Verbal derivation in Kambaata (Cushitic), with a focus on the encoding of noncausal/causal alternations

Abstract

Kambaata, a Cushitic language of Ethiopia, has a rich verbal morphology. This paper first sets out to describe its productive verbal derivation processes, i.e. the forms and functions of the causative, the passive and the middle (autobenefactive) derivation. In the second part, the study starts from Haspelmath’s (1993) list of 31 verbal concepts to determine the preferred morphological strategies to express noncausal/causal alternations. The analysis shows that the causative strategy is predominant in Kambaata, but that the decausative strategy follows closely behind. If the whole documented lexicon including the numerous ideophones are considered, the equipollent strategy is a very important third strategy. Kambaata has only a single labile verb but otherwise distinguishes consistently between transitive and intransitive verbs. Finally, two suppletive verb pairs are found in the list: ‘die/kill’ and ‘finish (intr./tr.)’.