Word Formation In K+stantfifia
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Date
2000-01
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Publisher
AAU
Abstract
This thesis attempts to investigate and explain the word-formation processes of
Kistantiiiia, one of the Ethio-Semitic languages. The issues raised are nominali zation,
verbalization, adj ecti vization, reduplication and compounding. These largely represent the
non-inflectional aspects of morphology.
An overview of Kis tane phonology is included in order to give highlights to the
morpho-phonemic processes of the language. The major morpho- phonemic processes are
assimilation, insertion and deletion of segments.
Under nominali zation, the diffe rent nomina Is are described and their deri vation
shown. The two major types of nominals are those deri ved concatenatively such as abstract
nominals and those deri ved non-concatcnati vely sucli as action nominals.
In verb-formation, the di ffe rent ve rbal patterns are discussed. Roots are the bases
for the formati on of mos t verbals, and in some cases, perfec ti ve forms of verbs are taken as
bases. Reduplication is discussed under verbali zation, as it is verbal based and res ults in
verbal outputs.
Adjectivization is also based on roots, stems and words used as inputs. Formally,
there are some adj ectivizers that are similar to some Kistantiiiia nOlllinali zers but with
different function s.
x
Compounding in the Kistane language also takes roots, stems or words as bases.
Different lexical categories such as nouns, adjectives, verbs etc. come together to form
compound adjectives, verbs and nouns.
Some deri vations are governed by word-formation rules and others are
demonstrated with the help of morphemic-tier hypothesis which adequately explains
Semitic morphology in general.
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Keywords
Ethio-Semitic languages