Cover not available
Part of
Grammatical and Sociolinguistic Aspects of Ethiopian Languages
Edited by Derib Ado, Almaz Wasse Gelagay and Janne Bondi Johannessen †
[IMPACT: Studies in Language, Culture and Society 48] 2021
► pp. 15–34

Term-formation methods in the Gamo language

| Kotebe Metropolitan University

This research describes the techniques used to form terms in the Gamo language, an Omotic language of Afro-asiatic family spoken in South-Western Ethiopia. The introduction of Gamo as a medium of instruction in primary education and as a language subject for all grade levels requires the creation of new terms for concepts that do not already exist in the language. A number of new terms were formed to facilitate the teaching and learning of language, science and mathematics education. This research followed linguistic and communicative approaches, as illustrated in Antia (2000: 39, 44), to describe techniques of term-formation and to analyse features of the terms in line with the linguistic properties of Gamo. To this end, lexical data were collected from language and mathematics textbooks prepared in the Gamo language. Data were also gathered from native speakers who participated in textbook preparation and terminology works. According to the data, borrowing, compounding, blending, initialism, paraphrasing and semantic extension were applied to form terms pertinent to education in the Gamo language. The most frequent mechanisms were borrowing, followed by compounding, but few terms were formed by blending and paraphrasing.

Keywords: Gamo, education, terminology, term-formation methods
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Conceptual framework
  • 3.Methodology
  • 4.Term-formation methods used in Gamo
    • a.Borrowing
    • b.Compounding
    • c.Blending
    • d.Semantic extension
    • e.Initialism
    • f.Paraphrasing
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Note
  • References
  • Online resources
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 23 April 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/impact.48.01was
References (36)
Antia, Bassey E.
2000 Terminology and Language Planning: An Alternative Framework of Practice and Discourse [Terminology and Lexicography Research and Practice 2]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Azeb Amha
2012 Omotic. In The Afroasiatic Languages, Frajzyngier Zygmunt & Erin Shay (eds,) 423–504. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
2017 The Omotic language family. In The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Typology, Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald & Robert M. W. Dixon (eds), 815–853. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bauer, Laurie
1983 English Word Formation. (Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics.) Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bender, M. L.
1975 The Begnings of ethnohistory in Western Wellega: The Mao problem. Patterns in Language, Culture, and Society: Sub-Saharan Africa. OSU WPL 19.125-141Google Scholar
Blench, Roger
2006 Omotic Livestock Terminology and its Implications for the History of Afroasiatic. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Brinton, Laurel
2000 The Structure of Modern English: A Linguistic Introduction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brinton, Laurel & Traugott, E. Closs
2005 Lexicalization and Language Change. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cabre, Teresa
1999 Terminology: Theory, Methods and Applications [Terminology and Lexicography Research and Practice 1]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Campbell, Lyle
1998 Historical Linguistics: An Introduction. Edinburgh: EUP.Google Scholar
Central Statistical Authority (CSA)
2008 The Population and Housing Census: Statistical Report for Country Level. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: CSA.Google Scholar
Cooper, Robert
1989 Language Planning and Social Change. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Crystal, David
2008 A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics, 6th edn. Oxford: Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Deumert, Ana & Vandenbussche, Wim
2003 Standard languages: Taxonomies and histories. In Germanic Standardizations: Past to Present [Impact: Studies in Language and Society 18], Ana Deumert & Wim Vandenbussche (eds), 1–14. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Education and Training Policy
1994 Federal Democratic Republic Government of Ethiopia. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.Google Scholar
Fabb, Nigel
1998 Compounding. In The Handbook of Morphology, Andrew Spencer & Arnold M. Zwicky (eds), 66–83. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Gebreyohannes Tedla
2000 Gamo Goofatho -Amaraththon Sima Qaala -Birshe. Gamo Gofa-Amharic Dictionary. Arba Minch, Ethiopia.Google Scholar
Almaz Wasse
2016 Norm selection and standardisation in Gamo. In Multilingual Ethiopia: Linguistic Challenges and Capacity Building Efforts, Binyam Sisay & Janne Bondi Johannessen (eds). Oslo Studies in Language 8(1): 273–293. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Habte Mengistu
2013 Gamo society vernacular house typologies and their science, Southern Ethiopia. American Scientific Research Journal for Engineering, Technology and Sciences (ASRJETS) 3(1): 1–29.Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin
2009 Lexical borrowing: Concepts and issues. In Loanwords in the World’s Languages, Martin Haspelmath & Uri Tadmor (eds), 35–54. Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hayward, Richard J. & Chabo, Eshetu
2014 Gamo-English-Amharic Dictionary with an Introductory Grammar of Gamo. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.Google Scholar
Hirut Woldemariam
2005 GAMO: A Dialect Variant or a Group with its Own Dialects. Cushitic – Omotic Studies 2004.1. 67–78. Tsuge, Yoichi (ed). Japan: Kanazawa University.Google Scholar
2013 Determining the genetic classification of Ganta within the Ometo Group. International Journal of Sociology and Anthropology 5(9): 409–415. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hosseinzadeh, Naghmeh
2014 New blends in English language. International Journal of English Language and Linguistics Research 2(2): 15–26.Google Scholar
ISO704
2009 Terminology Work- Principles and Methods. [URL]> (13 August 2020).
Kingei, Kitula
1999 Swahili technical terminology: Problems of development and usage in Kenya. Afrikanistische Arbeitspapiere 60: 147–160.Google Scholar
Kloss, H.
1978 Die Entwicklung neuer germanischer Kultursprachen seit 1800. Second, expanded edition (ªrst edition 1952). Düsseldorf: Swann.Google Scholar
Kozicki, Michal
2017 Neologism construction in Amharic by compounding various parts of speech. Studies of the Department of African Languages and Cultures 51: 53–68.Google Scholar
Lewis, M. Paul
(ed.) 2009 Ethnologue: Languages of the World. Dallas TX: SIL International. [URL]> (13 August 2020).
Lujan, Eugenio
2010 Semantic extension. In Continuum Companion to Historical Linguistics, Silvia Luhraghi & Vit Bubenik (eds), 286–310. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Probyn, Margie
2006 Language and learning science in South Africa. Language and Education 20(5): 391–414. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Richards, Jack & Schmidt, Richard
2002 Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics. London: Pearson Education.Google Scholar
Sakita, Tomoko
2001 Another semantic extension of Go. Doshisha Studies in Language and Culture 4(2): 447–466.Google Scholar
Vaughan, Sara
2003 Ethnicity and Power in Ethiopia. PhD dissertation, The University of Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Wondimu Gaga Gashe
2010 Sociolinguistic Facts about the Gamo Area, Southern Ethiopia. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: ARCCIKL.Google Scholar

Online resources

<
[URL] Glosbe: Gamo Amharic Dictionary Online.