A Comparative Study of Ideophones in Ethiopian Afro-Asiatic Languages with Special Reference To Amharic, Kafa and Oromo

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dc.contributor.advisorProf. Baye Yimam
dc.contributor.authorTeferi Mulugeta
dc.date.accessioned2025-07-29T13:17:46Z
dc.date.available2025-07-29T13:17:46Z
dc.date.issued2024-01-16
dc.description.abstractIn day-to-day communication, ideophones play very significant roles in Ethiopian Afro-Asiatic languages. However, in descriptive studies they are less tread. This dissertation aimed at the phonological, morphological, and syntactic descriptions and comparison of ideophones of Ethiopian Afro-Asiatic languages. The three representative languages are Amharic (Semitic), Kafa (Omotic), and Oromo (Cushitic). These languages are from the same Afro-Asiatic phylum but they are distantly related. This comparative study identifies more similarities than differences in the phonology and syntax of ideophones. Their morphology shows significant differences. The languages exhibit unique phonological features in phonemic inventories, phonemic distributions, phonotactics, suprasegmentals, and syllable structures of ideophones. Phonetically, the languages exhibited five non-phonemic click-like sounds [ʘ, ǁ, ǃ, ʞ, and the tchip (suck teeth)]. Phonologically, especially Amharic shows the front and back vowels, at the initial positions of ideophonic words, which are not found in the regular phonology of the regular language. Phonotactically, the three languages display the sequences of two identical consonants in coda positions. Ideophones also show expressive consonant and vowel lengthening as main suprasegmental features. Kafa ideophones exhibit high /H/ tone in all ideophonic words across all syllables. In the last case, ideophones show the CVVː, CVVːC, CVCCː and CVCC pattern in addition to the respective regular syllable types. Morphologically, Amharic and Kafa ideophones undergo complex process in compounding and derivation whereas Oromo shows simple processes. Cross-linguistically, ideophones deploy compounding, derivation, reduplication, and inflectional morphology. Inflectional morphology is unpredictable in ideophones. Syntactically, the ideophones of Ethiopian Afro-Asiatic languages go contrary to the existing generalizations of syntactic aloofness of ideophones. They do not show differences to the non-ideophonic words. Ideophones occupy the argument and the predicate positions. They function as subject, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. They are used in complex predicates of active and passive verb constructions. They also occur across all sentence types even though they are reported to be found in certain sentence types and exist peripherally. The remaining semantic and pragmatics of features of ideophones of Ethiopian Afro-Asiatic languages are the future study focuses of the researcher.
dc.identifier.urihttps://etd.aau.edu.et/handle/123456789/5700
dc.language.isoen
dc.publisherAddis Ababa University
dc.titleA Comparative Study of Ideophones in Ethiopian Afro-Asiatic Languages with Special Reference To Amharic, Kafa and Oromo
dc.typeThesis

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