word Formation in Girirra
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Date
1994-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
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.
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Keywords
Girirra