Chapter in:
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

Manner of movement in Amharic

| 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
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