Iraqw has a number of morphological means to derive nouns from verbs. All of these can develop specific meanings but it is the nominalisation that expresses the action of the verb that allows for... Show moreIraqw has a number of morphological means to derive nouns from verbs. All of these can develop specific meanings but it is the nominalisation that expresses the action of the verb that allows for the expression of arguments, irrespective of the actual nominalisation morpheme. These arguments (patient or agent) can be expressed as possessive elements in noun phrases. Despite the fact that the deverbal noun is fully nominal in morphological characteristics, the deverbal noun can occur in constructions in which its semantic argument (patient or agent) is expressed as an object to the main verb. There are four constructions to integrate a deverbal noun in a clause. We provide an overview of the formal characteristics of these constructions. Show less
Iraqw has a number of preverbal elements that are compounded to the verb and some of these have functions similar to an applicative.These compounds are not fully productive and are prone to... Show moreIraqw has a number of preverbal elements that are compounded to the verb and some of these have functions similar to an applicative.These compounds are not fully productive and are prone to lexicalisations.One of them, hara, doubles as a preposition. The grammaticalisation of a number of these preverbal elements allows us to study the process of development from preposition (and other independent elements) to verbal applicative marker. Show less
Cushitic languages have a number of interesting properties in the category of number. None of these are valid for all Cushitic languages. Number is not obligatorily expressed in various Cushitic... Show moreCushitic languages have a number of interesting properties in the category of number. None of these are valid for all Cushitic languages. Number is not obligatorily expressed in various Cushitic languages which have a general number form that is unspeci^ed for number. Nonetheless morphological number marking in the noun is often complex in two ways: there are many competing lexically determined morphological markers and many di^erent constellations of derived singular and derived plurals.Number and gender show complex interactions in Cushitic. Number formatives impose gender and hence di^erent gender values for di^erent number forms in the same lexeme, sometimes apparent gender polarity (singular and plural having opposite values for gender). A theoretically challenging property of some languages is that that there is a third gender, here labelled ‘plural’ because it takes the agreement morphology of 3PL pronouns. Show less
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... Show moreThis 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. Show less
Event number is an important grammatical category in Konso in addition to nominal number. Event number has two main values, singular and plural, which can be expressed by two distinct verbal... Show moreEvent number is an important grammatical category in Konso in addition to nominal number. Event number has two main values, singular and plural, which can be expressed by two distinct verbal morphological processes, punctual and pluractional. The interpretation of a sentence in terms of event number is arrived at through an intricate interplay of lexical meaning, the core meaning of the number marking morphology and the separate system of aspect. Each verb has its intrinsic values for event number associated with its systematic lexical distinctions in terms of event number. Event number includes both event internal and event external situations. The meaning of the markers of singular and plural event number has a primary and a secondary value. There are several situations in which the primary meaning is excluded and the secondary meaning is the only possible interpretation. The pluractional is fully productive while the punctual is not productive and has interesting structural morphological restrictions. Show less
In Konso (Cushitic, Ethiopia), a sentence contains an inflectional element separate from the verb. This is in essence a subject clitic and a sentence type indicator. Its position is at some place... Show moreIn Konso (Cushitic, Ethiopia), a sentence contains an inflectional element separate from the verb. This is in essence a subject clitic and a sentence type indicator. Its position is at some place in the sentence before the verb and indicative of information structure. The article provides a first full analysis of the basic properties of the subject clitic. Show less
