A Sketch of Ongota, a Dying Language of Southwest Ethiopia (original) (raw)

(with G. Savà) A sketch of Ongota, a dying language of southwest Ethiopia

A sketch of Ongota, a dying language of Southwest Ethiopia. Studies in African Linguistics 29 (2000; published 2001)/ 2: 59-135, 2000

The article provides a grammatical sketch of Ongota, a language on the brink of extinction (actively used by eight out of an ethnic group of nearly one hundred) spoken in the South Omo Zone of Southwestern Ethiopia. The language has now been largely superseded by Ts'amakko, a neighboring East Cushitic language, and code-switching in Ts'arnakko occurs extensively in the data. A peculiar characteristic of Ongota is that tense distinctions on the verb are marked only tonally. Ongota's genetic affiliation is uncertain, but most probably Afroasiatic, either Cushitic or Omotic; on the other hand, it must be noted that certain features of the language (such as the almost complete absence of nominal morphology and of inflectional verbal morphology) point to an origin from a creolized pidgin.

A Grammar of Gedeo A Cushitic Language of Ethiopia

2015

Verbs inflect for agreement (person/number/ gender), tense/ aspect, and mood. Section (§4.1.1.1.) treats agreement, and section (§4.1.1.2.) discusses aspect/ tense. The discussion of mood is not entertained in this section. For the discussion of mood (i.e., imperative, optative, hortative) see chapter 10, sections §10.2.3 positive imperatives, and §10.3.3 negative imperatives. Finally, converbs are briefly discussed in (§4.1.1.3).

Gwama, a little-known endangered language of Ethiopia : a sketch of its grammar and lexicon

2005

nominals are identical with simple nouns. Rarely, however, they can be derived by prefixation, reduplication and modification: (30) sit ‘man’ sin ‘manhood’ warr ‘child’ warrwarr ‘childhood’ noko ‘kind’ ninoko ‘kindness’ 3.5 The Passive The passive is marked by the prefix baas in the following examples. (31) Active Passive Ωa ‘eat’ ma-ba-l-Ωa PS-PASS-3MS-eat ‘was eaten’ s’it ‘catch’ ma-ba-l-s’it PS-PASS-3MS-catch ‘was caught’ t’op’ ‘drink’ ma-ba-l-t’op’ PS-PASS-3MS-drink ‘was drank’ gi ‘work’ ma-ba-l-gi PS-PASS-3MS-work ‘was worked’ k’uΩ ‘kill’ ma-ba-l-k’uΩ PS-PASS-3MS-kill ‘was killed’ k’obo ‘cut’ ma-ba-l-k’obo PS-PASS-3MS-cut ‘was cut’ t’uΩ ‘tie’ ma-ba-l-t’uΩ PS-PASS-3MS-tie ‘was tied’ Gwama passive verbs have a TN + PASS + SUBJ + VERB structural pattern. (32) u-muzu ma-balΩa. u-bwaΩa mabalk’uΩ. the banana PS-PASS-3MS-eat the snake PS-PASS-3MS-kill ‘The banana was eaten.’ ‘The snake was killed.’ sitkoboΩ ma-bals’it. bas’s’ ma-balt’op’. the thief PS-PASS-3MS-catch milk PS-PASS-3MS-d...

Ongota (Birale), a moribund language of Southwest Ethiopia

Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 2003

... complete sketch, instead some salient features of Ongota phonology and grammar (for a more complete de-scription the reader is referred to Fleming et al. ... indirect possessive ablative locative" on" 1Sg kata ka ka na sinne ka-tu uku-ni 2Sg janta~ jami jan jata siidu jan-tu ugu-du ...

Daatsʼíin, a newly identified undocumented language of western Ethiopia: A preliminary examination

Daatsʼíin is a heretofore unknown language spoken in western Ethiopia near the border with the Republic of Sudan. The Daatsʼíin people live in both Ethiopia and the Republic of Sudan but only those in Ethiopia still speak the Daatsʼíin language. The speakers of Daatsʼíin may number around 1,000 but may be as few as 300-500. This paper provides the first-ever overview of basic aspects of Daatsʼíin phonology, morphology and syntax. The overview documents that Daatsʼíin is structurally similar to the nearby Gumuz languages (of possible Nilo-Saharan affiliation) in many respects, including vocabulary, bound pronominals with a distinct tone for S versus A arguments, and incorporated nouns. However, there are a few differences, mainly in structure and certain tense-aspect categories of the verb word.

Daats'íin, a newly identified undocumented language of western Ethiopia A preliminary examination

2017

Diversity in African Languages contains a selection of revised papers from the 46th Annual Conference on African Linguistics, held at the University of Oregon. Most chapters focus on single languages, addressing diverse aspects of their phonology, morphology, semantics, syntax, information structure, or historical development. These chapters represent nine different genera: Mande, Gur, Kwa, Edoid, Bantu, Nilotic, Gumuzic, Cushitic, and Omotic. Other chapters investigate a mix of languages and families, moving from typological issues to sociolinguistic and inter-ethnic factors that affect language and accent switching. Some chapters are primarily descriptive, while others push forward the theoretical understanding of tone, semantic problems, discourse related structures, and other linguistic systems. The papers on Bantu languages reflect something of the internal richness and continued fascination of the family for linguists, as well as maturation of research on the family. The distr...

Switch-reference and Omotic-Cushitic language contact in Southwest Ethiopia

Published 2012 in: Journal of Language Contact 5.1: 80–116

Africa has up until now been considered a continent where switch-reference systems are extremely rare. This study shows that there is a confi ned area in the South of Ethiopia where many Omotic languages and a few Cushitic languages have fully grammaticalised switchreference systems on dependent (co-)subordinate non-final verbs, so-called converbs. The paper describes in detail the switch-reference system of Kambaata (Cushitic) and gives an overview of the distribution of switch-reference systems in Ethiopia in general. It is argued that switch-reference marking in Cushitic languages is the result of contact with neighbouring Omotic languages.