Mesqan folktales: A contribution to the documentation of the Mesqan language
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Date
2011-07
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The Mesqan are one of the diverse Ethno-linguistic clusters in Ethiopia whose language and
oral traditions are not well -studied. So in order to fill such a gap I select 14 folktales and
document it. The concept of documentary linguistics introduced to our notion presently it
meant that production of a lasting, multipurpose record of a language. In order to meet
such results, I collect about 55 folktales from 7 informants, of 60 minute by means of audio
and video recording. Then I employed different software to digitalize it .These are audio
and video converter, audacity, virtual-dab, praat and elan
Lastly, using these selected folktales and other linguistic data I understand same
grammatical skeleton of the language. Some of these sketches were described in previous
studies, but some are described by the researcher. As a result of this I learned that Mesqan
doesn’t have number marker.
In conclusion, the target of this study is documenting Mesqan speech events and based on
this to provide a grammatical sketch of the language. Few B.A students of Addis Ababa
University and some foreign scholars have already studied some linguistic features .
However, these studies do not provide a full description of the language. So this one fill
some gap too.
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Mesqan language