Tense, Aspect and Mood (TAM) in Wolayta
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2012-06
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Addis Ababa University
Abstract
This study explores tense, aspect and mood in the Wolayta language. Wolayta is one of
the main languages of the Ometo group of the Omotic family, which belongs to the Afroasiatic
language phylum. It is spoken in the south west part of Ethiopia by about 1, 7
million people. The study presents an in-depth description of tense, aspect and mood in
affirmative declarative clauses, negative declarative clauses and interrogatives. The thesis
identifies and discusses tense, aspect and mood marking morphemes and their interaction
with agreement and negation markers. Aspectual distinctions include perfective aspect,
imperfective aspect, progressive aspect, ingressive aspect and iterative aspect.
Furthermore, present perfect tense and future tense morphemes are discussed. In addition,
speaker-oriented, agent-oriented and epistemic modalities/ moods are explained next to
various kinds of imperatives and hortative.
Description
Keywords
Tense