Tense, Aspect and Mood (TAM) in Wolayta

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Date

2012-06

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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.

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Keywords

Tense

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