19 декабря в 18:45 состоится открытое заседание Отдела типологии и ареальной лингвистики в очном формате в конференц-зале Института.
С докладом «Copula and Existential Constructions in Gwama» выступит Андаргачеу Г. Гебееху (НИУ ВШЭ, приглашенный исследователь).
Аннотация
This paper analyzes the copula and existential constructions in Gwama, a Nilo-Saharan language in North-West Ethiopia. Similar to other Koman languages. copula and existential structures are conveyed by different morphemes. In this sense, Gwama is a split-language since it uses different strategies to encode nominal and existential predicates. Two different forms of copula morphemes are identified, but in sentences where possessive NPs function as predicate, no copula element is used. The two identified copula morphemes are the copula verb wet ‘COP’ that appear in equation and object pronouns functioning as copula morphemes in attributive sentences. Negative constructions of both equation and attribution take the copula wet ‘COP’ along with a negative morpheme. Likewise, Gwama has its own means of predicate formation to express the existence of an entity in a particular location or position, which is also common in other Koman languages such as Komo (Tesfaye, 2014) and Uduk (Killian, 2015). It thus conveys the existences of an entity using different verbs both for affirmative ze ‘exist’ and negative paŋ ‘not exist’. These are used for what Creissels (2013) called inverse locational predication. Plain locational constructions, on the other hand, are formed using a locative morpjeme i-.