This paper examines the phonological features that characterize the Amharic variety spoken in South Wəllo, an area which has been influenced by the diffusion of linguistic and cultural features arising from longstanding contact situations between Semitic and non-Semitic linguistic groups. Data from eight districts of the zone have shown that the South Wəllo variety has 26 consonant and seven vowel phonemes. The consonants are four fewer than that reported of the standard variety. The co-occurrence restrictions of the consonants and the syllable structures are the same as those of the standard variety. However, the phonological rules that operate at morpheme internal, morpheme and word boundary levels are different in the degree of complexity and directionality. These include inter-vocalic lenition of velar stops, word-final weakening of alveo-palatals, coalescence of lowering diphthongs, centering, lowering and fronting of vowels, metathesis of coronals and anteriors, and lexeme specific alternations of homorganic consonants. The description of the facts provides more substantive arguments in favor of the long-held claim that Wəllo constitutes a distinct dialect area.
This paper attempts to describe focused structures in Dromo in light of the generative framework of Chomsky [1976, 1981, 1986] and Williams [1977]. The framework recognizes two levels of grammar: sentence and discourse. Focus is believed to be part of the latter.Three types of focus have been identified in relation to the four major syntactic categories of the language. In NP's the feature is realized as /-tu/, in VPs as /hin-/, and in PP's as /-da/. These elements are not part of the inflectional or derivational morphology of the language. Adjectives use prosodic or structural devices when focused. The structural device is clefting, which the other categories also employ in addition to the elements mentioned above.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.