T’ambaaro phonology

This article describes the phonology of T’ambaaro, a Highland East Cushitic language of the Afro-asiatic phylum spoken in southwest Ethiopia. The language has twenty-four consonant phonemes, and five oral vowels and one nasal vowel whose phonemic status is not safely established. The oral vowels are typical Cushitic vowels occurring short and long. In T’ambaaro, except the phonemes/h/ and /f/ which never occur geminate, the rest of the consonant phonemes appeargeminate, but that is only in word medial position. The palatal nasal and the voiceless, alveo-palatal affricate never occur as a single consonant, but only as a geminate consonant. Gemination and vowel length are phonemic in the language. Consonant cluster are allowed only in word medial position with a maximum of two consonants. Some consonants and vowels appear in free variation, but it is very difficult to formulate a systematic rule that captures the phenomenon. The phonology has phonological processes such as assimilation, epenthesis, deletion, and metathesis. T’ambaaro is not a tonal language, but seems a pitch accent language which is difficult to establish a rule for at this stage

A grammar of Konso

This book presents a description of Konso, a Cushitic language spoken by about 250,000 speakers in South-West Ethiopia. It presents analyses of the phonology, morphology and syntax of the language. Aspects of pragmatics including greetings and leave-taking expressions, interjections and ideophones as well as the link between naming of week days and how these relate to the distribution ofbig markets in the Konso area are discussed. A sample of two texts and a list of singular-plural pairs of nouns with their corresponding gender values is included.The data underlying the analyses are based on the author’s native speaker intuition and fieldwork in Konso area where other native speakers are consulted.Konso phonology is characterised by having a full set of labial, alveolar, palatal and uvular implosives but no ejectives which contrasts with what is observed in geographically and some genetically related languages. The language has a rich morphology as evidenced in its nominal and verbal inflection. The work accounts the intricate link between gender and number marking in nominals,it explicates variation in number- and person-marking in affirmative and negative verb paradigms and presents analyses of nominal and verbal derivation.Various clause-linking strategies and the way these relate to person markingof the subject are examined. Word order in simple as well as complex clausesis discussed.A Grammar of Konso is of interest to specialists in Cushitic and Afroasiatic languages for historical-comparative purposes. It will be a valuable source for typological comparison and for testing theoretical claimsLEI Universiteit LeidenLanguage Use in Past and Presen

A Preliminary Study of the Practices of Personal Naming in Konso

This article presents the personal naming practices in Konso, a Cushitic-speaking people in southwest Ethiopia. Personal naming in Konso can be formal or informal. Formal personal names are given during a ceremony called sookata, while informal names are given either before or after the sookata ceremony. This article argues that the Konso have family names in their naming practice. This article analyses the typology of personal names in Konso and shows an intrinsic interplay between poetry, songs and personal names. The unitary state policies of the previous regimes and the proliferation of religions have resulted in trends in which people give Amharic or religious names to their children or replace indigenous Konso personal names either by Amharic or religious names. The new trends of changing indigenous names into Amharic and/or religious (mainly biblical) names compromise the knowledge and role of the Konso language as an expression of culture and an identity marker

The pragmatics of blessings in Gedeo (south Ethiopia)

The Gedeo, a Cushitic-speaking group in southern Ethiopia, have a long tradition of blessing expressions ingrained in their native cosmology. The pragmatics of the Gedeo people's blessing utterances are examined in this article. Pertinent information was gathered from knowledgeable senior community members through interviews, and focus group discussions conducted between November 2020 and December 2021. The technique of gathering data also included non-participant observations. We have thematically analysed the data based on the situations in which the blessings are expressed and used to convey the intended meanings in the specific contexts, The expressive functions of blessings in Gedeo vary from context to context as would be expected, but, interestingly, they frequently revolve around praising Mageno ‘the Creator,’ shielding fellow community members from harm, boosting the land's productivity, safeguarding the environment, and upholding the general well-being of the community. We conclude that, while blessings have diverse meanings depending on the context in which they are expressed, their overall purpose is to preserve communal harmony and order

The semantics of pluractionals and punctuals in Konso (Cushitic, Ethiopia)

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 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.Language Use in Past and Presen

Transfer of Swahili ‘until’ in contact with East African languages

Swahili has transformed the noun mpaka ‘boundary, border’ into a function word ‘until’, which has successfully spread to many other East African languages with locative and temporal readings. The grammaticalisation originated in a N-N construction without an associative ‘of’ interpreted as limiting the action adverbially. The main function is in the time interpretation of ‘until’. I provide an overview of this transfer in East Africa by looking at a large number of languages and argue that parallel independent grammaticalisation is not what is at stake but rather transfer of the function word and the preposition-like function.Descriptive and Comparative Linguistic

Subject clitics in Konso

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 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.Language Use in Past and Presen

The practices and dynamics of Baalle, an indigenous governance system of Gedeo (Southwest Ethiopia)

This article comprehensively examines the governance quest of the Gedeo people (a Cushitic-speaking people in southern Ethiopia) and their itineraries in building an egalitarian indigenous governance system locally called Baalle. The Baalle governance system is based on the distribution of political powers and social responsibilities across nine grades, each with a life span of eight years. Our analysis focuses on three aspects of the Balle system: essence, practices, and dynamics. We have analyzed the roles of the state in the dynamics of the Baalle system by considering the different historical phases of the Ethiopian state: the Imperial regime (1889-1974), the Derg regime (1974-1991), and the EPRDF regime (1991-2018). Data were collected through narrative interviews, observation, and focus group discussions from Baalle leaders and cultural consultants during several fieldworks carried out in 2018, 2019, and 2020. Based on our findings, we argue that Baalle is a complex indigenous governance system of Gedeo’s social structure that influenced their economic, social, political and spiritual life. Moreover, given the complexity of the Baalle system, the presence of governance institution (Songo) in all the three autonomous regional territories of the Gedeo, the practices of sustainable economy that combined forestry with agriculture, and the presence of dense population, we argue that the Gedeo qualify for being a state. Since the incorporation of the Gedeo into the Ethiopian state in the late 19th century, Baalle has been structurally subordinated to the central government, and its roles in the day-to-day life of the local community have significantly declined. Although the post-1991 political developments of the EPRDF made attempts to protect Baalle from extinction, its role is still reduced to playing only supplementary roles to state conflict resolution institutions and instruments

“Tree Is life”: The rising of dualism and the declining of mutualism among the Gedeo of southern Ethiopia

This study investigates ecocultural discourses and practices among the Gedeo in southern Ethiopia within the contexts of globalizing commodification of nature, successive governmental extractivist and conservationist discourses, and increasingly influential colonial present religious systems. Our analysis illustrates ways in which indigenous Gedeo understandings of reciprocal ecological coexistence are rooted in cultural knowledge, values, and customs. However, competing forms of knowledge introduced in the form of governance, commerce, conservation, and religion have resulted in an in-process shift from traditionally, spiritually maintained mutualist human–environment relations to dualist commodified relations, particularly among youth, and dualist expert-reliant conservationist relations emanating from governmental bodies. By examining a traditional meaning system during an explicit process of erasure, the study points to ways local meanings of, and narratives about, ecocultural interactions are produced and communicated within wider contexts of power, and illustrates tensions among traditional, governmental, capitalist, conservationist, and religious environmental ontologies in everyday and institutional practice