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Particles of concatenation and of reference in Amharic1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

Olga Kapeliuk
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Extract

Stimulated by Z. Harris's ‘Discourse analysis’ which raised the problem of continuing linguistic analysis in a particular connected discourse beyond the limits of a single sentence and by K. L. Pike's hints at the existence of a formal and semantic supra-sentence unit, such as the paragraph, American linguists produced some systematic and coherent descriptions of larger stretches of discourse, pointing towards certain grammatical, lexical, and stylistic relations reaching across sentence boundaries. Although most of these works deal with Amerindian languages, the method of analysis and the terminology they use can readily be applied to other languages, as was done, for instance in English, by V. Waterhouse in ‘Independent and dependent sentences’. This author draws a parallel between independent and dependent morphemes, phrases, and clauses on the one hand, and independent and dependent sentences, on the other, pointing out that ‘not all sentences are independent’ and that ‘there are in fact grammatical constructions which indicate that some sentences are dependent and therefore to be included in some larger linguistic form such as paragraph or discourse’.

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Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , June 1978 , pp. 272 - 282
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1978

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References

2 Harris, Z. S., ‘Discourse analysis’, Language, XXVIII, 1, 1952, 1–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Hjelmslev, L., Prolegomena to a theory of language. Revised English edition. Madison, Wisconsin, 1969, 16Google Scholar, where a whole text is defined as the primary object of any linguistic analysis.

3 In Pike, K. L., Language in relation to a unified theory of the structure of human behaviour, second ed., The Hague, 1967, p. 442Google Scholar, n. 3, we read: ‘Some studies in preparation are seeking to establish a formal unit which may be called a Paragraph, identified by sentence sequence restrictions or other markers, and by some kind of topic or focused attention as its semantic components’. See also Halliday, M. A. K., ‘Categories of the theory of grammar’, Word, XVII, 3, 1961, p. 253, n. 3.Google Scholar

4 A comprehensive list of these works would be too long to quote. For a detailed bibliography see Pike, K. L., ‘A guide to publications related to tagmemic theory’, in Sebeok, T. A. (ed.), Theoretical foundations (Current Trends in Linguistics, III), The Hague, 1966, 365–94Google Scholar; see also an exemplary analysis of a text in Galand-Pernet, P., ‘Signaux démarcatifs dans “La fillegazelle” conte berbère du Tazerwalt (Maroc)’, Litterature Orale Arabo-Berbèrs. Bulletin de Liaison, 6–7, 1973–1974, 53–98.Google Scholar

5 International Journal of American Linguistics, XXIX, 1, 1963, 45–54.Google Scholar

6 ibid., 45.

7 ‘… one of the four things every college freshman knows is that he must not begin a sentence with “and” or “but”’, Christensen, F., ‘Notes toward a new rhetoric: sentence openers’, Cottege English, XXV, 1, 1963, 8.Google Scholar

8 This particle is certainly related to the Gǝ'ǝz particle -mä which ‘serves to emphasize the conceptional word to which it is appended’ (Dillmann, A., Ethiopic grammar, second ed., London, 1907, §162Google Scholar). However, hi Amharic its emphasizing power is much weakened and it is mainly used as a connecting element. Besides its use as a link, -mm also has other functions in Amharic. It is found in the negative form of the main verb, in concessive constructions and expressions, such as bimätamm ‘even if he comes’, honomm ‘anyhow’, etc., in alternatives, e.g. annäsämm bäzzamm ‘small or big’, and in indefinite pronouns and adverbs. In the last case its use after interrogative pronouns or adverbs (mǝnǝmm ‘something, anything’, mannǝmm ‘someone, anyone’, yätǝmm ‘wherever’, etc.) can be compared to a similar situation in Latin, in words like quisque, ubique, etc. (cf. Meillet, A., Introduction à l'étude comparée des langues indo-européennes, fifth ed., Paris, 1922).Google Scholar

9 Hetzron, R., ‘The element -mm in the Amharic verbal system’, Annali dell'Istituto Orientate di Napoli, XXXIII, 1973, 1–10.Google Scholar

10 Praetorius, F., Die amharische Sprache, Halle, 1879, §§225c, 296h.Google Scholar

11 I use the word ‘reference’ in a somewhat different way from that of American linguists. Whereas in their works reference means substitution of a noun or a verb in a preceding sentence by a pronoun or a pro-verb in the following sentence (cf. Grimes, J. E., ‘Outlines and overlays’, Language, XLVIII, 3, 1972, 615Google Scholar), I use this term with the general meaning of pointing back to what has already been mentioned.

12 cf. Goldenberg, G., ‘Tautological infinitive’, Israel Oriental Studies, I, 1971, 39–43.Google Scholar

13 This example and the following one, as well as the extremely frequent use of -ss with words marking reference or opposition, in concessive constructions (which are outside the scope of this paper) and in questions are sufficient proof that the definition of -ss as a particle ‘whose main function is no other than isolating the “logical subject”’ (Goldenberg, , art. cit., 40Google Scholar) is an over-simplification.

14 See the note by Tubiana, J. in Comptes Rendus du GLECS, VII, [for] 1954–1955, 77.Google Scholar

15 See for this term Jespersen, O., A modern English grammar, London, Copenhagen, 1954, v, §§25.11, 25.12.Google Scholar