Chapter in:
Grammatical and Sociolinguistic Aspects of Ethiopian LanguagesEdited by Derib Ado, Almaz Wasse Gelagay and Janne Bondi Johannessen †
[IMPACT: Studies in Language, Culture and Society 48] 2021
Manner of movement in Amharic
Baye Yimam | Addis Ababa University
Movement is a situation type with a source, a goal, a path,
timeline and a figure. It starts from the source, and heads towards the goal, along
the path, a timeline, and speed, and terminates at the centre of the goal. It
comprises sub-movements that define the main movement in subordinate clauses
predicated of compounds involving the verb ‘to say’. The path could be straight,
sloppy, bumpy, etc., which defines the movement as durative, iterative and
terminative. The speed can be slow, extra slow, fast or extra fast, which
characterizes the figure as sober or edgy, and his stature as awkward or elegant,
depending on the path, age and gender. This paper argues that both the manner of
movement and the behaviour of the figure are expressed in subordinate clauses of
extended verbal stems, derived adjectivals, nominals, and prepositional phrases, all
of which are treated here as manner adverbials necessitated by the lack a productive
category of lexical manner adverbs in the language.
Keywords: movement, source, goal, path, manner, adnominal, adverbial, adjectival and figure
References
References
Alemayehu, Haile
Baye, Yimam
Bybee, Joan L., Perkins, Revere & Pagliuca, William
Comrie, Bernard
Getahun, Amare
Hudson, Grover
Levinson, Stephen P.
Mengistu, Amberber
Meyer, Ronny
Platzack, Christer
Slobin, Dan
Talmy, Leonard