In the literature on Cushitic languages, ideophones have often only been treated in a cursory manner. A little explored problem of the synchronic analysis concerns their word class status: do they ...constitute a word class on their own, or should they be subsumed under another word class and if so, under which one? The study of Kambaata ideophones presented here shows that there are valid arguments both for analyzing them as a separate word class and as a subclass of verbs. Based on a language-internal definition of the ideophone word class, features of its phonology, phonotactics and stress marking are discussed. The section on morphosyntax shows in which syntactic functions ideophones are used, clarifies the status of their support verbs (‘say’ and ‘do’) and considers the argument structure of ideophones. The section on ideophone-related word formation investigates which derivational processes take ideophonic inputs, describes the functions of reduplication and illustrates the significance of compounding and conversion for the formation of ideophones. The discussion of the semantics of ideophones is followed by preliminary information about the frequency of ideophones across text types. Finally, the use of ‘say’ as a quotative verb in reported speech constructions is explored, and it becomes clear that the line between ideophone constructions with ‘say’ and reported interjections is not always easy to draw.
This paper is an in-depth study of the expression of comparison in Kambaata, a Highland East Cushitic language of Ethiopia. It discusses not only quantitative comparison, i.e. comparison of relative ...and absolute inequality and comparison of equality, but also analyses the morphology and syntax of expressions of qualitative comparison, i.e. comparison of similarity. Apart from predicative constructions, the analysis takes into account attributive comparative, superlative, equative and similative constructions. In the comparative construction (lit. 'X is tall from Y'), the standard of comparison is marked by the ablative case, as in most languages spoken in the Horn of Africa. Kambaata distinguishes between two superlative constructions, one of which is based on the comparative construction ('X is tall from all'), while the other is characterised by a locative standard of comparison ('X is tall among Y'). Furthermore, Kambaata has two equative constructions. The first is based on the similative construction ('X is tall like Y'); the second is a periphrastic construction ('X is tall to the extent Y'). The paper argues that the enclitic morpheme which marks the standard of comparison in the similative construction originates from a noun meaning 'manner'.
Recent SSU rDNA sequence data of the paleoceanographically important planktonic foraminifer species
Globigerinoides ruber showed the presence of two distinct phylogenetic lineages within this ...morphotaxon. The first lineage (
G. ruber sensu stricto) includes the genetic type that corresponds to pink-pigmented
G. ruber, as well as three of the five genetic types recognised in individuals of “white”
G. ruber (labelled Type Ia, Type Ib and Type Ib2). The remaining two genetic types of G
. ruber (white), labelled as Types IIa and IIb, represent a distinct phylogenetic lineage (
G. ruber sensu lato), closer related to
Globigerinoides conglobatus. Here we combine molecular clock and morphometric analyses to shed light on the taxonomical and phylogenetic significance of the presence of these two distinct lineages within the morphotaxon
G. ruber. A molecular clock approach suggests a rather recent origin of the
G. ruber sensu stricto lineage in the late Miocene and a split between
G. ruber (pink) and the “white” genotypes Ia, Ib and Ib2 around 6
Ma. This indicates that all records of
G. ruber prior to the
G. ruber “pseudo-extinction” event at 8
Ma refer to an unrelated species (G
lobigerinoides subquadratus) and that the
G. ruber (pink) lineage is substantially older than the first appearance of the pink pigmentation in the fossil record. In order to establish the taxonomic identity of the
G. ruber sensu lato phylogenetic lineage, we conducted morphometric measurements on (i) pictures of specimens with known genetic identity, (ii) shells from sediment samples, (iii) specimens assigned to
G. ruber and
Globigerinoides elongatus from a museum collection and (iv) pictures of
G. ruber sensu lato morphotype from recent literature. Our results suggest that specimens of Type IIa that represent the
G. ruber sensu lato lineage are morphologically identical to the concept of the
G. ruber sensu lato morphotype in recent literature, and that these morphotypes are consistent with the species definition of
Globigerinoides elongatus. We therefore propose that the name
G. elongatus (sensu d'Orbigny) should be reinstated and used for the genetic Type IIa. The name
G. ruber (sensu d'Orbigny) should be reserved for specimens of the pink chromotype. Specimens of Types Ia, Ib and Ib2 require new species names, but our data are not sufficient to provide a morphological character separating these species from their sister
G. ruber (pink), other than by their shell colouration.
Full text
Available for:
GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
This paper introduces the special issue of Linguistic Typology at the Crossroads, entitled “Ideophones: honing in on a descriptive and typological concept”, edited by Aimée Lahaussois, Julie Marsault ...and Yvonne Treis. The contributions, which are the result of work by a research group on ideophones and interjections, funded by the Labex EFL in Paris, are mainly descriptive papers with a typological perspective, informed by the more than 20 years of ideophone research following the landmark publication edited by Voeltz & Kilian-Hatz in 2001. After introducing the field and briefly presenting each contribution, we discuss issues in ideophone research that the articles gathered here contribute to, namely whether or not ideophones make up a clear-cut word class in different languages, and how different contributors interpret their relationship with onomatopoeia and interjections. We also present an overview of the primary syntactic uses of ideophones in the different languages and highlight the morphological processes attested for ideophonization and deideophonization, which are still under-investigated.
As the patronymic Ethiopian names do not match the widespread GIVEN NAME – FAMILY NAME pattern of the Western world, the names of Ethiopian authors are often quoted inconsistently and inappropriately ...by scholars in the field of linguistic typology and historical-comparative linguistics. After a brief introduction into the Ethiopian naming conventions and a summary of recurrent issues in quoting Ethiopian authors in scientific publications, we propose a number of general citation rules that would help overcome these issues and do justice to the Ethiopian naming conventions. The rules are offered as an addendum to the Generic Style Rules for Linguistics. Finally, the article demonstrates how reference management software can be manipulated so that it correctly applies the Ethiopian naming conventions.
This volume explores the use of demonstratives in the structuring and management of discourse, and their role as engagement expressions, from a crosslinguistic perspective. It seeks to establish ...which types of discourse-related functions are commonly encoded by demonstratives, beyond the well-established reference-tracking and deictic uses, and also investigates which members of demonstrative paradigms typically take on certain functions. Moreover, it looks at the roles of non-deictic demonstratives, that is, members of the paradigm which are dedicated e.g. to contrastive, recognitional, or anaphoric functions and do not express deictic distinctions. Several of the studies also focus on manner demonstratives, which have been little studied from a crosslinguistic perspective. The volume thus broadens the scope of investigation of demonstratives to look at how their core functions interact with a wider range of discourse functions in a number of different languages. The volume covers languages from a range of geographical locations and language families, including Cushitic and Mande languages in Africa, Oceanic and Papuan languages in the Pacific region, Algonquian and Guaykuruan in the Americas, and Germanic, Slavic and Finno-Ugric languages in the Eurasian region. It also includes two papers taking a broader typological approach to specific discourse functions of demonstratives.
Africa has up until now been considered a continent where switch-reference systems are extremely rare. This study shows that there is a confined area in the South of Ethiopia where many Omotic ...languages and a few Cushitic languages have fully grammaticalised switch-reference 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.
Kambaata, a Cushitic language of Ethiopia, has a productive, word-class changing approximation derivation. The process marked by the suffix -lab takes adjectival, nominal and verbal roots as inputs ...and generates approximatives that belong to the adjective word class, whose members are characterised by their agreement behaviour in the NP. The meaning of the Kambaata approximatives is dependent on the word class of its input. Deadjectival approximatives express a vague, attenuated degree of a property, deverbal forms convey similarity or near-identity in manner, while denominal forms express similarity in nature or function and create ad hoc categories. The sub-meanings are subsumable under an overarching meaning of approximation, understood as deviation from a prototypical realisation. The source of the -lab suffix is a verb ‘resemble’. From a Cushitic perspective, the Kambaata approximative derivation is unique of its kind. No related language is known to have approximative morphology.
While comparative constructions have been extensively studied in the past decades, the expression of equality and similarity has so far attracted little attention in the typological literature. The ...fifteen contributions assembled in this volume study similative and equative constructions in typologically and genetically distant languages, albeit with a focus on Africa, and from a range of perspectives. Purely synchronically oriented case studies are supplemented by contributions that also shed light on the diachronic development of similative and equative constructions in language contact situations. Sources of similative morphemes and lexically expressed concepts of likeness are examined, and little-known multifunctionality patterns and grammaticalisation targets of similative morphemes - such as purpose clause markers, modality morphemes and markers of glottonyms - are discussed. Based on a sample of 119 languages worldwide, a new typology of equative constructions is proposed. The book should be of interest to typologists, semanticists, specialists of grammaticalization, historical linguistics and syntax.
PDF
