Graduation Semester and Year

2005

Language

English

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts in Linguistics

Department

Linguistics

First Advisor

Donald Burquest

Abstract

Dizin (Dizi) is an Omotic language spoken in Southwest Ethiopia with three main dialects. This thesis focuses on Central Dizin phonology and morphology, but includes some data from Eastern Dizin and Western Dizin. Prolonged language contact with Amharic has affected the sound system of Dizin and numerous Amharic words have been borrowed. Features of the Dizin sound system include glottalized consonants, syllabic nasals, lengthened vowels, three phonemic tone levels and contour tones. Western Dizin has phonemic retroflex consonants. The glottal stop is analyzed as phonemic word initially before nasals, but not phonemic elsewhere. Dizin is polysynthetic and more agglutinative than fusional. Dizin has a stacked (compound) case system, a switch reference marker on medial verbs, a complex system of relativizing verbs, and interdependent verbs. Most of the words that modify nouns are understood to be relativized verbs.

Disciplines

Linguistics | Social and Behavioral Sciences

Comments

Degree granted by The University of Texas at Arlington

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