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Afroasiatic: Data and perspectives
Edited by Mauro Tosco
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 339] 2018
► pp. 167–184

Possessive and genitive constructions in Dahālik (Ethiosemitic)

There have been few comparative studies of possessive or genitive relationships within the Modern South Arabian (MSA) group, but Dahalik, an Ethiosemitic language, had never been the subject of any study on this topic. In fact the language itself was completely unknown until 1997 and could not be fully investigated because of the inaccessibility of the region since 2006. This article attempts to give details on these constructions in Dahalik to compare the different strategies for determining the noun in some Southern Semitic languages of Arabia and the Horn of Africa.

By providing such comparisons this chapter highlights the common features of these languages and the characteristics of Dahalik within the Southern Semitic group as a specific Afrosemitic language.

All the Dahalik data have been collected during my fieldworks in Eritrea,1 on the three inhabited islands of Dahlak Archipelago, on the continent in Massawa and suburbs. They are compared with the available data on MSA, Tigre and Tigrinya (see references below and Simeone-Senelle 2014: 686–687).

Keywords: Southern Semitic,  analytic/synthetic structures, definiteness, comparison
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Possessive and genitive constructions
    • 2.1Synthetic construction
      • 2.1.1 n + n
      • 2.1.2 n=suf.pr
      • 2.1.3Definiteness degree within the synthetic structure
        • 2.1.3.1The definite article
        • 2.1.3.2Deictic as a definite marker for n1: n1=deic + n2
        • 2.1.3.3The suffix pronoun as a determinative marker of n1 or n2
        • 2.1.3.4Concluding remarks
    • 2.2Analytic construction
      • 2.2.1Indirect construction: n + link=n/suf.pr
        • 2.2.1.1Semantic values
        • 2.2.1.2Analytic construction vs. synthetic construction
      • 2.2.2Definiteness degree within the analytic structure
      • 2.2.3Remarks on word order in Dahalik, MSA, Tigre, and Tigrinya
  • 3.Conclusion
  • Abbreviations
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 1 February 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.339.10sim
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