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Verbal Extension and Valence in Gumer Variety of Gurage

Summary

The paper examines how verbal affixes change the number of arguments a verb takes in Gumer, a West Gurage (South Ethiosemitic) variety of Ethiopia. Its morphosyntax has received little study. The author is a native speaker and combined introspection with fieldwork. He elicited data from six key informants using a questionnaire and recorded short stories and oral texts. These were transcribed in IPA and glossed with the Leipzig conventions, and the analysis follows a broad typological-descriptive framework.

Extensions fall into three groups:

  • Valence-raising: direct and indirect causatives, and benefactive and malefactive applicatives.
  • Valence-lowering: passive, reflexive, middle, reciprocal and impersonal.
  • Valence-neutral: frequentative and intensive, both built by partial reduplication.

The study also finds bound stems that carry causative or passive prefixes without any change in argument count. This suggests that equipollent alternation and true valence operations are not sharply separated. The work fills a descriptive gap for Gurage and adds data to cross-linguistic research on valence.

Key points

  • Data: six native-speaker informants (four men, two women, aged 25–45) from Arekit town in the Gumer district, each resident there for over 20 years. Sources were a questionnaire plus recorded narratives.
  • Causatives: the direct causative uses {a-} and the indirect causative uses {at-}. With some verbs, {at-} acts as a double causative and adds two arguments, as in "send via someone".
  • Applicatives:
    • The benefactive is marked by {-nv}, and {-lv} takes its place if the subject is third person.
    • The malefactive is {-bv}, alternating with {-wv}.
  • Valence reduction:
    • A single prefix {tə-} (glossed PRM) covers passive, reflexive and middle.
    • The reciprocal adds an inserted /a/ to {tə-}.
    • The impersonal uses {-U}.
  • Polyfunctional suffix: {-m} marks past tense, converb, focus or main verb, and only context separates these readings. Bound stems such as -slamət' 'entreat' and -dbapər 'deceive' take {a-} or {tə-} with no change in argument count.

Interesting ideas

  • I1. Grouping every derivational operation by its net effect on argument count (add, remove or keep) gives a compact, testable typology of constructions. — For Mova (frames): Treat English passives, "make X do" causatives, benefactive "for" phrases and reciprocals as explicit operations that edit a base frame's role list, so each role shift can be traced and explained.
  • I2. The paper shows that a valence-marking form does not guarantee a valence change, because some lexicalized stems carry the marker with an unchanged argument set. — For Mova (world): The verb-class knowledge base should record lexeme-level exceptions where morphology suggests passive or causative but the real argument structure stays the same, instead of deriving roles from form alone.
  • I3. One prefix receives a single underspecified gloss (PRM) for passive, reflexive and middle, and context settles the reading later. — For Mova (tree): Allow the parser or converter to emit an underspecified voice feature and leave the passive-vs-middle-vs-reflexive choice to a later stage with more context. This avoids early hard errors.
  • I4. The homophonous {-m} is told apart by its structural position: a converb before another verb versus final past tense versus focus on pronouns. — For Mova (tokens): For ambiguous English function morphemes such as -ing or -ed, tagger features should look at clause position and neighbouring verbs, which keeps the choice rule-like and explainable.
  • I5. The double causative adds an intermediary agent (sending something to someone through a third person). This shows causation chains can have more than two participants. — For Mova (world): Model delegated actions with an explicit intermediary entity in the event chain, so questions like "who actually carried it?" can be answered.

Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.

Fields: Linguistics & languages

Cite

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work.

@article{gewta2022verbal,
  title = {{Verbal Extension and Valence in Gumer Variety of Gurage}},
  author = {Gewta, Fekede Menuta},
  journal = {Studies in African Linguistics 51},
  year = {2022},
  url = {https://journals.flvc.org/sal/article/view/121891}
}

References

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