Word formation in diddessa mao
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Date
2007-07
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
This thesis has attempted to investigate and describe the word formation processes in
Diddessa Mao, the variety of Northern Mao of Omotic family spoken around Diddessa
River Valley. Derivation, compounding and reduplication have been dealt with as the
major word formation processes. The derivational processes in this variety of Mao
included nominalization, verbalization, and adjectivalization.
Derived nominals such as: manner nominals suffix /-ä/ to action verbs. Abstract
nominals suffix/-iyä/ to adjectival and nominal bases. Action nominals suffix /-i/ to
verb roots, and result nominals suffix /-e/ to verb bases. In verb derivation causatives
are derived from verb roots, adjectivals and nominal bases by suffixing /-sisa/.
Passives suffix /-ek’-/ to transitive verb roots. Reflexives suffix /-inke/to simple verb
roots, causative verbal stems and intensive verbal stems. Statives attach the
morpheme /-inke/ to adjectives. The reflexive /-inke/ is homophones with the stative
/-inke/. Adjectivals are derived from nominals by suffixing the morpheme /-itä/.
Compounding in this variety of Mao is formed through the combination of two or more
words from the same or different word-classes. Compound nominals are formed from
verbals and nominals or from two nominals. Compound adjectives are formed from
two adjectivals, or nominals and adjectivals, adjectives and nominals and number with
nominals. Compound adpositions are formed from two adpositions.
Intensive verbal stems are formed from verb roots through complete reduplication
process. Adverbials are derived from nouns that refer to time with the suffix /-at/.
Some phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic characters of the
derivatives and compounds are considered in this study. For all kinds of word
formation processes, word formation rules (WFRs) have been proposed and their
positions are also described.
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Keywords
Word formation