Multifunctional Morphemes ja-and -min Ezha：An Ethio-Semitic Language

This paper is meant to indicate the different functional tasks covered by the two multifunctional bound morphemes: j9- and in Ezha. The former is found to mark accusative, genitive and dative cases. The latter, on the other hand, renders the functions of contrastive focus marking, converb marking, declarative clause marking in the affirmative perfective, and coordination. After a thorough description of their functions, it is attempted to propose as to whether the various roles rendered by the two forms relate to distinctive homophonous morphemes or to a single morpheme. The required data for this study were collected from native speakers primarily through elicitation, and this method was supplemented by recording free narratives.

The Structure of a Noun Phrase in Ezha, Ethio-Semitic

This article is meant to provide a descriptive account of a noun phrase in the Ezha language. By so doing, no particular theoretical assumption is adhered to; the data analysis is dictated by a purely descriptive perspective. Data for the study were accessed by consulting native speakers through elicitation augmented by recording of spontaneous speech. A noun phrase in Ezha is found out to be built out of a head noun alone or a head noun together with (a) dependent(s). In situations where a noun phrase is made up of a head noun along with dependents, the dependents can be a noun, an adjective, a numeral, a demonstrative and/or a relative clause. The phrase is always head-final.

Negation in Amharic and Ezha:A comparative perspective

This article offers a description of negation marking in the two Ethio-Semitic languages:Amharic and Ezha.The description has been made from the perspective of synchronic comparison.The article discloses that both Amharic and Ezha make use of negative prefixes in order to reverse the truth condition of an affirmative expression.The negative morphemes employed by each of the two languages have two allomorphic variants whose alternation is grammatically conditioned.The two allomorphs of the negative marker in Amharic are al-which occurs with perfective and imperative verbs,and a-that surfaces with imperfective and jussive verbal conjugations.Similarly,the Ezha negative prefix appears as an-with perfective verbal bases,and as a-with imperfective,jussive and imperative verb forms.In both languages,the negative prefixes attach to verbs preceding person prefixes and following subordinators in negative subordinate clauses.When it comes to copular and existential verbs,as compared to prototypical verbs,negation in both languages can be expressed in two ways:in some cases,the aforementioned negative prefixes are employed;and in some other cases,completely different verb forms rendering negative readings are introduced,hence,lexical negation via suppletion.

Major Morphophonemic Operations in Ezha(Ethio-Semitic)

This article describes the various phonological/morphophonemic processes resulting from segmental co-occurrences within simple words(words which constitute a single morpheme)and at morpheme junctures of complex words in the Ezha language.The language is found to be rich in such operations.The morphophonemic processes identified and described in this study include assimilation,labialization,palatalization,depalatalization,vowel fronting,vowel deletion,deletion of a glide and a vowel,epenthesis and spirantization.Among these operations,assimilation is found to be by far the most prominent.