Ethiopian languages Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

When I did my fieldwork in Bashada, I often heard of Sill-ama, a mysterious kind of creature that is said to live in the bush. The Sill-ama, people said, own a lot of cattle and cultivate sorghum. But preferably they eat people...
The Sill-ama stories are famous in Bashada and Hamar and loved especially by children when told to them in the evenings sitting around the fire.

Bete Giyorgis, Lalibela, Ethiopia

The optimal language for literature and educational materials is not the same for all Zay areas. The data gathered during the current study points to Zay as optimal for the islands on Lake Ziway and Oromo as optimal for the lakeshores. However, the Zay people living on the islands would probably be well served by Amharic literature and educational materials until most of them immigrate to the shore or the Oromo educational system causes a shift in preference to Oromo. Zay’s case is one of an endangered language that could prove to be a development success story, but only if the level of motivation for a language development project is high enough to initiate and sustain the effort.

- by Linda Jordan
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- Multiculturalism, Languages and Linguistics, Semitic languages, Multilingualism

Course material from Comparative Semitics class

- by Ronny Meyer
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- Ethiopian Studies, Ethiopian languages, Gurage
- by Giorgio Banti
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- Ethiopian Studies, Ethiopian languages, Cushitic Linguistics, Oral literature

Portada e índice del libro "Historia de Etiopía", publicado por la editorial Catarata y Casa África en 2022.

- by Mario Lozano Alonso
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- Ethiopian Studies, Ethiopian languages, Ethiopia, Ethiopian History
- by Wolbert Smidt
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- Ethiopian Studies, Ethiopian languages, Ethiopia, Oromo
- by Ronny Meyer
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- Ethiopian Studies, Ethiopian languages

In this paper, the vocabulary of the Classical Ethiopic language is analyzed in an etymological perspective. Several strata and source languages (or language families) of loan words are identified: The common Semitic stock, Cushitic, Greek, Aramaic, Arabic, Coptic, Indian languages, Latin and Amharic. The different ways by which this lexical material found its way into Geez texts are examined according to their historical background.

- by Stefan Weninger
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- Ethiopian languages, Language contact, Classical Ethiopic, Geez language

In memory of Nikodemos Idris. Nikodemos Idris was a honest man and a competent linguist. He died in Addis Ababa 23 years ago. I met him for the first time in 1991 at the Kennedy Library. I was impressed by his dignified manner and love... more

- by Gianni Dore
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- Ethiopian Studies, Ethiopian languages, Kunama

In this presentation, I argued that Ethiosemitic languages are primarily aspect-based but developed a secondary tense system. For this purpose, I first illustrated my conceptual understanding of tense/aspect with data from Amharic. In the second part, I discussed the situation for the remaining Ethiosemitic languages on more abstract comparative data.

- by Ronny Meyer
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- Ethiopian Studies, Ethiopian languages, Tense and Aspect Systems, Gurage
- by Susanne Epple
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- Anthropology, Social Anthropology, Social Sciences, Ethiopian Studies

In the last 20 years the Ethiopian education system has rapidly expanded, leading to a 500% increase in primary school enrolment. The Ministry of Education (MoE) has sought to address a perceived decline in educational quality through nationally-mandated programmes for school improvement and teachers’ professional development . Such programmes – imported on the advice of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Department for International Development (DfID) and other development partners – are implemented “mechanistically”, without adaptation for societal or organisational cultural contexts. This article reviews empirical research from the last decade, including “grey” literature, in the school improvement (SI) and school effectiveness research (SER) traditions to draw implications for primary school principals in Ethiopia.

- by Rafael Mitchell
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- Education, Development Studies, International Development, Ethiopian Studies

Meskel is an annual celebration with spiritual grounds held in the 17thof September of each year by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and its followers. For centuries the day has been celebrated and has come to be one of the fundamental... more

The main objective of this study intends to identify significant sites that have basic acquaintances with Emperor Tewodros II (1855-1868) in Dabra Tabor and its surroundings. It was conducted in quantitative methods-literature reviews, interviews and direct observations. It attempts to identify the real place where Emperor Tewodros manufactured his cannon at Gafat, the source of raw materials used, the people involved and the technology implied in the manufactures of the cannon as well as part of the route along with the cannon was dragged to Maqdala. It also overviews other heritage potentials of the surrounding of Gafat, such as the ruins of the palaces of Emperor Yohannes IV at Semernaha and Emperor Suseneyos at Aringo Abo; historic churches in the area such as Dabra Tabor Iyesus, Hiruy Gioyrgis, Dabra Tabor Medhane and Wukro Medhane Alem.

- by Gabra AGZIAABHIR JR
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- African Studies, Ethiopian Studies, African History, Ethiopian languages

The main purpose of this research was to determine whether the Deaf of Ethiopia could understand and use literature videotaped in American Sign Language (ASL), which is related to Ethiopian Sign Language (ESL). This was investigated by means of a Video Recorded Text Test (VRTT) using both translated scripture and original literature in ASL. The results show quite low comprehension of the videotaped material by Ethiopian test subjects. Further research will be needed to investigate dialect differences among signers of ESL.

- by Linda Jordan
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- Dialectology, Deaf studies, Sociolinguistics, Ethiopian Studies

The gigantic and sumptuous Holy Trinity cathedral is Ethiopia's second-most important place of worship. It's also the burial place of the great Emperor Haile Selassie and his wife. Their huge granite tombs complete with lions' feet has... more

- by Girma A Demeke
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- Cultural History, Ethiopian Studies, Race and Ethnicity, Ethiopian languages
- by Aaron Butts
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- Ethiopian Studies, Enoch literature, Second Temple Judaism, Ethiopian languages

The socio-cultural origin of hieroglyphics and writing systems has never adequately been explained. This is mainly due to ‗argument from silence', i.e., a faith that elevates a single perspective and silences others. This paper breaks with the metaphysical presentation of ‗Egyptian' hieroglyphics. It adopts Oromo perspective with social-semiotic framework to analyses the hieroglyphics in its Ancient Black African context. Linguistic and epigraphic data pertaining to mythology are collected from secondary sources especially Horapollo (1840). The analysis and findings show Oromo-Kush concepts/lexemes of mythology correspond to the mythological, semantic, phonological and lexical values ascribed by Egyptians to the hieroglyphs. Results, thus, confirm that Oromo shows rich explanatory power in explaining the genesis and evolution of hieroglyphics, semiosis and language.

- by Dereje T A D E S S E Birbirso
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- Ethiopian Studies, Oromo history, Ethiopian languages, Africology

Amharic and Muher primarily distinguish between perfective and imperfective aspect but also developed a secondary tense system to mark past and non-past situations. This paper deals with the possible origin and further grammaticalization of this tense system in Amharic and Muher by considering supplementary data from Gǝʿǝz.
The tense opposition past vs. non-past originated in nominal main clauses, which functionally distinguish between equative clauses and existential clauses. Morphologically, they are differentiated only for non-past situations by suppletive forms for affirmative and negative clauses. With past situations, the paucity of functional and formal distinctions is reduced to one or two auxiliary verbs. This lack of variance indicates that past tense was the first category to be morphologically marked in order to distinguish between present and past situations. The past marker was then extended to imperfective verbs. Consequently, a secondary tense system was established in main clauses, in which past tense is always morphologically marked while the non-past tense can be marked by copular morphemes (Amharic) or zero (Muher).
The past marker acquired an additional function as marker of counterfactual and hypothetical clauses, and replaced other constructions in this function. The cognitive association between past tense and unreal situations in the past and future seems to result in a further grammaticalization of the past marker into an epistemic modality marker for non-actuality, i.e. for situations which are not or no longer valid at the moment of speech.

Many descriptions of Ethiosemitic languages do not pay much attention to the analysis of aspect and tense. Often, only inflectional paradigms (with translation equivalents) are provided whose designations merge functional and formal features into categories such as “past imperfect”, “relative perfect”, “compound imperfect”, which tell not much about their actual meaning.
This paper provides a comprehensive overview about aspect and tense in Ethiosemitic, and argues that modern Ethiosemitic languages are primarily aspect-based, with a secondary binary tense system distinguishing between past and non-past. This assumption results from the analysis of obligatory grammatical markers of aspect and tense in affirmative main-clause predicates through a combination of structural, typological, and historical-comparative approaches. In Ethiosemitic, temporal notions can be marked by templates, affixes, and periphrastic constructions with auxiliary verbs and copulas, or a combination of them. A temporal marker is identified by associating a morphosyntactic construction with the specific temporal notion(s) it conveys, and by contrasting it with other temporal markers regarding their morphosyntactic distribution and semantic co-occurrence constraints. Each marker is assigned a basic function by considering its possible diachronic origin and further development, contact-induced areal features, and general typological concepts.

- by Amsalu Tefera
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- Philology, Comparative Literature, Historical Linguistics, Ethiopian Studies

This article is extracted by the author from his books: Tracing the Route of Emperor Tewodros II from Quara to Maqdala…Lambert Academic Publishing (2019) and Intangible Treasures of Ethiopian Orthodox Church... VDM Verlag Dr. Müller e.K. (2010).
The paper briefly traces a number of the developments of the commemoration of Timqat (Ethiopian Epiphany) from its origins. And it follows its history within Ethiopia, but especially at Gondar. It touches upon terminologies, dates and institutions of its practices by some of the different Ethiopian Emperors, early and late, as well as by key monastic figures.
The latter portion of the article elaborates on the living struggle for the integrity of this primarily religious feast, among the religious, cultural and the secular entities, pitting the traditional accepted practices against the more secular innovative touristic elements being promoted by the Department of Culture & Tourism in Gondar, since its UNESCO world heritage status.