Ethiopian Languages Research Articles

The Development of the Amharic Definite Article and an Indonesian Parallel

The definite articles of Amharic and some other Ethiopian languages derive from possessives rather than demonstratives, and the origin of these articles has never been convincingly explained. The development of a possessive into a definite article in Indonesian provides a clue to the origin of the definite articles in Ethiopic.

Homelands: Interviews with Swedish Ethiopians

Homelands:Interviews with Swedish Ethiopians Lena Bezawork Grönlund (bio) The seven individuals introduced on the following pages do not speak Amharic or Oromo or any other Ethiopian language, yet they were all born in Ethiopia. They were adopted to Sweden from Ethiopia. Adopted Ethiopians may have a lot in common with Ethiopians born outside of Ethiopia, as they are both physically removed from Africa. Other Ethiopians have, however, in most cases grown up at a much closer proximity to the Ethiopian culture, while many adopted Ethiopians have not grown up with any immediate Ethiopian culture, although they may, at the same time, also have a bond to Ethiopia that Ethiopians born outside of Ethiopia do not necessarily have. Sweden has a high percentage of international (meaning non-European) adoptions. The individuals interviewed on the following pages were adopted during the 1970s. They came to a country that had not yet seen its population diversify. Several also testify that growing up in a sometimes prejudiced context was far more problematic than growing up adopted. Today Sweden has a large population of individuals born outside its borders or born to parents who were themselves born in another country. The individuals interviewed on these pages have all gone back to Ethiopia at some point. Some of them have met their biological families upon returning. They are proud of their history and origin, but at the same time, to varying degrees, acknowledge that they are also Swedish. Some define themselves as Swedish-Ethiopian, some as Swedish, and some as neither. Any such definition might not be necessary either. Today, national boundaries do not necessarily determine a person's cultural or social identity. Many, not just adoptees, see themselves as global citizens. [End Page 177] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Forest Road in Umeå, Sweden (2007) by Marie Grönlund. Viktoria Walldin Viktoria Walldin was adopted in 1973, at the age of three months. She lives in Kista, Stockholm, and works for the company White Arkitektur. GRÖNLUND: Do you use your Swedish or your Ethiopian name? Does it hold any specific significance for you? WALLDIN: I use my Swedish name, but in Ethiopia and also among Ethiopians in Sweden, I use my Ethiopian name. It has a pretty large significance for me. I would never change my name, but I don't feel connected to my Swedish or to my Ethiopian name. I make it a point to play with them a little as I want to, sort of as a protest to the fact that whatever I choose is wrong. [End Page 178] GRÖNLUND: Have you felt that it's been necessary for you to go back to Ethiopia? WALLDIN: Yes, I've always taken it for granted that I would go back someday. I've been back once when I was thirty and once when I was thirty-one. GRÖNLUND: What has your relationship to Ethiopia looked like over the years? WALLDIN: It's been very present and strong. I've always had a lot of friends from Ethiopia and Eritrea. I listen to Ethiopian music all the time and I eat injera at least once a week. GRÖNLUND: Do you define yourself as Swedish or Ethiopian? WALLDIN: Neither. I've noticed that I define myself in much the same way as second generation immigrants. My experience as adopted has been less problematic than my experience of being black in Sweden. GRÖNLUND: Some state that adoptees have a large frame of reference and a wider perspective than many others-would you agree with that? WALLDIN: I think we have a different frame of reference more than anything. It's difficult to distinguish what in my experience has had to do with me being adopted. Sometimes I meet other adoptees that I feel an instinctive solidarity or connection with, and then I realize that she (it's seldom a he) has had similar experiences, which, in turn, makes me wonder if a lot of my experiences have had to do with the fact that I am adopted. A larger frame of reference or wider perspective might have to do with us experiencing the world...

Bayesian phylogenetic analysis of Semitic languages identifies an Early Bronze Age origin of Semitic in the Near East

The evolution of languages provides a unique opportunity to study human population history. The origin of Semitic and the nature of dispersals by Semitic-speaking populations are of great importance to our understanding of the ancient history of the Middle East and Horn of Africa. Semitic populations are associated with the oldest written languages and urban civilizations in the region, which gave rise to some of the world's first major religious and literary traditions. In this study, we employ Bayesian computational phylogenetic techniques recently developed in evolutionary biology to analyse Semitic lexical data by modelling language evolution and explicitly testing alternative hypotheses of Semitic history. We implement a relaxed linguistic clock to date language divergences and use epigraphic evidence for the sampling dates of extinct Semitic languages to calibrate the rate of language evolution. Our statistical tests of alternative Semitic histories support an initial divergence of Akkadian from ancestral Semitic over competing hypotheses (e.g. an African origin of Semitic). We estimate an Early Bronze Age origin for Semitic approximately 5750 years ago in the Levant, and further propose that contemporary Ethiosemitic languages of Africa reflect a single introduction of early Ethiosemitic from southern Arabia approximately 2800 years ago.

Les cheminots éthiopiens francophones en Éthiopie. Discours et identité plurielle d’une petite communauté linguistique

Ethiopian french-speaking railwaymen in Ethiopia ; Through a qualitative analysis of interviews in French with Ethiopian rail workers, I propose to examine the links built up between French language and railway identity in a non-francophone context. The railway track between Djibouti and Addis Ababa has been built at the beginning of the 20th century by French engineers who have imported their language as a working language. Little by little, French has been imposed as a language with a professional prestige, associated with Amharic, the largest spoken language in Ethiopia. The rail workers remember that time as a myth : the myth of a “ golden age” (the sixties), associated in their speech with a pride based on francophonia, as well as on their professional and Ethiopian identity.

An investigation into the maintenance of the Maale language in Ethiopia

For centuries Maale, a minority language spoken in the Omo region of Ethiopia, has been in contact with Amharic, the dominant language and the language of wider communication in Ethiopia. In spite of this prolonged contact situation, there is very little evidence of a language shift taking place in the Maale speech community. This paper aims to give an account of the underlying social factors that have contributed to the maintenance of the Maale language. Ethnographic research, using participant‐observation, field‐notes, as well as intense interviews with key informants, was conducted in the Maale speech community. Paulston's theory of social mobilisation was applied to the findings of this research into the Maale language. An analysis of the data suggests that regional nationalism, which is isomorphic with ethnic groups in Ethiopia, such as the Maale, corresponds to ethnic nationalism of Paulston's model and is the reason why the Maale language has been maintained as a viable language in spite of centuries of political repression.

Language Policy in Ethiopia: History and Current Trends

Ethiopia, as one of the multilingual and multicultural countries, has faced the critical problem of development and implementation of language use policy that could satisfy the needs of various societies in question and contribute to their socioeconomic and socio-cultural development. The various governments that ruled Ethiopia since the reign of Emperor Tewodros II followed various language use policies that suit their political orientation. The major objective of this paper was to seek answers to the following questions: a. What type of language policy did Ethiopia have in the past? b. What is the language policy of the country today? c. How is Ethiopia implementing its language policy today? The historical survey of language use policy was made based on the secondary data (i.e. written documents) from different sources. The study on the implementation of the current language policy of the country focuses mainly on four regional states, namely Amhara, Oromiya and SNNP regional states and the Addis Ababa City Administration. Interviews were conducted with various bodies that are concerned with developing, implementing and monitoring language use policies, such as the Ethiopian Language Research Center, the Ministry of Tourism and Culture, the information and education bureaus of three regional states, namely the Amhara, Oromiya and SNNP regional states to get the necessary data. The analysis of the data shows that though there had been a change from having no written policy to a policy that encourages the development and use of all the languages in the country, the implementation showed a little change in the time from the reign of Tewodros II up to the end of the Derg. The language policies of Tewodros II, Minilek II, Hailesellasie I and the Derg regime had been similar on the ground level: they all implemented a one-language language use policy .The language use policy of the current government, however, is quite different in its approach and implementation. The implementation of a multilingual language use policy has served the country both its blessings and consequences. Ethiopian Journal of Education and Science Vol. 2 (1) 2006: pp. 37-62

“Ex Uno Plura”: the uneasy road of Ethiopian languages toward standardization

The history of Ethiopia has witnessed a constant struggle between centralizing forces and regional powers. Since 1991 the pendulum has swung clearly toward a policy of “ethnic federalism.” Nevertheless, to date only a few of the about eighty ethnic groups of Ethiopia have implemented the right to fully develop their own language and use it in education and administration, as enshrined in the new federal constitution. Actually, only Oromo (the second or possibly even the first language of the country in demographic terms) has been equipped to become a full-fledged medium in the fields of education, administration, and publication. For many other languages, reshaping has been limited to the selection of an orthography, accompanied by the introduction of the local language in the first years of the school curriculum and the production of primers or dictionaries. After a comparison with the previous language policies of the country and of neighboring Eritrea, the article discusses the problems facing the standardization and Ausbauization of Ethiopian languages: orthographic choices, the selection of the official variety to be implemented, the elaboration of modern technical vocabulary, and the production of high-quality written material.

Speech Error Elicitation and Co-occurrence Restrictions in two Ethiopian Semitic Languages

This article reports the results of speech error elicitation experiments investigating the role of two consonant co-occurrence restrictions in the productive grammar of speakers of two Ethiopian Semitic languages, Amharic and Chaha. Higher error rates were found with consonant combinations that violated co-occurrence constraints than with those that had only a high degree of shared phonological similarity or low frequency of co-occurrence. Sequences that violated two constraints had the highest error rates. The results indicate that violations of consonant co-occurrence restrictions significantly increase error rates in the productions of native speakers, thereby supporting the psychological reality of the constraints.

Ethiopian Language Policy and Health Promotion in Oromia

Ethiopian Language Policy and Health Promotion in Oromia

A tigrinya letter from an eritrean notable

tigrinya (t[schwa]gr[schwa]ňňa) is, next to amharic, the most widely spoken semitic language in ethiopia, mainly in the tigre province and in eritrea. in most respects it is closer to the orthodox semitic typology than amharic. in terms of the number of semitic language speakers in general it follows arabic and amharic and surpasses hebrew by those who speak that language indigenously.

Gendered Self-Fashioning: Adelaide Casely Hayford's Black Atlantic

times of Africans who were subject to colonialism. This interest has not only been spawned by a desire to outline a deeper literary history of the African continent than has often been assumed by its academic postcolonialist consumers, but it has also arisen out of a genuine concern for the ways in which and African agency, in particular, have been represented in the colonial and indeed, often, the postcolonial archive. So, for instance, the lay version of the story of African literary production would continue to see the beginnings of a written literary tradition in with the publication of Achebe's Things Fall Apart or, at best, in the earlier writings of Amos Tutuola and his Palm Wine Drinkard. Everything before this, so the story assumes, was oral tradition. To be sure, this version of the story has never been the official story of the discipline, but it continues to be part not only of the popular consciousness but also often of the professional unconscious. And it is for this reason that titles of scholarly articles, such as Albert Gerard's 1500 Years of Creative Writing in Black Africa published in Research in African Literatures in 1981, still come across as a little provocative, a little jarring. that article, Gerard states categorically, In historical fact, important segments of subsaharan had been introduced to writing and to written literature long before the first white man-whether explorer or philanthropist-reached her shores (147). He continues to outline the growth of a written African literary tradition in the Ge'ez language of Ethiopia, in the Arabic of the East African coast, and in eighteenth-century Swahili. Before concluding with the generation of postcolonial writers with whom we are most familiar, he pays significant attention to the nineteenthand twentieth-century development of missionary presses in colonial Africa. These presses, primarily interested in producing translations of the Bible in the indigenous languages of Africa, found it necessary at first to develop an orthography

Sound Mutations: The Morphophonology of Chaha (review)

Reviewed by: Sound mutations: The morphophonology of Chaha by Degif Petros Banksira Eugene Buckley Sound mutations: The morphophonology of Chaha. By Degif Petros Banksira. Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2000. Pp. xxxi, 332. ISBN 9027225648. $90 (Hb). This book, which grew out of the author’s 1997 dissertation from the University of Québec at Montréal, is a thorough discussion and analysis of certain aspects of the phonology and morphology of Chaha, a member of the Gurage group of Ethiopian Semitic languages. The phonological discussion focuses on matters of featural representation and distribution for which Chaha is an exceptionally rich source; the morphological discussion is restricted to a set of suffixes and clitics that mark verb agreement. The facts of each phenomenon are presented clearly before turning to a more formal analysis, easing the way for anyone seeking primarily to explore the typological data. The theoretical devices that Banksira deploys involve well-known approaches, in particular radical underspecification and distributed morphology, so that readers from a variety of perspectives should find the material accessible and of lasting value. Chaha is famous in the phonological literature for the palatalization or labialization of consonants in the stem, subject to interesting cooccurrence and directionality effects, and illustrates the autosegmental behavior of place features in a striking way (cf. John McCarthy, ‘Consonantal morphology in the Chaha verb’, WCCFL 2.176–88, 1983). This will be most familiar to some readers as the expression of inflectional suffixes, for example, nɨk’ɨm, nɨk’jɨm, nɨk’ɨmw ‘collect!’ in masculine singular, feminine singular, and impersonal forms. Similar effects, often in combination, are found throughout the morphology, such as the imperative mət’ɨs and participle mwɨt’ɨʃ ‘to break at once by pulling’. In contrast to McCarthy’s use of [– back, + high] and [+ round] as the operative features, B argues for a solution with the [– back] element /I/ but also a single element /U/ which is both [round] and [high] since labialization entails palatalization. Another particularly interesting aspect of the language, one that is extensively discussed by B, is the paradigmatic alternation between voiced and voiceless consonants, or fricatives and stops, that historically derives from a pattern of gemination (e.g. jussive -əgɨr and perfective akər ‘to raise cattle’). The alternations, which involve pairs of segments typically involved in lenition—B analyzes them as two strengthening processes, parallel to historical gemination—depend as well on the features of the following (nonadjacent) consonant, leading to interesting issues of multiple linking of features and action at a distance. By abstracting away from contexts of strengthening and relying on the autosegmental independence of the labialization and palatalization elements, B reduces the surface inventory of thirty-eight consonants to just sixteen underlying phonemes. With its exhaustive data and careful attention to the analysis of wide-ranging facts, this book is essential for anyone interested in the morphophonology of Ethiopian Semitic and is of considerable value for its general contributions to rule typology and distinctive feature theory. Eugene Buckley University of Pennsylvania Copyright © 2004 Linguistic Society of America

Long-distance vowel-consonant agreement in Harari

This article addresses the problem of coronal palatalization in Harari (Ethiopian Semitic) triggered by the 2nd person singular feminine non-perfective subject suffix/-1/. The palatalization process is unusual in two respects: (a) palatalization operates at a distance over other vowels and consonants and (b) palatalization may optionally affect more than one coronal consonant in the same stem, including prefixes. Although long-distance palatalization has been documented for other languages, it has been analyzed either as a floating affix or as consonant harmony. While Harari palatalization shares properties with both of these phenomena, it should be analyzed as neither. Harari palatalization targets a specific group of consonants and is modeled using a correspondence agreement constraint rather than aligning or spreading the palatalizing feature. This accounts for its ability to skip over intervening consonants and vowels, including front vowels and palato-alveolar consonants.

Language Contact: An Introduction (review)

Reviewed by: Language contact: An introduction by Sarah G. Thomason Peter Unseth Language contact: An introduction. By Sarah G. Thomason. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2001. Pp. vii, 310. Paper $29.95. Thomason’s book is an excellent exploration of the linguistics of language contact. She does not focus on the sociolinguistics of language contact but concentrates on the linguistic results of language contact and the processes by which they come about. She explains what she means by language contact and reminds us that language contact is the norm and not an unusual phenomenon, as some North Americans may feel. No language, she says, has developed in total linguistic isolation. A partial list of chapter titles gives some indication of topics covered: ‘Contact onsets and stability’, ‘Contact-induced change: Results’, ‘Contact-induced language change: Mechanisms’, ‘Contact languages I: Pidgins and Creoles’, ‘Contact languages II: Other mixed languages’, ‘Language death’, and ‘Endangered languages’. Two key concepts that T develops are ‘imperfect learning’ and ‘shift-induced interference’ (the index helpfully listing the many pages where these are used). T differentiates the results of language contact when there is ‘imperfect learning’ or bilingualism, pointing out several differences. For example, the ‘mixed languages’ Michif and Mednyj Aleut developed in communities where speakers controlled both languages, but pidgins arise where there is imperfect learning. T presents a number of intriguing claims that scholars will want to evaluate in light of their own research, such as evidence of language interference from a second language back into speakers’ first language, evidence against Derek Bickerton’s hypothesis as an explanation of creole genesis, the claim that codeswitching is not a major mechanism of shift-induced change, and a recognition of multiple causes in cases of contact-induced change. T’s discussion of Charles A. Ferguson’s Ethiopian Language Area (Sprachbund) should be tempered by Mauro Tosco’s ‘Is there an “Ethiopian Language Area”?’ (Anthropological Linguistics 42.329–65, 2000). With a 25-page glossary, a helpful index, and clearly written text, the book is useful as a textbook for graduate students (who have had an introduction to sociolinguistic concepts) but wrestles with enough cutting edge questions to challenge mature scholars as well. The editors have tried a format that was apparently meant to be friendlier to the less scholarly reader by avoiding the citation of sources in the text. Instead, each chapter closes with ‘Sources and further reading’, where T suggests additional useful reading on the subject and then conversationally mentions all of the authors she has quoted or alluded to in the course of the chapter, citing page numbers where applicable. This, together with nearly invisible section headings, was presumably done to make the text flow more continuously. But this is not a novel. I trust this experiment will be recognized as a failure, and the publishers will return to the established practice of [End Page 672] linking citations to their actual references in the text. A second edition should fix these problems (and one certainly does hope for an updated edition in the future), as T provokes new study to answer some of the questions this book raises and leads readers to rethink previously overlooked relevant points in the literature. Peter Unseth Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics/SIL International Copyright © 2003 Linguistic Society of America

Ethiopic Documents: Argobba Grammar and Dictionary (review)

Reviewed by: Ethiopic documents: Argobba grammar and dictionary by Wolf Leslau Gonzalo Rubio Ethiopic documents: Argobba grammar and dictionary. By Wolf Leslau. (Aethiopistische Forschungen 47.) Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1997, Pp. xv, 274. Leslau has published essential grammars, dictionaries, and studies of the vast majority of the Semitic languages of Ethiopia, as well as made diverse contributions to our understanding of other Semitic languages (such as Soqot.ri in the Modern South Arabian group) and to Semitic and Afroasiatic linguistics in general. Argobba is the South Ethiopic Semitic language spoken by the Argobbas—who are Muslims—in the regions of Ankober (North Argobba) and Harar (South Argobba). More than half a century ago, South Argobba became extinct and was replaced by Oromo in Harar. In his lifetime of research, L has had diverse opportunities to work with different speakers of North Argobba. Unfortunately, the only speaker of South Argobba to whom L had access in the mid 1940s had no teeth, which put an end to L’s work on that dialect. Nevertheless, several dialectal variants can still be distinguished based on early linguistic surveys of Argobba (132–35). The first part of the volume (1–135) is devoted to a thorough descriptive grammar of Argobba, including an especially useful chapter (116–31) on isoglosses shared by Argobba and Amharic as well as linguistic features that differentiate both Ethiopic languages. The second part includes reprints of four previously published articles: on the old descriptions of Argobba published by Seetzen and Lefebvre (137–45); on Argobba vocabulary (147–57); on Arabic loanwords in this language (159–62); and L’s early article with a preliminary description of the same language (163–85). The third part presents Argobba- English (188–227) and English-Argobba (228–51) dictionaries. The volume closes with indexes of the Argobba and English terms discussed. In spite of its many virtues, this work would have been even more useful if a chapter on syntax (in addition to the overall section on clauses and conjunctions, 98–110) and a selection of Argobba texts had only been included, as Stefan Weninger has pointed out in his recent review (Orientalistische Literaturzeitung 95.63–65, 2000). In light of the pace at which many of these languages spoken in Ethiopia and other African countries are dying and being substituted by national official languages (Amharic, Arabic, Hausa, etc.), swift fieldwork should be urged in order to document and archive the actual linguistic artifacts of their speakers (oral traditions, improvised speeches, folklore, etc.). In sum, as expected, this work lives up to the standards of excellence set by L in his long and exceedingly fruitful career as a leading scholar in Semitic linguistics, and he should be thanked and congratulated [End Page 869] for constantly improving and enhancing our knowledge of the linguistic wealth of Ethiopia. Gonzalo Rubio Ohio State University Copyright © 2001 Linguistic Society of America

Epenthesis positioning and syllable contact in Chaha

If an epenthetic vowel is required for syllable structure reasons, its position in a string may be determined by ‘directionality’, with the construction of maximal syllables beginning from a word edge (Ito 1986, 1989, Farwaneh 1995). Arabic has served as the prime example of directionality, but other Semitic languages have also played a role, such as Harari (Kenstowicz & Kisseberth 1979, Ito 1986) and Tigrinya (Denais 1990, Berhane 1991). In these languages the sonority of heterosyllabic (coda–onset) consonant sequences neither conditions insertion nor affects the site of the epenthetic vowel. Epenthesis is triggered by constraints on maximal syllable size, and the position of the epenthetic vowel is determined by directionality. As a result, violations of SYLLABLE CONTACT abound. Syllable contact can be defined as the requirement that a coda be more sonorous than a following onset (Murray & Vennemann 1983, Vennemann 1988). In this article, I provide new data from Chaha, an Ethiopian Semitic language of the Gurage family, which demonstrate an intriguing difference from Semitic languages such as Harari, Tigrinya and Arabic.

The pragmatics of greeting, felicitation and condolence expressions in four Ethiopian languages*

In this paper, I intend to make a comparative description of the structural patterns and pragmatics of greeting, felicitation and condolence expressions of four Ethiopian languages. The languages are Amharic, Oromo, Wolayita and Nuer; the first three belong to the Semitic, Cushitic and Omotic sub-groups of the Afroasiatic phylum respectively, whereas the last one, Nuer, belongs to the Nilotic sub-group of the Nilo-Saharan phylum. The purpose of the description is to see whether there are features in the expressions to be examined which are shared by these languages and also whether the the shared features distinguish the languages as a whole from other languages outside the Ethiopian region.' Since the languages represent all the four genetic groups in the country, any shared features

Issues in Ethiopian Language Policy and Education

In Ethiopia, the overthrow of the military government of the Dergue in 1991 ushered in a period of political reforms which are still in progress, including a policy of recognition of a range of indigenous languages other than the traditionally dominant national language, Amharic. This paper addresses the question of language planning and education in this pluralist, multilingual state. It presents a profile of some of the many languages in use within the country, both indigenous and foreign, and briefly considers their historical role in the education system, touching on the associations of Amharic and the classical Ethiopian language Giiz with Orthodox 'Coptic' Christianity, and of Arabic with Islam. An evaluative appraisal of the new policy is offered which, whilst acknowledging the enlightened nature of the reforms in light of current political and linguistic concerns for 'linguistic human rights' (Phillipson & SkutnabbKangas, 1995), considers a number of major obstacles to the implementation of the po...

Wolf Leslau: Fifty years of research: selection of articles on Semitic, Ethiopian Semitic and Cushitic. xlv, 503 pp. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1988. DM 98.

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Wolf Leslau: Fifty years of research: selection of articles on Semitic, Ethiopian Semitic and Cushitic. xlv, 503 pp. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1988. DM98.

Wolf Leslau: Fifty years of research: selection of articles on Semitic, Ethiopian Semitic and Cushitic. xlv, 503 pp. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1988. DM98.