This paper aims at producing and analyzing substantial linguistic data to point up differences between Argobba and Amharic. The paper argues against prior studies (Bender, 1976;Bender and Fulas, 1978;Zelealem, 1994; Leslau, 1997) which consider Argobba as a dialect of Amharic. There are also a few works which suggest that Argobba is an independent language of its own (Waldron, 1984;Wetter, 2006).These works, however, have not produced concrete linguistic evidence to substantiate their claim. This brings about the relation between Amharic and Argobba not to be comprehensible. This study, thus, intends to make this hazy issue to come to an end by providing comparable grammatical facts from both languages. The paper also provides counter examples which challenge the claims in Hudson (1997). The paper presents concrete linguistic facts that clearly show that Argobba and Amharic are not dialects of one another, but independent sister languages. It is strongly believed that this will finish off the problem about the relation between the two languages and brings the full picture of Argobba as an independent language in Ethio-Semitic subfamily.
This study focuses on the morphosyntactic properties pronouns in Argobba, an endangered Ethio-Semitic language. The data for this study is collected from Shonke, where the language is used widely and actively by elders and the young generation. The study found that the subject, interrogative and demonstrative pronouns are primitive whereas the possessive, object and reciprocal pronouns are derived. It is also argued that the derived pronouns are lexicalized in the present day Argobba. Reflexive meaning is expressed by the base dmah "head" and hms "soul" suffixing possessive pronouns. Likewise, reciprocity is expressed by reduplicating dɨmah and hɨms with the connector morpheme li.
This paper analyzes the internal structure of Argobba nominal phrase in Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) formalism. Argobba is a seriously endangered Semitic language in Ethiopia. Unlike its sister languages in the Ethio-Semitic subfamily, Argobba nouns qualified by a demonstrative, possessive pronoun and genitive NP bear a definite article. It is argued in this paper that the definite article is not an independent syntactic element, but an affix, which is attached to indefinite nouns lexically. It is argued that the derivation of Argobba definite common nouns is captured by the Definite Lexical Rule (DLR). The paper also claims that the NP internal agreement of specifiers and modifiers with the head noun is accounted for by the SPEC and MOD features that impose certain constraints on the morphosyntactic features of the head noun.
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