Noun Phrase Structure in Harari
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Date
2004-07
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
This study reports on the noun phrase of Harari. It gives a descriptive account of the
structure of the noun phrase in the language.
Harari is among the Ethioc Semitic languages on which so far little linguistic studies have
been made and documented. The descriptive works on the language are not comp lete
and most except a chosen few are sketchy. This proves a cons id erable research gap
and lack of descriptive work s pertaining to the language in general and its syntax in
particular. This has led to the present thesis which would be the first detailed syntactic
study on the language presented after a decade since Teshome (1992) . . Its pertinacity
would therefore be to some extenttei address the lack of descriptive works on the
language.
This study, based on syntactic-semantic grounds, describes certai n grammatical or
lexical formatives - articles and quantifiers - as specifiers; and other phrasal structures -
adjectival and nominal phrasal structures - and clausal structures - relative clauses - as
complements. Both of these are optional and position ally pronominal structural
constituent s that may occur with an obligatory simple nominal head in noun phrases. It
also discloses that the two hold independent structural positions when both occur in the
same noun phrase structure. The specifiers always precede the phrasal and clausal
categories described as complements .
Th e study also claims that, in Harari, there is no morphological affix for definiteness, and
argues that the forms z and z are distribution ally distinct markers introducing relative
clauses co institutionalize and imperfection verb forms respective
In general, this stud y provides empirical evidence for classifying Harari as a head-final
language.
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Keywords
Noun Phrase Structure