Projectdetails

The proposed project is an expansion and continuation of ongoing research on endangered Omotic languages of Ethiopia (Dime and Zargulla) financed by the first round of NWO?s Endangered Languages Programme. It will include both a thorough documentation of one endangered Omotic language, Sheko, and a typological-comparative study of the distinction between declarative (statement-like) sentences and interrogatives (questions) within the Omotic language family. Interesting findings made during the study of the Dime and Zargulla languages motivate the project. Notably, in Zargulla one common way of forming an interrogative sentence is dropping the focus marker, which is obligatory in declarative sentences. Otherwise the interrogative and declarative clauses are identical in their constituent structure and intonation. (A similar case is reported for another east-Ometo language, Zayse in Hayward 1990. However details on the intonational differences and similarities between interrogative and declarative clauses still needs to be done). In Dime, a similar phenomenon is observed. In this language, the interrogative is formally different from the declarative only by the absence of subject agreement markers in interrogative clauses whereas these are obligatory in Declarative clauses.

Another system of modality-marking - typologically rare - is observed among the North-Ometo languages of Omotic. In these languages, the distinction between declaratives and interrogatives (of both polar and content-question-word types) is obligatorily marked on the verb through the use of different sets of morphemes which vary according to the person, number and gender of the subject. In this system, as well as in the reductive morphology system observed in Dime and Zargulla, there is no morpheme/particle that specifically designates questions and/or statements. The research team sets out to investigate the inter-categorial dependence, i.e., the use of the presence or absence of other independently motivated categories, namely of focus and agreement morphemes, to signal the distinction among members of other paradigms, i.e. the distinction between declaratives and interrogatives. We plan to examine details of these unusual phenomena in all branches of the Omotic language family and to explore their theoretical relevance to discussions in general linguistics, particularly on universals and variation in languages.

Omotic as a whole represents close to thirty minority languages most of which have not been documented. Since it is not possible to document each and every language of this family at the moment, we intend to combine a thorough study of a representative language, Sheko, from the least-studied branch of Omotic (from the so-called Dizoid group) with a typological comparative study on morpho-syntactic strategies of interrogative and declarative mood marking in Omotic. The study on Sheko will be important both for the preservation of the language and as input for the proposed typological comparison. The ongoing project on the Dime and Zargulla languages was designed in such a way that there will be two publications with the grammars of these two languages. Now, as the project progresses, some interesting similarities between the two languages emerge, e.g. the interrogative-declarative clause distinction. Thus, a project forming a synthesis between these two languages and covering the whole family will be useful also for the field of Omotic linguistics.

Artikelen

• AC Hellenthal (2007). Modality Properties of Sentence Type Markers in Sheko.. Leiden Working Papers in Linguistics. pp. 17-32. ISSN 1574-4728.

Bijdragen aan boeken

• Dr. Azeb Amha, Azeb Amha, Graziano Sava and Maarten Mous (2007). Are -a- and -o- in the indicative verb paradigms of Zargulla nominalizers?.. in: Omotic and Cushitic Languages Studies. Cologne: . pp. 1-22. ISBN ISBN 978-3-89645-482.
• Azeb Amha, R. Meyer, J. Crass (2007). Non-verbal predication in Wolaitta.. in: Deictics, Copula and Focus in the Ethiopian Convergence Area. Cologne: . pp. 99-117
• Azeb Amha, S Uhlig (2007). Koorete.. in: Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, Vol. 3. Wiesbaden: . pp. 429-431
• Azeb Amha, S Uhlig (2007). Kullo.. in: Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, Vol. 3. Wiesbaden: . pp. 447-449
• Azeb Amha, S Uhlig (2007). Maale.. in: Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, Vol. 3. Wiesbaden: . pp. 607-608
• Azeb Amha, Professor Rainer Voigt (2008). Questioning forms in Zargulla.. in: From Beyond the Mediterranean.. Aachen: . pp. 197-210. ISBN 978-3832263409 .
• Azeb Amha, J.D. Bengtson (2008). The functions of Zargulla Copula markers ?tte and ?tta.. in: In Hot Pursuit of Language in Prehistory. Amsterdam ? Philadelphia: . pp. 39-49
• Azeb Amha, S Uhlig (2009). Malo. in: Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, Vol. 3. Wiesbaden: . pp. 710-711
• Dr. A. Amha, G.J. Dimmendaal (2009). Participant marking and valence in Wolaitta.. in: Participant Marking: Case Studies from Twelve African Languages. Amsterdam - Philadelphia: . pp. 355-384
• A. Amha, A. de Voogt, I.L. Finkel (2009). On loans and additions to the Fidel (Ethiopic) script. in: The Idea of Writing: play and complexity. Leiden: . pp. 179-196
• A. Amha, L. Wetzels (2009). The morpho-syntax of negation in Zargulla. in: The Linguistics of Endangered Languages: Contributions to Morphology and Morpho-Syntax. Utrecht: . pp. 199-220
• A-C. Hellenthal, L. Wetzels (2009). Possession in Sheko. in: The Linguistics of Endangered Languages - Contributions to Morphology and Morphosyntax. Utrecht: : . pp. 
• A-C. Hellenthal, M. Matondo, F. McLaughlin, E. Potsdam (2009). The morphology of Sheko adverbial clauses. in: Selected proceedings of the 38th Annual Conference on African Linguistics: Linguistic theory and African language documentation. Somerville: . pp. 118-127