Grammatical Description and Documentation of Bayso
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Date
2018-07
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
This dissertation deals with the documentation and grammatical description of Bayso/Giddicho, a Lowland East Cushitic language spoken in the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples of Ethiopia. Bayso is an endangered language due to the strong pressure of the dominant languages spoken in the area, urbanization and population reduction.
The documentation part covers video and audio annotation of texts, bilingual word list (Bayso- English) and the grammatical description. The grammatical description examines Bayso phonology, morphology and syntax based on the primary data that was obtained via series of fieldworks and through elicitation, interviews, observation and discussion methods. Therefore, the qualitative research methodology was employed in this dissertation.
Bayso, which belongs to Lowland East Cushitic, Omo-Tana subgroup, has 28 consonant phonemes and five vowels with contrastive long vowels. Bayso employs diverse system of noun pluralisation which includes suffixation, reduplication and final vowel elision. Bayso also marks paucal and singulative on nouns by using different suffixes. Theoretically, a language that marks paucal should also mark dual. However, Bayso is one of few languages that mark paucal without marking dual. Gender polarity is also one of the marked features of Bayso which was one of the focuses of this dissertation.
In Bayso, gender is not marked on nouns. It is reflected through agreement on other word categories such as verb, adjective and demonstrative. The grammatical cases, nominative and accusative, are not morphologically marked. However, the sematic cases such as genitive, dative and instrumental are marked with various strategies. In Bayso, noun derivation is not as productive as other related languages. Yet, new nouns can be derived from the existing ones by using various suffixes.
In Bayso, both verb inflection and derivation mainly involve suffixation. A verb is inflected for tense, person and number to show concord. Verb stems such as causatives, passives, frequentatives and inchoatives are derived by using different derivational suffixes.
Word order in Bayso is flexible. That is modifiers may precede or follow their head. However, subordinate clause always occurs preceding the matrix clause. Bayso employs various mechanisms of sentence chaining, that is, to form coordination, subordination and converbs.
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Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples of Ethiopia. Bayso