The Morphology of Koorete
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Date
2003-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
This study attempts to provide a descriptive account of the inflection and derivation
of Koorete nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, postpositions, numerals and
some compound nouns and adjectives are also discussed thoroughly.
Thus, it has been found out that Koorete nouns are inflected for number, gender,
definiteness and case. Moreover, nominals such as abstract, manner and result may be
derived form other nouns, verbs and adjectives. The different forms of the pronouns
and their inflections are discussed in some detail.
Koorete verbs may be categorized into three principal classes according to their
forms: infinitive, perfective and imperfective. Moreover, the verbs show simple and
complex verbal morphology, in which the complex verb form repeats itself in the
structure. The study has also shown that Koorete verbs are inflected for aspect, tense,
mood, gender, number, person, and negation. In addition verbs such as passive,
causative, reciprocal and frequentative may be derived from infinitive form of the
verb.
Furthermore, the different types of adverbs, adjectives, postpositions, and numerals
have been discussed, and as the result I have identified three types of adverbs, i.e.
place, time and manner adverbs. Manner adverbs can be derived from adjectives.
With regard to adjectives, they are grouped into six semantic fields, such as value,
age, color, dimension,
physical property, and human propensity. They are found to be inflected for number,
definiteness and case, and are derived form nouns and verbs. All postpositions of
Koorete are independent words, which stand alone in a structure. The numeral system
of Koorete is that of quinary in which it has the base form from one to five.
In the sections where we dealt with compound words, the study indicated that
Koorete allows compound words formed from Noun + Noun, Noun + Adjective,
Noun + Verb, Numeral + Noun, and Adjective + Adjective sequences.
Key Words: Koorete, descriptive, inflection, derivation, nouns, pronouns, verbs,
adjectives, postpositions, numerals, compound nouns, number, gender, definiteness,
case, abstract, manner, result, infinitive, imperfective, perfective, aspect, tense, mood,
negation, passive, causative, reciprocal, frequentative, semantic field, quinary
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Keywords
Koorete