Linguistics

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Browsing Linguistics by Subject "a language spoken by the Irob people in the Northern part of Ethiopia"

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    Descriptive Grammar of Saaho
    (Addis Ababa University, 2015-04) Tajebe, Esayas; Yimam, Baye (Professor); W/Mariam, Hirut (PhD)
    This study is about the grammatical description of Saaho, a language spoken by the Irob people in the Northern part of Ethiopia. The description includes phonology, morphology and syntax. In the phonology part inventory of phonemes has been made with respect to segmental and supra segmental phonemes. Thus, the language has 22 consonant and 5 vowels segmental phonemes. Gemination of consonants, vowel length and tone constitute meaning distinction and are suprasegmental phonemes. In addition, cooccurence restriction of segments, syllabic structure and morpho phonological processes have been described based on distribution. In the morphology part description and classification of words has been made by considering universal and language specific features. In the language nouns, verbs and adjective have been considered as major word classes, and adverbs, pronouns, determiners, demonstratives, postpositions, and conjunctions are minor word classes. Some specific components of nominal morphology include sub classes of nouns - proper, common; count and mass. Number: (Plural marking and singulative marking), Gender: masculine and feminine where feminine is the default gender. Formal and semantic gender assignment systems have been described. Tone plays an important role in the morphology of the language. Tone distinguishes gender in nouns. It also serves in case assignment as in nominative, accusative and genitive cases. In addition, nominal derivation involve different processes like affixation, compounding, stem modification, tone alternation, reduplication etc that are employed in forming different sub classes of nouns. Verbs are grouped into four sub classes- class I both prefixing and suffixing verbs, class II suffixing verbs, class III reduced-verb form and class IV compound verbs. Class I verbs make use of affixation and ablaut process but other classes involve affixation. In addition description of verbal inflection and derivation has been made. The verbs show inflections for subject agreement, aspect (Perfective, imperfective, and progressive) andmood subjunctive, jussive, imperative and infinitive. In the verb derivation: causative, middle, passive, intensive, attenuative, frequentative and inchoative have been described. Word order the syntax of phrases (NP- Modifier Head N), PP – NP Postposition) and simple sentence has (SOV), and describing different types of clause have been made. In addition, analysis of sentence types as declarative, interrogative, negative has been made