Browsing by Author "Zaro, Amina"

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    Ideophones in Oromo
    (Addis Ababa University, 2013-11) Zaro, Amina; Meyer, Ronny (PhD)
    This study aims at describing ideophones in Oromo. Oromo ideophones are different from other lexicon and form their own open word class. They express different degrees and manner of feelings, actions, and events. In this study both secondary and primary sources including the intuition of the researcher have been used. Oromo ideophones have a number of features. Their syllabic structure is the same with other lexicon which is CV, CVV, CVC and CVVC where all vowels and consonants except „y’ and č are used in ideophones. Morphologically they do not mark number, gender, person etc. These features are shown on the dummy verb, but they take different derivational affixes. Syntactically, Oromo ideophones occur with verbs, and adverbs where they play different roles when they co-occur with different word classes. They are used with dummy verbs like ʤeɗ ‘say’ or goɗ ‘ do/make. Semantically, ideophones refer to actions such as movement, breaking, hitting, entering etc. The expressions are imitative and synesthetic of action. Ideophones also represent different sounds like human sound, animal sounds, sounds of different phenomena etc.