(Non-)specificity and case in Gorwaa: the -oo/-(h)ee suffix

Kerr, E.J.; van Alem, A.; De Sisto, M.; Wall, J.

Persistent URL of this record https://hdl.handle.net/1887/139157

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Kerr, E.J. (2020)

(Non-)specificity and case in Gorwaa: the -oo/-(h)ee suffix

Article in monograph or in proceedings

This paper presents results of a corpus study on the South-Cushitic language Gorwaa which investigated the ‘enigmatic’ -oo/-(h)ee suffix (Mous & Qorro 2010:47, Harvey 2018). Various contexts in which this nominal suffix occurs are identified, including negation, polar questions, universal quantification, adverbials, the object of comparison, and locatives. I characterise these as non-specific contexts and frame-setting topics. I compare these contexts to those in which the augment (nominal pre-prefix) is dropped in Bantu languages and, based on the empirical similarities, I discuss whether analyses of the Bantu augment can account for the Gorwaa cases. One analysis proposes that the suffix marks (non-)specificity, which I show is not fully satisfactory. Instead, I propose that what truly conditions the appearance of the suffix is the syntactic position of the nominal with respect to the verb phrase.

syntax

theoretical linguistics

African languages

Cushitic