for the definiteness feature of the head noun is licensed, Ko of KP is a position for the dummy genitive case assigner, and Agro is the position where feature of the head or of the possessor is checked. Finally, the proposed structure of Tigrinya nominal functional categories that includes lexical and functional projectionsItem The Syntax of Simple Verbal and Nominal Clauses of Yem(Addis Ababa University, 2007-08) Belayneh, Teshome; Yimam, Baye (PhD)This study is about the syntax of simple verbal and nominal clauses of Yem in light or the Minimalist Approach of Chomsky ( 1995a and 1995b), The focus is on the derivation or simple verbal and nominal affirmative clause structures, The flrst chapter has dealt with the background, research question. objectives, methodology and the theoretical framework of the study Previous studies are available on the phonology, morphology and to some extent on the syntax and sociolinguistics of the language. This study intended to fill some gaps in the ,description of the syntax of the language. So the basic questions that are answered in this stencil include how are simple affirmative verbal and nominal clause structures of Yem derived? What are the possible derivational operations as well as the feature checking principles of verbal and nominal clause structures? What are the projectiles and hierarchical orders of functional and lexical categories in IP and VP in the language? What are the similarities and differences between the structure of verbal and nominal clauses in the language The objective of this study is to describe the derivation of simple verbal and nominal clauses in the language. The study identify derivation al operations, the projections of functional and lexical categories and the conditions of theta- role assignment, feature checking condition, the hierarchical order of functional and lexical categories in the VF and IP layers as well as the similarities and differences between verbal and nominal clause structures the language The research method includes reading relevant research materials and creating a point of departure for the present study and developing clear concepts about the Minimalist approach as .1 theoretical framework. Data is collected from native speakers of Yem. Sample verbal and nominal structures are prepared in Amharic for soliciting equivalents in the target language. The data IS phonemically transcribed and checked again stapes recordings. Finally, data is described and analyzed on the bases of the Minimalist approach and conclusions are drawn about the syntax of simple verbal and nominal clauses. Under the theoretical framework. basic assumptions of the Minimalist approach about syntactic representations In general and clause derivations in particular are considered in this chapter. In the second chapter, some functional and derivational inflections on verbs and infinitives are described. These include agreement. tense, aspect and case in verbal clauses as well as agreement and nulls in nominal clauses. Some derivation al clements like nominalizers and causativizers are al so described. The th ird chapter shows the derivat ions of simple verbal and nominal clauses including their similarities and diffen:nces. The derivational operations are merge and move. Features like agreement, tense and case trigger movement. The functional categories projected in IP layer are TP, AgrsP, and AspP. Their hierarchical order is [AgrsP[TP[AgrsP[ AspP[vP[ VP llllll for past perfect simple affirmative clauses and this goes in line with Baker's (1985) Mirror Principle. The basic word order is SOY derived from Kayne's (1994) SVO universal order. OSV is also possible when object is focused. Nominative case is checked at the spec of AgrsP whereas accusative case is checked at the spec of vP in verbal clauses. The derivation of nominal clauses is similar to that of their verbal counterpart in Yem. The assumption of this study is that the derivation of nominal clause takes place in the lexicon following the lexicalist hypothesis. The word order in nominal clauses is similar to the basic order. The difference is that there is no temporal element in nominal clauses and it is interpreted as DP, not as IP. The hierarchical order that observed in nominal clause is [DP[AgrsP[nP[NP llll. Accusative and nominative cases are checked at the spec of nP and AgrsP respectively. The highlights and some facts abut the derivations of verbal and nominal clauses are given in chapter four.Item Theoretical Upraisal of Verb Incorporation : The Case of Shekacho Causatives(Addis Ababa University, 1996-06) Fufa, Tolemariam; Yimam, Baye (PhD)Incorporation theory denies the existence of Grammatical Function changing (GF changing) phenomenon in our knowledge of language. This phenomenon is believed to be the side effect of verb incorporation. But we argue in this study that GF changing phenomenon does exist in our knowledge of language. We show that this phenomenon is the actual evidence for the existence of a level of representation which is higher (more abstract) than the level of D-structure to preserve the recursive device in language. This device cannot be preserved through the abstract levels of D-structure and S-structure since there is no difference between them in terms of meta languages. Moreover, the S-structrue can be predicted from its D-structure as the 0- structure is deducible from the S-structure and this situation leads a linguistic theory into a contradiction. To get out of this and account for recursivness and creativity in language, we have to assume a higher abstract level of representation on the basis of facts from causative structures of languages like Shekacho.Item Verbal Complementation in Awingi(Addis Ababa University, 1991-06) Leul, Haile; Yimam, Baye (PhD)This paper attempts to describe complements of Awinr i verbs following the X-Bar Theory of phrase structure rules of Jackendoff (1977), Chomsky (1981,1986) and Radford (1981) . The theory claims that in all natural languages, the major lexical categories, that is, nouns, verbs, adjectives and prepositions have similar complement structures and levels of projection. 'fhe study shows that verbs in this language take A"', N' ", P'" and CPs at V'; VPadverbials at V" ; and parentheticals at V" '. This is consistent with the claim of the theory. The position of the head in relation to its complement i s a lways final which fixes the parameter of Awingi as a head-final language.Item word Formation in Girirra(Addis Ababa University, 1994-06) Lemma, Askale; Yimam, Baye (PhD)Girirra is believed to be one of the Eastern Lowland Cushitic Languages of Ethiopia. [t has not been morphologically described so far. This study attempts to examine the structure of its words on the basis of the theoretical framework known as the Lexical Hypothesis. Particularly it follows the weak Lexicalist Hypothesis of Siegel (1974), Aronoff (1976), and Allen (1978). The study describes the processes of nominalization, verbalization, and adjectivization. The study attempts to describe the roots or stems from which nouns, verbs and adjectives are derived along with the affixes that derive them, and the rules that govern the processes. Compounding and reduplication are al so examined as morphological processes. The study also attempts to describe the position of the head of words. In both affixation and compounding, the head is considered to be either the constituent which has the same syntactic feature as the whole word or that which determines the central meaning of the word.Item The zaysse People and their Language(Addis Ababa University, 1999-06) Yimer, Teshome; Yimam, Baye (PhD)