An Overview of Central Dizin Phonology and Morphology

196 Pages·2016·1.07 MB·English

by  Beachy Marvin Dean.

AN OVERVIEW OF CENTRAL DIZIN PHONOLOGY AND MORPHOLOGY

by
MARVIN DEAN BEACHY

Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of
The University of Texas at Arlington in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements
for the Degree of

MASTER OF ARTS IN LINGUISTICS

THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT ARLINGTON
December 2005
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My thanks go first to the Maji Bethel Parish and the South-West Bethel Synod of the
Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus for inviting me to coordinate the Dizin
translation work and to SIL Ethiopia for assigning me to that role.
I am grateful also for the helpfulness and cooperation of the following government
agencies in Ethiopia: the Maji Woreda Office, the Bench-Maji Zone Department of Culture
Information and Tourism, and the Southern Nations Nationalities and Peoples Regional
State Youth Sports and Culture Bureau.
I have been fortunate to have an exceptional M.A. committee: Donald A. Burquest,
David J. Silva, and Peter E. Unseth. Thank you, committee members, for providing
encouragement and helpful advice on the analysis and presentation of the data. Special
thanks to Dr. Unseth for lending your expertise on the languages of Ethiopia and for wading
through some very rough drafts and providing direction.
Thank you to all who have gone before me and have made your research on Dizin
and related languages available, especially James Keefer, Edward Allen, Mary Breeze, and
Aklilu Yilma. I hope that this work can be as helpful to you and other researchers as your
work has been to me.
Thank you to my beloved wife, Suzanne, and our children, Atticus, Cedric, William,
and Hadassah, for traveling with me to a remote, exotic, tropical paradise, and for
understanding the need to see less of me, during these months of writing and rewriting.
Additional thanks to Suzanne for editing all the pages of this thesis and for carrying a heavy
load in our household during this busy time.
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Thank you to all of our supporters, including individuals and churches, who have had
a part in making this possible. May this research lead to the results you had in mind when
you prayed and gave of your finances.
Finally, thank you to all of the Dizin speakers who cooperated with my methods of
linguistic discovery. You have always done your best to answer my strange questions, and I
am grateful.
Many others have also had a part in the completion of this thesis. Know that I am
grateful, even if you are not mentioned in these pages.
This research was conducted initially under UTA Institutional Review Board (IRB)
Protocol #03.282, and was completed under IRB Protocol #05.223.

November 16, 2005
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ABSTRACT

AN OVERVIEW OF CENTRAL DIZIN PHONOLOGY AND MORPHOLOGY
Publication No.______
Marvin Dean Beachy, M.A.

The University of Texas at Arlington, 2005
Supervising Professor: Donald A. Burquest
Dizin (Dizi) is an Omotic language spoken in Southwest Ethiopia with three main
dialects. This thesis focuses on Central Dizin phonology and morphology, but includes some
data from Eastern Dizin and Western Dizin.
Prolonged language contact with Amharic has affected the sound system of Dizin
and numerous Amharic words have been borrowed.
Features of the Dizin sound system include glottalized consonants, syllabic nasals,
lengthened vowels, three phonemic tone levels and contour tones. Western Dizin has
phonemic retroflex consonants. The glottal stop is analyzed as phonemic word initially
before nasals, but not phonemic elsewhere.
Dizin is polysynthetic and more agglutinative than fusional. Dizin has a stacked
(compound) case system, a switch reference marker on medial verbs, a complex system of
relativizing verbs, and interdependent verbs. Most of the words that modify nouns are
understood to be relativized verbs.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................................................. ii
ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................. iv
LIST OF FIGURES ...................................................................................................... xi
LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................................ xii
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ........................................................................................ xiv

Chapter

1. INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................... . . 1

1.1 Overview of Thesis .......................................................................................... . . 1

1.2 The Names of the Language .............................................................................. . 1

1.3 Number of Dizin Speakers ................................................................................. 2

1.4 Where the Dizi Live ........................................................................................... 2

1.5 Language Classification ..................................................................................... 4

1.6 Dizin Dialects ................................................................................................ 5

1.7 A Few Pieces of Dizi History ............................................................................. 6

1.8 The Current Sociolinguistic Situation ................................................................ 9

1.9 Previous Linguistic Research ..............................................................................10

1.10 Research Methodology .......................................................................................12

1.11 Notation .............................................................................................................13

2. DIZIN PHONOLOGY ................................................................................................16

2.1 Phonology, Orthography, and the Ethiopic Script ...............................................16

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2.2 Consonants .........................................................................................................16

2.2.1 Voiceless Stops ......................................................................................17

2.2.2 Voiced Stops .........................................................................................23

2.2.3 Affricates ...............................................................................................24

2.2.4 Fricatives ...............................................................................................26

2.2.5 Nasals ................................................................................................ 29

2.2.6 Liquids ................................................................................................ 30

2.2.7 Glides ................................................................................................ 31

2.2.8 Lengthened Consonants .........................................................................32

2.3 Vowels ...............................................................................................................32

2.3.1 Vowel Variations ...................................................................................38

2.4 Syllable Structure ...............................................................................................38

2.5 Interpretation of Ambiguous Items ................................................................ 41

2.5.1 Affricates or CC Sequences? ................................................................ 41

2.5.2 Prenasalized Units or Sequences? ..........................................................42

2.5.3 Palatalized and Labialized Consonants or /CG/ Sequences
or /CV/ Sequences? ...........................................................................42

2.5.4 Diphthongs, VG Sequences, or VV Sequences? ................................ 45

2.5.5 Adjacent Non-High Vowels or Diphthongs? ..........................................46

2.5.6 Lengthened Vowels or Identical VV Sequences? ................................ 47

2.6 Stress .................................................................................................................47

2.7 Tone ...................................................................................................................47

2.7.1 Extra-High and Extra-Low Tones: Intonational Phenomena ...................50

2.7.2 Tone Minimal Pairs ...............................................................................50

3. DIZIN GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES AND MORPHOLOGY .............................52

3.1 Morphological Typology ....................................................................................52

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3.2 Prototypical Shapes of Dizin Words ................................................................ 52

3.3 A Comparison of Pronouns, Possessive Prefixes, and PNG Affixes ....................53

3.4 The Grammatical Categories of Dizin Words .....................................................54

3.5 Nouns .................................................................................................................54

3.5.1 What Belongs in the Noun Root? .........................................................54

3.5.2 Possessive Pronominal Prefixes ...........................................................56

3.5.3 Definiteness Prefixes ...........................................................................58

3.5.4 Derivational 'possessor_of' Suffixes .....................................................59

3.5.5 Demonstrative Suffixes ........................................................................59

3.5.6 Plurals ................................................................................................60

3.5.7 Gender Markers ...................................................................................62

3.5.8 The Case System .................................................................................63

3.5.8.1 Nominative Case ................................................................66

3.5.8.2 Accusative Case ................................................................ 66

3.5.8.3 Dative Case .........................................................................69

3.5.8.4 Genitive Case ......................................................................71

3.5.8.5 Cases of Location ................................................................75

3.5.8.5.1 Locative Case ......................................................76

3.5.8.5.2 Inessive Case ......................................................77

3.5.8.5.3 Allative Case .......................................................78

3.5.8.5.4 Adessive Case .....................................................79

3.5.8.6 Instrumental Case ................................................................79

3.5.8.7 Vocative Case ................................................................ 81

3.5.9 Interrogatives on Nouns .......................................................................83

3.5.10 Proper Nouns .......................................................................................83

3.5.11 Subject PNG Proclitics on Nouns .........................................................84
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3.5.12 A Prosodic Suffix ................................................................................84

3.5.13 Connectors ...........................................................................................84

3.6 Pronouns ............................................................................................................86

3.6.1 Interrogative Pronouns .........................................................................88

3.7 Demonstratives ................................................................................................ 89

3.8 Verbs .................................................................................................................90

3.8.1 Stative Verbs .......................................................................................91

3.8.2 Derivational Suffixes and Valence .......................................................92

3.8.2.1 Causative .............................................................................92

3.8.2.2 Passive ................................................................................93

3.8.2.3 Reciprocal ...........................................................................94

3.8.3 Affixes on Common Independent Verbs ..............................................95

3.8.3.1 Person, Number, and Gender Suffixes ................................96

3.8.3.2 Tense/Aspect Suffixes .........................................................98

3.8.3.2.1 Past (Present on Copulas): -∅ ...........................1..00

3.8.3.2.2 Present: -k .........................................................1..01

3.8.3.2.3 Future: -i ...........................................................1..02

3.8.3.2.4 Imperfective;

Subtypes: Progressive and Habitual: -dɛ .......1..03

3.8.3.2.5 Perfect: -ki ........................................................1..03

3.8.4 Affixes on Distant Past Independent Verbs ........................................1..04

3.8.5 The Suffix on Negated Lexical Verbs ................................................1..05

3.8.6 Affixes on Verbs of Interrogative Clauses ..........................................1..06

3.8.7 Affixes on Imperative and Jussive Verbs ............................................1..09

3.8.8 Affixes on Dependent Verbs ..............................................................1..13

3.8.8.1 Affixes on Medial Verbs ....................................................1..13
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3.8.8.1.1 'Different Subject' Constructions .......................1..14

3.8.8.1.2 The 'Same Subject Succession' Construction .....1..16

3.8.8.1.3 'Same Subject Overlap' Constructions ...............1..17

3.8.8.2 Affixes on Infinitive Verbs ................................................1..18

3.8.8.3 Affixes on Gerunds ...........................................................1..20

3.8.8.4 Affixes on Conditional Verbs ............................................1..20

3.8.8.5 Affixes on Temporal Verbs ...............................................1..21

3.8.9 Affixes on Interdependent Verbs ........................................................1..22

3.8.10 Affixes on Relativized Verbs .............................................................1..24

3.8.10.1 Overt Relativizer Constructions .........................................1..25

3.8.10.1.1 Overt Relativizer Constructions Without
Tense/Aspect Marking ................................ 125

3.8.10.1.2 Overt Relativizer Constructions With
Perfect Marking ............................................1..27

3.8.10.1.3 Overt Relativizer Constructions With
Imperfective Marking ................................ 127

3.8.10.2 Covert Relativizer Constructions .......................................1..28

3.8.10.2.1 Covert Relativizer Constructions Without
Tense/Aspect Marking ................................ 129

3.8.10.2.2 Covert Relativizer Constructions With
Perfect Marking ............................................1..29

3.8.10.2.3 Covert Relativizer Constructions With
Imperfective Marking ................................ 130

3.8.10.2.4 Covert Relativizer Constructions With
Imperfective and Perfect Marking ................1..30

3.8.10.3 Analyzing Words That Resemble Adjectives as
Relativized Stative Verbs ..............................................1..31

3.8.10.3.1 Analyzing [d͡ʒɛjʒ] 'good/fine' as a
Relativized Stative Verb ...............................1.32

3.8.10.3.2 Relativized Numeric Stative Verbs? ..................1..33
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3.9 Adjectives ........................................................................................................1..35

3.9.1 Ordinary Adjectives ...........................................................................1..35

3.9.2 Numerals as Adjectives ......................................................................1..36

3.9.3 Quantifiers: A Subcategory of Adjectives ..........................................1..37

3.10 The Auxiliary Negative Verb ...........................................................................1..38

3.11 Adverbs ............................................................................................................1..39

3.11.1 Manner Adverbs ................................................................................1..40

3.11.1.1 Ideophones ........................................................................1..41

3.11.2 Time Adverbs ....................................................................................1..43

3.11.3 Location Adverbs ..............................................................................1..44

3.11.4 Degree Adverbs .................................................................................1..45

3.11.5 A Duplication Adverb ........................................................................1..45

3.12 Adpositions ......................................................................................................1..45

3.12.1 Grammaticalization of Nouns into Postpositions ................................146

3.12.2 A Case of Optional Case Marking ......................................................1..47

3.12.3 The Lone Preposition .........................................................................1..48

3.12.4 Case Markers or Postpositions? ..........................................................1..49

3.13 Interjections .....................................................................................................1..49

4. SUMMARY AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH ....................... 150
Appendix
A. SELECTED TEXTS ............................................................................................ 153
B. WORDLISTS ...................................................................................................... 161
REFERENCES ............................................................................................................. 173
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ......................................................................................... 179

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