Ideophones and verbal constructions with the verb ‘say’ in Amharic

Abstract

Amharic (Ethiosemitic) has verbal predicates of two types: (i) verbs derived from a consonantal root and (ii) complex predicates consisting of an invariant coverb followed by an inflecting light verb, most commonly the verb alä ‘say’. Although complex predicates have been discussed in several descriptions of Amharic, little attention has been paid to the different word classes that occur as coverbs and the differences in their morphosyntactic behavior. This is also true for ideophones, which are often mentioned in the discussion of complex predicates, but without stating whether they form a distinct lexical class in Amharic and how this class can be characterized. This article describes the various elements that function as coverbs in complex predicates and provides a language-internal morphosyntactic definition of ideophones as a word class in Amharic. It is argued that only an ideophonic coverb can form noncausal/causal complex predicate pairs with the light verbs alä ‘say’ and adärrägä ‘do’. In addition to basic ideophonic lexemes, Amharic can also derive ideophones from verbal roots through dedicated templates expressing intensification or attenuation of the event denoted by the root. Amharic ideophones rarely occur on their own, but are typically morphosyntactically integrated by light verbs. Finally, a comparison of different types of coverbs in Amharic with those in other Ethiosemitic languages shows that the languages that are geographically close to or in close contact with Amharic have a similarly large variety of coverbs, while the Ethiosemitic languages that are further away have a more limited inventory.