AN OVERVIEW OF THE INTERFACE BETWEEN ASPECTS OF SOMALI

PHONOLOGY AND MORPHOLOGY: A RESOURCE GUIDE FOR

ESL TEACHERS

by

Ahmed Mohamed

B.S., Afgoi College of Education, Mogadishu, Somalia, 1983

A Thesis

Submitted to the Graduate Faculty

of

St. Cloud State University

in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

for the Degree

Master of Arts

St. Cloud, Minnesota

January, 2013 1

This thesis submitted by Ahmed Mohamed in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts at St. Cloud State University is hereby approved by the final examination committee.

______Chairperson

______

______

______Dean School of Graduate Studies ii

AN OVERVIEW OF THE INTERFACE BETWEEN ASPECTS OF SOMALI PHONOLOGY AND MORPHOLOGY: A RESOURCE GUIDE FOR ESL TEACHERS

Ahmed Mohamed

In writing this thesis, I pursue three objectives. First, the research is mainly designed as a reference book for English language teachers who have Somali ELL students in their classes. It gives a brief overview of the phonological and morphological structures of the Somali language. In so doing, it draws the teachers’ attention to the linguistic challenges their students face while acquiring English. By knowing how the students’ L1 language works, teachers will gain a sense of how to transition their students’ L1 to English as an L2. This insight can help them understand the challenges that their Somali students face when writing or speaking English.

The second objective is achieved by answering these two questions: 1. What are the salient phonological and morphological features of the Somali language? 2. What are the phonological and morphological features of the Somali language that may lead to negative transfer during the process of acquiring English?

Somali lacks five phonemes which are found in English: /p, v, z, ð, θ/. Similarly, English does not have seven phonemes that are present in Somali: /G, ɖ, ʔ, x, ʕ, ħ, and r/. The lack of these phonemes in either language may cause negative interference. In addition, the sounds /k/, /t/, and /m/ never occur at the end of a Somali word. This illustrates the fact that Somali hardly ever allows these sounds to occur in a coda cluster.

The syllable structures of both languages are fairly distinct. English permits syllable clusters in the onset and the coda, but Somali does allow either.

Orthographically, Somali has a transparent spelling, whereas English is opaque. For example, the sound /f/ is represented in spelling as , , . Because Somali does not have /v/, and , may be spelled the same.

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Morphologically, Somali is an agglutinating language. This means that grammatical formation of words is determined by attaching morphemes (suffixes or prefixes) to the word root or stem to form a new part of speech. Nouns are inflected for number (plural, singular), for definiteness and indefiniteness, gender (masculine, feminine), and case (subjective, objective, possessive, absolutive). Verbs inflect to show person (first, second, third), gender (masculine, feminine), number (singular, plural), mood (indicative, imperative, subjective, conditional), aspect (habitual, progressive), and tense (present, past, future).

The third objective in writing this thesis is that I have an intrinsic passion to study my language. The Somalis are known as a nation of bards. Therefore, it has a long and rich history of oral tradition and literature. Poetry is one of the main means of cultural preservation. Somali has a rich poetic genre which consists not only of songs, but also of various forms of wisdom literature (proverbs, riddles).

This study presents a brief morphophological analysis of Somali. It compares these aspects in both Somali and English and highlights the areas that may cause challenges to Somali ELL students. It is advantageous if ELL teachers have some ideas about these aspects of Somali that are likely to interfere with the students’ acquisition of English.

______Month Year Approved by Research Committee:

______Ettien Koffi Chairperson

iv

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I wish to express to Professor Ettien Kofi my gratitude for the patience, advising, editing and commenting on successive versions of my thesis. I am indebted to Rhoda Fagerland who completely edited my thesis.

v

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

LIST OF TABLE ...... x

LIST OF FIGURE ...... xi

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS ...... xii

Chapter

1. A SOCIOLINGUISTIC OVERVIEW ...... 1

Lingusitic Background ...... 4

Language Family/Lineage ...... 5

2. OVERVIEW OF THE SOMALI SOUND SYSTEM AND ALPHABET ...... 8

Somali Phonology and Orthography ...... 8

An Overview of the Somali Alphabets (Shaqallada) ...... 8

Vowels ...... 10

Somali Consonant Phonemes ...... 10

Consonant Sound Systems (hab-dhawaaga-shaquallada) ...... 11

Gemination ...... 16

Somali Vowel Phonemes ...... 17

Diphthongs ...... 19

vi

Chapter Page

Tone and Accent ...... 21

Morphosyntactic Tone ...... 24

Sullable Structure ...... 25

Sullable Final Stops ...... 27

Consonant Cluster Simplification ...... 28

Restriction on Vowel Syllables ...... 28

Vowel Deletion ...... 29

3. NOMINAL DERIVATIONS ...... 31

Derivational Affixes in Nouns ...... 32

Derivation of Abstract Nouns ...... 36

Compound Nouns ...... 38

Nouns Derived from Adjectives ...... 40

Possessive Suffix <-le> ...... 41

Basic Structure of Somali Noun Phrases ...... 42

Vocative Suffixes ...... 42

Noun Reduplications ...... 44

Adjective ...... 46

Adverbs ...... 53

4. NOMINAL INFLECTIONS ...... 58

Types of Inflexion in Somali Nouns ...... 59

Noun Declensions ...... 59

vii

Chapter Page

Plural Form of Adjectives ...... 68

Comparative and Superlative ...... 69

Numerals ...... 70

Determiners ...... 71

5. VERB MORPHOLOGY ...... 77

Pronouns ...... 77

Verb Structure ...... 81

Verbal Inflection Categories ...... 89

Tense ...... 89

Aspect ...... 93

Habitual Present (Positive Form) ...... 99

Habitual Past ...... 100

Habitual Past (Negative Form) ...... 101

Mood ...... 102

Sentence Subordinate Clause (Main/Subordinate) ...... 111

Derivational Morphology of Somali Verbs ...... 116

Verb Reduplications ...... 121

Middle Voice ...... 122

6. IMPLICATIONS AND FINDINGS ...... 128

Inflectional Mistakes (Negative Transfer) ...... 129

Phonological Challenges ...... 132

viii

Chapter Page

Consonant Cluster Simplifications ...... 133

Stress and Tone Challenges (Negative Transfer) ...... 134

Implications ...... 135

Conclusion ...... 137

REFERENCES ...... 138

APPENDIX ...... 143

ix

LIST OF TABLE

Table Page

1. Somali Consonant Chart ...... 11

x

LIST OF FIGURE

Figure Page

1. The Classification of Somali in East Cushitic ...... 7

xi

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS

ABS absolutive case ADJ adjective ADP Adposition ADV adverb AP accentual pattern ART article AUX auxiliary verb C1, C2, C3 1st conjugation (C1), 2nd conjugation (C2) and 3rd conjugation (C3) CAU causative (derived verb) DEM demonstrative COLL collective D1, D2….D8 noun declensions (1st, 2nd ….8th declension) DET Determiner DM Declarative marker / mood classifier (MC) EXC exclusive EXP experiencial (derived noun) FACT factitive (derived verb) F/FEM feminine gender FUT future tense GEN genitive case H high tone HAB habitual tense IMP imperative INC inclusive INCH inchoative (derived verb) INF infinitive INFL Inflectional affixations INTR intransitive INTER interrogative IPRO independent pronoun L low tone LEX Verbal derivational affixes M. masculine gender NIMP negative imperative marker NEG negative form (word or verb)

xii NOM nominative case O object O PRO object pronoun OPT optative verb form PAS passive voice PAST past tense Pl. plural POT potential verb form PRES present tense PORG progressive tense Sing. singular S PRO subject pronoun ROOT base form verb SUBORD subordinate clause SUPR superlative marker TAM tense, aspect and mood markings TRN transitive VOC vocative case 1 first person 2 second person 3 third person * ungrammatical constructed form ?? sounds arkward // syllable boundary ⊘ zero /null

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Chapter 1

A SOCIOLINGUISTIC OVERVIEW

This study is mainly designed as a reference book for English language teachers who are teaching Somali English language learners (ELL) students. It gives a brief overview of the phonological and morphological structures of the Somali language, in order to draw teachers’ attention to the linguistic challenges Somali students face as they acquire English. It is hoped that teachers, by knowing how their students’ first language works, will gain a sense of how the students’ first language

(L1) is different from their second language (L2), and that this insight can help them better understand the source of the difficulties that their first language (L1) Somali students face in writing and speaking English.

This study aims to answer two important questions:

1. What are the salient phonological and morphological features of the Somali

language?

2. What are the phonological and morphological features of the Somali

language that may lead to negative transfer during the process of English

acquisition?

The underlying hypothesis that remains to be verified is that Somali ELL students will acquire English quickly because the phonological and morphological

1 2 structures of their language are more complex than those of their second language,

English.

Before embarking on a full-blown analysis, it is important to provide a historical overview of the Somali people, their language, and the reason why many of them live in Minnesota.

The Land and the People (Dulka iyo Dadka)

The country of Somalia is located in eastern part of the Horn of Africa. The

Somali language is spoken by the Somali people. The countries where Somali is spoken include the following: Somalia, most parts of Djibouti, the eastern part of

Ethiopia, and the Northeastern part of Kenya. The exact number of Somali speakers is not known, but it is roughly estimated that there are about twelve million Somali speakers in the world. The Somali people are divided into three socio-economic groups. The first and the largest are nomadic pastoralists (reerguuraa). They herd livestock such as camels, goats, sheep, and cattle. They move from one place to another to find pasture and water for their flocks. The second group is made up of farmers (beeralay) who live between the two rivers: The Shebelle and the Juba. They cultivate crops and keep some livestock. The third group is the townspeople

(reermagaal). They are scattered all over the world because a large number of Somalis fled to neighboring countries as refugees, where they received resettlement from the

USA, Canada, and Australia and different countries in Europe.

For the past 21 years, Somalia has been in chaos: a state of anarchy. This lawlessness has compelled Somali citizens to flee to wherever they felt would be a

3 safe haven. The first Somali refugee influx to Minnesota began in the early 1990s.

Currently, there are “more Somalis living in Minnesota than anywhere else outside

East Africa” (Burke, 2001, p. 8).

In fact, the significant dialect variations in Somali are grouped into three categories:

1) Maxatiri: The Northern dialect is the standard used for official purposes

such as government operations, education, and broadcasting. The Northern

dialect is also most widely used across the country as the lingua franca. It is

called the standard form and prestigious dialect because it has been used by

scholars, politicians, and poets since the country’s independence. This

dialect enjoys official status, and it is regarded as the official dialect. It is

spoken in the northern, western, and southernmost areas of Somalia. There

is a fair degree of intelligibility between the Northern dialect and the

Banadiri.

2) Banadiri: This dialect is the second largest dialect, spoken along the Indian

Ocean coast and also in Mogadishu.

3) Maay: Lastly, this dialect is spoken in the southwestern area, stretching to

the Ethiopian border andto some coastal areas between Mogadishu and

Kismanyo. The Maay dialect is completely unintelligible to both Northern

and Banadiri dialect speakers (Saeed, 1999). There are very small pockets

of dialects within the three major dialect variations in the Somali language.

4

Linguistic Background

The Somali language had no official orthography before 1972. There were several systems of writing in existence, but none had gained or won the general acceptance of the people. The Somali republic was formed by the unification of the ex-British Somaliland Protectorate and the ex-Italian Somaliland. The ultra- nationalists pressed the notion and the need for having a national orthography, because the two different colonial systems of education, which did not share the same written language, employed translators in order to read correspondence between the government offices. This urgency of needing a national language forced the Somali government to set up a Linguistic Committee in 1961 to study and investigate the matter and also invited the public to submit their proposals to the Linguistic committee. About eighteen proposals were submitted to committee. The Linguistic

Committee was advised to present its recommendations to the Government, but they did not follow through due to political wrangling over the Somali script called

Osmania (Far Somali) and the Roman script (Latin).

Finally, the Roman script (Latin) was officially adopted in 1972 and remains the official writing system of Somali today. Prior to the adoption of this script, an indigenous alphabet known as Osmania had been introduced as a primary writing system by Cisman Kenadiid in 1922. It did not succeed because its orthography was difficult, and the Latin alphabet was more suitable for government offices as well as in public education. It could be used with available typewriters and was therefore economically viable.

5

On March, 7, 1974, the government launched a nationwide literacy campaign which aimed to promote and implement the new orthography and to teach every

Somali citizen. Government officials, universities, and public school students were intensively trained to teach and engage in the literacy campaign. As Wolf (2002) reports, “Astriking example of highly effective implementation was the master plan for introducing an official language and the new standard orthography in Somalia in

1972/3, after endless years of escaping decisions on which type of graphicization to adopt” (p. 338). Civil servants were compelled within three months to pass a test in writing the new orthography; failure resulted in loss of employment. A year after the campaign, the ministry of education instantly implemented Somali language as the medium of instruction for primary education and later made it mandatory for secondary schools.

Language Family/Lineage

Somali language is a member of the Cushitic family which branches off a larger language family: the Afro-Asiatic/Hamito-Semitic language phylum along with

Omotic, Chadic, Berber, and ancient Egyptian (Saeed, 1999). Somali is a sub-group of

East Cushitic languages which comprises more than thirty languages. The most prominent East Cushitic languages are Oromo and Somali.

There are internal classifications within East Cushitic; the major divisions are between the highland East Cushitic and the lowland Cushitic. Western Omo-Tana is a

6 distinct branch. There are two additional branches, Yaaku and Boon, which are considered endangered languages.

Although Cushitic can be seen as a single family, it consists of six major groups of languages. Some of them are very distinct from each other, while others show some commonalities but exhibit a number of substantially different internal subgroups. Some Cushitic languages are nearly extinct, such as Yaaku, which is spoken by a few elderly members of hunter-gatherers in Kenya (Hayward, 2000). The

Somali language has the second largest number of speakers within the Cushitic family after Oromo. Thus; Somali is a regional language that is spoken in the Horn of Africa region. It is mainly spoken in Somalia, Djibouti, Western Ethiopia, the North-

Easternprovince of Kenya, and by millions of Somali diaspora who are scattered around the world.

Figure 1 shows the current position of Somali within the Cushitic language.

7

(Source: Saeed, 1999)

Figure 1: The Classification of Somali in East Cushitic

Chapter 2

OVERVIEW OF THE SOMALI SOUND SYSTEM AND ALPHABET

Somali Phonology and Orthography

This chapter will focus briefly on Somali phonology and orthogarphy. These phonological units include consonants, vowels, grapheme to phoneme inventory, syllable structure, morphosyntatic behavior, and tonal aspect.

An Overview of the Somali Alphabets (Shaqallada)

The basic set of Somali consonant graphemes consists of 22 graphemes; each of them represents specific sounds. The Somali alphabet uses all but three (

, , and ) of the English letters. Of the thirty-three sounds, fifteen (b, d, f, g, h, k, l, j, m, n, s, sh, t, w, y,) are similar to their English counterparts. The Somali standard orthography adopts the following symbols:

<‘>

The chart below shows both Somali and English consonant graphemes and consonant phonemes:

8 9

Pronunciations Somali consonant Somali consonant English English ( in Somali) graphemes phonemes consonant consonant graphemes phonemes

[ba] [b] [b] [ta] [ţ] [t] [ja] [ʤ] [ʤ] / [ /ʧ] [xa] [ ћ] - - [kha] [ χ] - - [da] [ɗ] [d] [ra] [r] [r] [sa] [s] [s] [sha] [ʃ] [ʃ] [dha] [ɖ] - - [ca] /ʕ/ - - [ga] [ɡ] [g] [fa] [f] [f] [qa] [ɢ] - - [ka] [k] [k] [la] [l] [l] [ma] [m] [m] [na] [n] [n] [wa] [w] [w] [ha] [h] [h] [ya] [j] [i] [‘] <’> [ʔ] - - - [ŋ]

[p] [z] [v]

The shaded columns show the English graphemes and phonemes that do not exist in Somali languages. There are no diatrics or other special characters; however,

Somali has three consonant diagraphs: , and . Tone is not marked in the written language and the word initial glottal stop <'> - [ʔ] is also not shown.

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Vowels

Somali has a five-vowel system, just like other languages in the Afro-Asiatic family. All vowels in Somali may be categorized as short or long, depending on the pronunciation.

The short vowels , , , ,

The long vowels , , , ,

The vowel length is phonemic in Somali, so this is represented in the orthography by noting single vowel graphemes and vowel geminates as represented the chart below:

Short vowels Long vowels

as in ‘news’ as in ‘breast’ as in ‘unknown man’ as in ‘tree’ as in ‘iron’ as in ‘boy’ as in ‘enemy’ as in ‘rain’ as in ‘flour/wooden club’ as in ‘bury’

Somali Consonant Phonemes

The 22 Somali consonants are written below in the standard orthography, followed by their corresponding IPA Symbols and basic phonetic descriptions (place of articulation and manner of articulation):

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Table 1: Somali Consonant Chart

Bilabial Labio- Alveolar Platoaveolar Retroflex Velar Uvular Pharyngeal Glottal dental

Stopsvoiceless t k ʔ

Stops b d ɖ g G voiced

Fricatives f s ʃ χ Ћ h voiceless

Fricatives ʕ voiced

Affricatives ʧ voiceless

Nasal m n

Trill r

Lateral l

Glides w j

Koffi (2010)1 proposes the above table for Somali Consonants.

Consonant Sound Systems (hab-dhawaaqa- shaqallada)

The sounds of the Somali alphabet are each represented by a specific letter.

The alphabet does not comprise all the letters of the English alphabet. Each consonant sound is described in the following examples:

1 The consonant chart in Saeed (1999, p. 7) omits the places of articulation. This piece of nformation has been supplied by comparing Saeed’s chart at http:// Weston.ruter.net/project/ipa- chart/view/keyboard/. Moreover, Saeed does not follow the IPA convention of listing voiceless consonants before their voiced counter parts. This is Koffi’s adaptation of Saeed’s chart with IPA.

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The sound /b/ is a voiced bilabial plosive, represented orthographically as , and sounding as it is in English. It sounds more like unaspirated English [p] when it occurs at the end of a word:

‘plain’ ‘ice’ ‘fire’

The sound /t/ is a voiceless dental plosive. It is represented orthographically as

, which sounds the same as in English. This sound has limited distributions compared to the other sounds because it never occurs at the end of a syllable:

‘crow’ ‘throw’ ‘go’

The sound /ʧ/ or /ʤ/ is the only affricative, and it is the palato-alveolar affricative, orthographically represented as . It can be pronounced like as in the English word . It also can be pronounced like as in the English word like . Both pronunciations are correct:

‘road’ ‘pilgrimage’ ‘kind/stimulant leaf’

The sound /ћ/ is a pharyngeal fricative, which is written as . The grapheme

is a voiceless pharyngeal fricative:

‘go out’ ‘sheep’ ‘close’ ‘lion’

The sound /χ/ is a voiceless uvular fricative and is represented as . This

It is the sound used for the .(خ) sound is only found in loan words from Arabic

Scottish pronunciation of the word :

‘vegetable’ ‘gay’ ‘drawer’

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The sound /d/ is a voiced dental plosive, which is written as and sounds just like the English[d], except it pushes more forward and touches the teeth:

‘skin

‘people’ ‘many’ ‘flood’ ‘move’ ‘fire’ pail’

The sound /r/ is a voiced alveolar trill and is scripted as an . This sound is a rolled

and is difficult to pronounce for non-native speakers:

‘accompany’ ‘male ‘female goat’ ‘truth’

goat’ The sound /s/ is a voiceless alveolar fricative and is denoted as an . It is pronounced very similar to its English counterpart:

‘hero’

‘nose’ ‘give’ ‘hide’ ‘oil’ ‘horn’ The phoneme /ʃ/ sound is voiceless palate-alveolar fricative. It is written as a diagraph and it also is pronounced the same as English:

‘bird’ ‘fry’ ‘five’ ‘evil’ ‘tell’

The sound /ɖ/ is a retroflex plosive. It is represented as a digraph . When it occurs between two vowels, it is sometimes pronounced as a flap, for example [ɼ] as in ‘buttocks’:

‘buttocks’ ‘girl’ ‘beard’

2 At the end of a word, it sounds more like [t], for example: ‘one’.

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In Chapter 1, dialectical variations within the Somali language were described.

In one dialect, this diagraph has a double form, , which is usually written as just for orthographic reasons. In addition, Southern Somali speakers replace

with , except at the beginning of words, whereas northern speakers double

, as illustrated in the example below:

Northern dialect Southern dialect <ádhi> ‘sheep and goats’ <ári> ‘sheep and goats’

‘keep sitting’ ‘keep sitting’ ‘bat/club’ ‘bat/club’

The phoneme/ʕ/ is a voiced pharyngeal fricative and is represented as a . It is somewhat similar to the sound someone makes when a doctor asks him/her to say

‘aaaa’. This sound is made by sudden contraction of the glottis, as in the sound /x/ but with vibration of the vocal cord, for example:

‘teacher’ ‘water ‘health’ ‘cow’

well’ The sound /g/ is a voiced velar stop, orthographically written as . This sound is pronounced the same as in English:

‘enter’ ‘house’ ‘hard’ ‘hand’ ‘beard/rope’ ‘angle’ ‘shoulder’ ‘men’

The sound /f/ is a voiceless labio-dental fricative; it is denoted as . This sound is pronounced as it is in English, as illustrated below:

<áfar> ‘four’ <áf> ‘mouth’ ‘generation’ ‘verb/do’

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‘finger’ ‘horse’ ‘far’ ‘rib’

The sound /G/ is a voiced uvular plosive. It has a grapheme representation

It is very hard for non-native speakers to .(ق) q>. This sound is like the Arabic> pronounce, but the best way to try is to pronounce and then move your tongue as far back as possible:

‘take’ ‘secret sign’ ‘God’ ‘to graze’

The sound /k/ is a voiceless velar, orthographically written as . It is pronounced the same as in English. It never occurs at the end of a syllable:

‘other’ ‘the boy’ ‘saddle’ ‘kidney’ ‘bring’ ‘bridle’ ‘shoe’/‘repair’

‘thousand’ The sound /l/ is a voiced velar lateral approximant, orthographically written as

. This sound is pronounced in the same manner as in English. It occurs in all positions in a syllable:

‘leg’ ‘female camel’ ‘other’ ‘boys’

Then sound /m/ is a bilabial nasal, . This sound is the same as the English sound. It never occurs at the end of a syllable:

‘one

‘honey’ time’ ‘or’ ‘men’ ‘lung’

The sound /n/ is a voiced velar nasal, orthographically denoted as . This sound is pronounced the same as in English:

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‘peace’ ‘knife’ ‘breast’ ‘woman’ ‘mercy’/ ‘piety’

The sound /w/ is a voiced bilabial approximate or semi-vowel represented as

. This sound is pronounced the same as in English:

‘rhinoceros’ ‘saint’ ‘ram’ ‘spear’ ‘news’

The sound /j/ is a voiced palatal approximant or semi-vowel, orthographically represented as . This sound is like the in the English word‘you’:

‘small’ ‘water’ <éy>‘dog’ ‘noise’

The sound/ʔ/ is a glottal stop, written as <’>. Usually it occurs between vowels. However, it can occur at the beginning of monosyllabic words which begin with vowels:

‘decision’ ‘cows’ ‘having

without’ Gemination

There are a number of consonants in Somali that may be pronounced as doubled consonants. These are called as geminate consonants. The list below shows all of the Somali consonants, with examples of those which may be found as double consonants:

17 b d dh g ‘sip’ ‘the sea’ <*gábadhdha> ‘the girl’ ‘boys’ (pl.) l m n r ‘fold (pl.) ‘the boys’ ‘trucks’ ‘year’

Somali Vowel Phonemes

Somali Vowel Chart

Height Front Back [+ATR] [-ATR] High [i, ɪ] [u,ʊ] [i, u] [ɪ, ʊ] Mid [e, ɛ] [o,ɔ] [e, o] [ɛ, ɔ] Low [æ] [ɑ] [e, o] [æ]

The above IPA chart of the Somali vowel (Koffi 2010) shows qualities of the variants of each vowel:

The Somali Language has five short and five long vowels, which are illustrated in the following sections.

Short vowels. The short vowels are represented in the orthography by five single graphemes, as shown below:

, , , , and

The vowel is pronounced as the vowel [a] in the English word ‘rat’:

‘thing’ ‘men’ ‘fire’

The vowel is pronounced the same as in the English word ‘bet’:

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‘change’ ‘unknown man’

The vowel is pronounced like [i]in the English word ‘pin’:

‘iron’ ‘one’

The vowel [o] is pronounced as in the English word ‘top’:

‘kinship’ ‘clif’ ‘enemy’

The vowel [u] is pronounced the same as in the English word ‘put’:

‘thousand’ ‘coffee’ ‘collect/‘pick up’

Long vowels. Long vowels are represented in the orthography by doubling vowels as in the examples below:

The is long, as the in the English word‘father’:

‘skin’ ‘brick/‘stone building house’ ‘trace/‘track’

The vowel is pronounced like [e] in English, as in ‘bear’:

‘tree’ ‘hyena’ ‘family’ ‘community’

The is pronounced like [ee] in English as in ‘seem’/‘feel’:

‘orange’ ‘sand’ ‘rice’ ‘table’

The is pronounced like [o] in English, as in ‘sole’:

‘lioness’ ‘camel bell’ ‘crooked’

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The is quite long, as in ‘book’:

‘mountain’ ‘book’ ‘Somali hut’

Diphthongs

Somali has five short and five long diphthongs. Their orthographic representations follow:

Short diphthongs. The below examples show the pronunciations of the short type diphthongs:

, , , , and .

is pronounced the same as in the English words ‘aisle’ or ‘fire’:

‘sort’ or ‘kind’ ‘old man’ ‘poem’

is pronounced like the English diphthong [au] as in ‘how’ or ‘hour’:

‘grass’ <áwr> ‘camel’ ‘throbbing’

is pronounced like theEnglish[ei] as in ‘feign’:

‘left handed’ ‘ask’ ‘calf’

is pronounced the same as in the English word ‘coy’:

‘an exclamation’ ‘cut’ ‘to wet’

3 Note that the diphthongs and are interchangeable because of regional dialect variation. The diphthong is not shown in the above chart; it has same pronunciation as .

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Long diphthongs. The long dipthongs are phonologically conditioned because nouns ending in <-a> take <-aay>, nouns ending in <-o> take <-ooy>; all other nouns that do not end <-a> and <-o>, which means they could end any other vowels or with consonants take <-eey>, <-oow> and . For the most part, vocative nouns are formed by the suffixation of:

i) <-ay> on female names and nouns

ii) <-ow> on male names and nouns

The long Somali diphthongs, then, are, , , , and

.The below listed examples show the pronunciation of the long dipthongs:

‘Oh, help!’ ‘Oh, Anab!’ ‘Oh, mother!’ ‘Oh, Hassan!’

In conclusion, there are fifteen consonant phonemes that exist both in Somali and English. The below chart shows the Somali sounds that are like English:

Manner of Somali phonemes English phonemes Shared phonemes

articulation stop /b/, /t/, /d/, /k/, /g/ /b/, /t/, /d/, /k/, /g/ yes nasal /m/, /n/ /m/, /n/ yes fricative /f/, /s/,/ʃ/, /h/ /f/, /s/,/ʃ/, /h/ Yes affricative /ʧ/, /ʤ/ /ʧ/ Yes glide /w/, /j/ /w/, /j/ Yes lateral /l/ /l/ Yes

21

There are five phonemes and a glottal stop in the Somali language that are not found in English. The below chart illustrates the Somali sounds that are not like

English:

Manner of articulation Somali phonemes Shared phonemes stops /g/, /ɖ/, /ʔ/ no fricatives /x/,/ʕ/,/ħ/, no trill /r/ no

As shown in the above chart, Somali has five phonemes and a glottal stop that are not found in English.Somali speakers who are English Language Learners (ELL) or English as Second Language (ESL) students will encounter grapheme to phoneme confusion replacing with /g, ɖ, ʔ, x,ʕ and ħ/ when learning

English reading. This study will help ELL teachers to understand and to be aware of the above phonemes that have different sound representation.

Tone and Accent

In the mid-thirties, Armstrong (1964) hinted that Somali had several instances of tone alterations within the words. Later on, several authors (Klingenhen, 1949;

Andrezewski, 1956; Vycihl, 1956) further discussed the nature of tonal alterations and their relationship with stress in Somali. As a result of these studies, tone and stress in

Somali were subsequently described in greater detail by Andrezewski (e.g., 1956,

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1964, and 1977), who developed a phonemic concept of “accentual units.” This means a set of fixed alternations of tone and stress.

Hyman (1981a, 1981b) showed the fundamental nature of Somali as a tonal accent system, and also demonstrated that neither tone nor accent is marked at the abstract level. That means each accent mora is assigned a high tone (+accent) at a later level, while each unaccented mora (-accent) is assigned a low tone. The mora is defined as an accent-carrying unit in the Somali language. It is represented in phonological convention by μ: “Accent in Somali is a property of the vowel (or mora), while it is a property of the syllable in English” (Hyman, 1981, p. 177).

Finally, Somali has three basic tones with two levels of pitch as shown the below chart:

Tone Symbol Characteristic Example

1 featureHigh tone á Acute, or strong stress <ínan> ‘a boy’ 2 Low tone a No stress, or un-accented ‘one’ (PRO) 3 Falling tone àa Diminishing strong to weak <èy> ‘a dog’

stress The mora is a carrying unit of tone and will be marked on vowels. On long vowels, the tone mark will be placed on the first vowel, for example, <áa>, <àa>. For clarification, it should be noted that the falling tone (high-low sequence) is a tone that falls from high to low, and only occur in the long vowels. Saeed (1993, p. 24) demonstrated three phonetic pitch levels of the syllables of two words and

, which are graphically shown below:

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3 an inan in 3 in2

2 1 ta 1 ‘a girl’ ‘the girl’

Level 2 (mid) is high tone in the second syllable of but is not the same as at absolute level 3 because it is followed by pause.

Level 3 (highest) is a high tone in, the second syllable of because it is followed by another syllable rather than by a pause.

Level 1 is a (lower) tone in the third syllable of compared to the other levels because <-ta>, a definite article, is before a pause.

Clements states, “The majority of African languages are tonal languages or tonal-accent languages, in which differences in relative pitch are used to show lexical and grammatical distinctions” (2000, p.152). The intonation of Somali words and sentences is governed by the placement of the stress-tone on a certain vowel. Usually, stress-tone is placed on vowel units: a short vowel is one vowel unit, and a long vowel and diphthongs are made up of two vowel units. For example, the Somali word

‘enter’ is made up of one vowel unit, and the Somali word ‘bring’ is made up of two vowel units. Pitch difference in the Somali language is not used to indicate different lexical items, but to mark grammatical differences. The following examples of nouns demonstrate the different cases that are marked by stress-tone:

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Subject case Absolutive case Word: nin nín‘a man’ Tone: L H

Gender and number in nouns are also marked by stress-tone only as shown in the examples below:

Gender: ínan ‘a boy’ inán ‘a girl’ Tone: HL LH Number: èy ‘a dog’ éy ‘dogs’ Tone: Falling H

Similarly, some words of different categories such as prepositions (Prep) and pronouns (Pro) are spelled the same way. Only the tone can help distinguish between the two:

Words: kú ‘in’, ‘on’ (Prep) ku ‘you’ (Pro) Tone: H L Words: lá ‘with’ (prep) la ‘someone’ (Pro) Tone: H L

MorphosyntacticTone

Tonal variations are used to mark case, gender, number, and verbal inflection as shown in the examples below:

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Words: ‘a man’ (subject case) ‘a man’ (absolutive Tone: L H case) Words: <éy> ‘a dog’ (sing.) ‘dogs’(pl.) Tone: HL HH Words: <ínan> ‘a boy’(absolutive ‘a girl’ Tone: H L L H case ) (absolutivecase )

Orthographically, tone is not marked in writing. Only native speakers understand where a word needs to be stressed or not. Therefore, one of most the difficult areas that foreigners face when learning the Somali language is correctly locating tone marking when reading.

Syllable Structure

Regarding syllables, Clements points out “In most African languages, words can be exhaustively divided into a sequence of syllables. That is, each word can be analyzed into a succession of units of the same general form, typically containing a peak of prominence V (representing a vowel, diphthongs, and syllabic consonants), usually preceded and sometimes followed by a less prominent margin consonant C

(representing a consonant cluster). An initial margin is termed onset and a final margin is a coda” (2000, p. 140). However, the basic Somali syllable structure can be described as (C) V (C). As Saeed notes, in Somali (1999, p. 16), syllable structure can only occur with one of three following combinations:

a) A syllable can consist of a single vowel (V). The vowel can be short :< u>

‘to or for’, long: or (conjunction), or a diphthong ‘dog’.

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b) A syllable can consist of a consonant (C) followed by a vowel:

‘from’ or ‘with’, ‘give’.

c) A syllable can consist of a consonant (C) followed by a vowel which is

followed by consonant: ‘man’, , ‘mountain’. These syllable

structures can be summarized as follows:

1. V ( short vowel) or VV long vowel or dipthong) 2. CV(consonant vowel) or CVV(consonant long vowel, diphthong) 3. CVC(consonant vowel consonant), CVVC(consonant long vowel, or

diphthong, consonant) When a Somali word begins with a vowel, a glottal is inserted before the vowel, in order to provide onset to the syllable. Therefore, a Somali words like

‘dog’ is transcribed and pronounced as [ʔey].

Additionally, Somali does not allow consonant clusters in any position in the syllable. There can only be a maximum of one consonant in the onset or coda in the same syllable. Consonant clusters only occur across syllable boundaries and consist of a maximum of two consonants. The following examples will show the syllable boundaries of words that begin and end with consonants. These words are taken from

Saeed (1999), with//standing for a syllable boundary:

‘box’ ‘shop’ ‘ship’ ‘wind’

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Moreover, whenthe consonants /b/, /d/, /ɖ/, /g/, /G/, /l/, /m/, /n/, and /r/ occur at the syllable boundary, they become double consonants (form long geminates,

‘shaqaladdalabbanlaabma’), as shown the following examples:

‘short’(pl.) ‘folded’(pl.) ‘be quiet’ ‘three’

However, when a word begins with a vowel, a glottal stop is made to precede that vowel, as in the examples below:

<éy> [ʔey] ‘a dog’ <ídan> [ʔdæn] ‘incense burner’

Somali syllable structure is less complex when compared to its English counterpart. The below table summarizes the syllable structures of both languages:

English Syllable structure Somali Syllable structure English onset C, CC, CCC Somali onset C English rhyme VV(C)(C)(C)(C) Somali V, VV, VC, VVC

Syllable Final Stops

The phonemes /t/ and /k/, which are voiceless stops, do not occur in the coda syllables. If they are supposed to be in this position, their voiced counter parts /d/ and/g/ occur there instead. The nasal stop /m/ also doesn’t occur in the coda but is replaced there by /n/ : ‘branch’ changes to ‘branches’. The consonants /t/ and /k/ do not occur in syllable-final position, as illustrated in the below examples:

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(/k/ → [g] / _ // as in <*ilik> ‘tooth’ →

(/t/ → [d]/ _ // as in <*gunut > ‘kont’ →

/m/ → [n] _ // as in ‘branch’ → ‘branches’

(Data taken from Saeed, 1993)

Consonant Cluster Simplification

Somali does not allow consonant clusters (VCC) in the coda. As a result of the re-syllabification applies to avoid this illicit construction, the cluster will be simplified to (VC), unless re-syllabification occurs as (CV//CV):

Thus, <*cább> becomes ‘drink it’, cf. wáan cabbay ‘you drink it’

<*cádd> becomes ‘white’, cf. caddie ‘whiten’ (Saeed, 1999).

Because of this constraint, it is likely that Somali ELL students will simplify

English complex syllable codas in writing. So, may be spelled as .

Restriction on Vowel Syllables

In Somali, there is a restriction on a V syllable following a CV. In such cases, an epenthetic consonant [y] is inserted, as shown in the below examples:

1. ‘knife’ ‘knives’ 2. ‘pot’ ‘pots’ (Data taken from Saeed, 1993)

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Vowel Deletion

Some structural complications arise when affixation results in the creation of trisyllabic situation, (C1) V1 C2 V2 C3 V3. If the V2 happens to be a short vowel, it is deleted, and the structure is reduced to a disyllabic word:

1. ‘girl’ <* gabadho> → ‘girls’

2. ‘day’ <*maalino> → ‘days’

However, this rule of vowel deletion is not applicable to trisyllabic structure with the form (C1) V1 C2 C3 V2 C4 V3 or (C1) V1 C2 V2 C3 C4 V3 because the result of deleting V2 would create a consonant cluster. Sequences of three consonants are forbidden in Somali syllable structure.

In summary, the Somali language has 22 consonant phonemes, each of which is represented by a specific sound and letter. These consonants occur in every place of articulation in the above table. Somali consonants do not constitute all English consonants; they lack the English consonants

, , and and have some consonant phonemes used to represent sounds not found in English.

Somali has five vowels: five short and five long. Similarly, there are five short diphthongs and five long diphthongs.

Somali is a tonal language. Its utterances, words, and sentences are determined by the placement of the stress-tone on certain vowels in words. As mentioned before,

Somali has three basic tones with two levels of pitch:

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1. High tone á acute/accented

2. Low tone a no stress/unaccented

3. Falling tone as àa diminishing strong to weak stress

Phonotatically, Somali syllable structure is (C) V (C). Clusters of two consonants do not occur word-initially or word-finally, which means they only occur at syllable boundaries. When a vowel occurs in word-initial position, aglottal stop is inserted before it. The phonemes /t/ and /k/, which are voiceless stops, do not occur in the coda syllables. The next two chapters will be briefly discussed the Somali morphology.

Chapter 3

NOMINAL DERIVATIONS

The rest of this study is primarily focused on Somali morphology.Word formation can be done either by shifting a word from one grammatical category to another or from one semantic type to another within the category, such as a verb derived from another type of verb. However, the main topics to be dealt within this chapter on nominal morphology are:

1) Derivational Morphology

2) Inflectional Morphology

According to the UCLA International Institute (n.d.),

Morphologically, Somali is an agglutinative language. This means grammatical information is determined morphologically by way of attaching affixes (prefixes or suffixes) to word roots and stems. Nouns change or “inflect” to show grammatical information such as definiteness (definite or indefinite), gender (masculine or feminine), number (singular or plural), and case (nominative, genitive, accusative or vocative). Verbs inflect to show person (first, second, third), number (singular, plural), gender (masculine, feminine), mood (indicative, imperative, subjunctive, conditional), aspect (perfect, imperfect), tense (present, past, future), and polarity (affirmative, negative).

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Derivational Affixes in Nouns

The derivational process of Somali nouns means that it is possible to derive nouns from other parts of speech, or from other nouns. Two main derivations will be examined in this chapter.

Nouns derived from verb roots. Some nouns are derived from verb roots without adding any suffixations. Saeed (1999) named this process “category shift.”

Mostly, these nouns are regarded as masculine nouns:

[Verb + zero suffix = Derived noun]

Verb Suffix Derived noun 1. ‘graze’ zero ‘grazing pasture’ 2. ‘repair’ zero ‘repairing or a repair’

Verbal nouns derived from verbs. Verbal nouns are derived from the verb stem by suffixing <-id> or <-to > to root verbs, <-n> to causative and factitive verbs, and <-asho> for middle voice. As an example, the derived verbal nouns are feminine abstract nouns as shown below:

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[Verb + <-id>, <-to>, <-n>& -asho> = Derived noun]

Verb Suffix Derived verbal noun

1. ‘graze’ <-id> ‘grazing,

2. factitive ‘graze’ <-n> browsing’ ‘completion’ 3. causative(←*daaqi) ‘put <-n> ‘pasturing’ to pasture’ 4. mid. voice ‘farm for <-asho> ‘farming for oneself' 5. ‘help’ <-to> oneself’ ‘nurse/ helper’

(Data taken from Saeed, 1999, p. 194)

Masculine verbal nouns are formed by suffixing <-itaan> to verb roots:

[Verb+ <-itaan > = Derived noun]

Verb Suffix Derived verbal noun 1. ‘flee’ <-itaan> ‘flee/exodus’ 2. ‘eat’ <-itaan> ‘eating’ 3. ‘search’ <-itaan> ‘research’ 4. ‘move’ <-itaan> ‘moving’ 5. ‘wish’ <-itaan> ‘wishing’ 6. ‘kill’ <-itaan> ‘butchering/killing’ 7. ‘write’ <-itaan> ‘writing/inscription’

Saeed (1999) pointed out some verbal nouns which are derived from verbs with “specific semantic modifications.” Nouns derived by suffixing <-niin> to a root verb are shown in the chart below:

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[Verb + <-niin > = Derived noun]

Verb Suffix Derived verbal noun 1. ‘eat’ <-niin> ‘eating/act of eating 2. ‘open’ <-niin> ‘divorce/act of opening’ 3. ‘flee’ <-niin> ‘fleeing/act of fleeing’ 4. ‘warn’ <-niin> ‘warning/act of warning’ 5. ‘marry’ <-niin> ‘act of marrying’ 6. ‘wish’ <-niin> ‘act of wishing’

Some other masculine nouns are formed by adding the suffix <-e> (<-ye> after stem ending in <-i>) to a verb. Saeed (1999) named this affix

“genitive/instrumental suffix”. This type of genitive suffix is similar or equivalent to the English genitive suffix <-er> as in “player,” “boxer,” or “killer”, for example. The nouns derived belong to Declension 7:

[Verb + <-e> = Derived noun]

Verb Suffix Derived noun 1. ‘write’ <-e> ‘writer’ 2. ‘send’ <-e> ‘sender’ 3. ‘pay’ <-e> ‘payer’ 4. ‘hide’ <-e> ‘hider’ 5. ‘teach’ <-e> ‘teacher’

A very small number of feminine nouns are derived from verbs by adding the genitive suffixes <-to> and <-aa> which lexically carry genitive information like the

35 affix <-e> mentioned above. In addition, the suffix <-to> derives nouns, forming an occupational/ professional status, whereas asuffix <-aa> which seems archaic. For example:

[Verb + <-to/-aa> = Derived noun]

Verb Suffix Derived noun 1. ‘do business’ <-to> ‘business people’ 2. ‘kill’ <-aa> ‘killer’ 3. ‘write’ <-aa> ‘writer’ 4. ‘eat’ <-aa> ‘eater’

Nouns derived from verbs are mostly masculine, even though feminine nouns are also found. According to Saeed (1999), “A further affix <-aal> creates for a verb, a derived noun meaning a product of verb V” (p. 151). This is illustrated in the examples below:

[Verb+ <-aal> = Derived noun]

Verb Suffix Derived noun 1. ‘be certain of’ <-aal> ‘certainty’ 2. ‘pile/heap’ <-aal> ‘pile/heap’ 3. ‘throw’ <-aal> ‘throwing’ 4. ‘write’ <-aal> ‘writing document’ 5. ‘dig’ <-aal> ‘digging’

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In conclusion, Somali nouns may be derived from nouns or other parts of speech. Saeed described as a “category shift” (1999) by which nouns arederived from other nouns with zero affixations process. Verbal nouns are derived from verbs by adding suffixial morphemes, and they are mostly masculine. A very small number of feminine nouns are derived from verbs.

Derivation of Abstract Nouns

There aretwosuffixes, <-nimo> and <-tooyo>, which when added to concrete nouns form abstract nouns of quality. All these nouns belong to Declension 6, and thus are nouns derived from other nouns. For example:

[Noun + < -nimo/-tooyo> = Derived noun]

Noun Suffix Derived noun 1. ‘clever/wise’ <-nimo> ‘cleverness/ being

2. ‘man’ <-nimo> clever’ ‘manhood, being a man’ 3. ‘woman’ <-nimo> ‘being a woman’ 4. ‘brave’ <-nimo> ‘bravery, being brave’ 5. ‘one’ <-nimo> ‘unity/oneness/being one’ 6. ‘head’ <-tooyo> ‘presidency’ 7. ‘friend’ <-tooyo> ‘friendliness’ 8. ‘king’ <-tooyo> ‘kingdom’ 9. ‘brother’ <-tooyo> ‘brotherhood’ (Data is taken from Saeed, 1999).

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Somali has also borrowed the Arabic suffix <-i4yad> to help create abstract feminine nouns, as seen in the table below:

[Loan noun + suffix <-iyad> = Derived noun]

Loan noun Suffix Derived noun 1. ‘diplomat’ <-iyad> ‘diplomacy’ 2. ‘communist’ <-iyad> ‘communism’ 3. ‘technology’ <-iyad> ‘technology’ (Data taken from Saeed, 1999).

The antonym suffix <-daro> ‘lack of’ is added to certain abstract nouns that show goodness or praise deserving qualities. The resulting feminine noun shows an unfavorable situation, as in the table below:

[Noun+ <-daro> = Derived noun]

Noun Suffix Derived noun 1. <árxan> ‘mercy’ <- ‘lack of mercy /merciless’ 2. daro<- > nasiib > 3. díin> ‘religion’ ‘lack of religion, religionless’ < daro<- > 4. aqoondaró> ‘ignorance, lack of daro<- > < 5. <áf > ‘mouth/ ‘muteness, speechless, or ‘knowledge’ daro<- > knowledge’ 7. ‘interest’ ‘lack ofinterest’ speech’ daro<- > sharplessness’ (Data taken from Saeed, 1999). daro>

4 In the examples above, each loan word noun ends with <-i>. It may be note worthing that one <-i> is dropped when the suffix <-iyad> is added.

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Compound Nouns

There are basically three types of compound nouns. The first class of compound noun is formed by a combination of two nouns, as shown in the examples below:

[Noun + Noun = Derived noun]

Noun Noun Derived compound noun 1. <áf> ‘language’ ‘home’ ‘home language’ 2. ‘iron’ ‘male’ ‘magnet’ 3. ‘farm’ ‘knowledge’ ‘agricularalist’ 4. ‘sky’ ‘knowledge’ ‘astronomer’ 5. ‘live’ ‘knowledge’ ‘biologist’ 6. ‘land’ ‘knowledge’ ‘land expert’ 7. ‘people ‘knowledge’ ‘socialogist’ 8. ‘water ‘knowledge’ ‘hydrologist’

The second class of compound nouns consists of a noun and an adjective (N +

Adj = N). Some resulting nouns have agentive case endings <-eed/-ood>, as illustrated in the table below:

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[ Noun + Adjective = Derived noun ]

Nouns Suffix Derived compound noun 1. ‘lion’ + ‘sea’ <-eed> ‘sea lion’ 2. ‘poison’ + ‘eyes’ <-ood> ‘poison of eyes’ 3. ‘play’ + <-eed> ‘play of children’ children’ 4. ‘news’ + <-ood> ‘news of ‘woman’ women’

Similarly, this second class of compound nouns may be formed by adding the adjective <-weyn> ‘big’ as a suffix to nouns, as shown in the examples below:

[Noun + Adjective= Derived noun]

Noun Adjective Derived compound noun 1. ‘well’ ‘big’ ‘big well’ 2. ‘mountain’ ‘big’ ‘big mountain’ 3. <áf> ‘mouth’ ‘big’ ‘very sharp/ big mouth’ 4. ‘ram’ ‘big’ ‘big ram’ 5. ‘farm’ ‘big’ ‘big farm’

The third class of compound nouns is formed by a combination of nouns and verbs. These are the most common compound nouns and are called deverbals because the last element is a verbal noun derived from a verb root. Saeed (1999) described these compounds as follows:

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[Noun + Verb = Derived noun]

Noun Verb Derived compound noun 1. ‘take care of’ ‘shepherd’ 2. <áf> ‘language’ ‘send back’ ‘interpreter’ ‘sheep/goat’ ́ ‘sea’ < máax> ‘travel in ‘sea traveler/seaman’ 43. ‘water’ ‘fall’ ‘waterfall’ 5. ‘stomach’ ‘ache’ ‘stomachache’ 6. ‘beard’ ‘lead to’ ‘leader’ (Data taken from Saeed, 1999).

Nouns Derived from Adjectives

Feminine abstract nouns are derived from adjectives by adding the suffix <- aan>. This type of derivation is similar to the English abstract suffix <-ness> as in

‘whiteness’, ‘shortness’, and readiness, as shown in the table below:

Adjective Suffix Derived noun 1. ‘white’ <-aan> ‘whiteness’ 2. ‘short’ <-aan> ‘shortness’ 3. ‘large’ <-aan> ‘largeness/being large’ 4. ‘red’ <-aan> ‘redness’ 5. ‘small’ <-aan> ‘smallness’

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Possessive Suffix <-le>

When the suffix <-le> is added to a noun, it forms a derived masculine noun, which means ‘owner of something’ or ‘possessor of something’, as illustrated in the table below:

[Noun + <-le> = Derived noun]

Noun Suffix Derived noun 1 ‘milk’ <-le> ‘milk owner/milkseller’ 2 ‘bat’ <-le> ‘bat owner/batter’ 3 ‘shop’ <-le> ‘shop owner’ 4 ‘water’ <-le> ‘water seller/waterowner’ 5 ‘spear’ <-le> ‘spearman’

The Somali possessives are determiners which are suffixed to the nouns and agree in gender. The examples below illustrate suffixes, which consist of combinations of possessive determiners and the definite articles <-ka/-ta> ‘the’:

Determiner Suffix <-ka> Masculine Suffix <-ta> Feminine my <-ga> táyga <-da> táyda our <-ga> káaga <-da> táada his/its (M.) <-sa> kíisa <-sa> tíisa her/its (F.) <-da> keeda <-da> téeda our (incl.) <-nna> kéenna <-nna> téenna our (excl.) <-ga> káyaga <-da> táyada your (pl.) <-nna> kíinna <-nna> tíinna their <-da> kóoda <-da> tóoda

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Basic Structure of Somali Noun Phrases

In a single noun phrase (NP), generally the head-initial occurs in the following order:

Noun Possessive Definite/ indefinite article Adjective Demonstrative article Relative Clause Interrogative article

NP {N (Det) (Demon.art) (Interro.art) (Adj) (Relative clause)}, the examples below show the possible occurences of a noun phrase in Somali:

‘a house’ Noun (NP) with indefinite article ‘the house’ Noun (NP) with definite article ‘my house’ Noun (NP) with possessive ‘which house’ Noun (NP) with interrogative ‘ a big Noun (NP) with adjective

house/the big house’ ‘the house I’m Noun (NP) with relative clause

going to’

Vocative Suffixes

The vocative is used to indicate direct speech such as an address to one or when using one’s personal name. In the vocative, the names are offset by comas; for example, ‘where have you been, Ahmed’. Somali has two vocative suffixes: honorific suffixes are <-éey/-áay/-óoy >, and neutral suffixes are

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<-yahay/-yahow>. The suffix <-aay> is added to nouns ending in the vowel <-a>. In nouns ending in the vowel <-o>, the <-ooy> is added, but elsewhere <-èey> is used.

The form of the suffix is phonologically conditioned. These suffixes do not occur in the short vowel variants <-éy/-áy/-óy> (these are not diphthongs as were seen on page

19).

Vocatives with suffix: <-éey/ -áay/ -óoy/-ow> (honorific). In Somali, using the word honorific is hard because Somali society believes in an egalitarianism system; however, this affixation is used for respected, elderly, or professional people in the examples below:

1. F.sing. ‘Anab!’, ‘5Oh Anab!’ (cf. Cánab, a women’s name) 2. <éedòoy> F.sing. ‘Aunt!’, ‘Oh Aunt!’ (cf. éedo, ‘aunt’) 3. M.sing. ‘Farah’, ‘Oh Farah!’ (cf. faaràx, ‘Somali male

4. name) M.sing. ‘Allah’, ‘Oh God!’ (cf. Iláah, Somali name

for God) Vocatives with suffix: <-yahay/-yahow> (neutral). The below table illustrates some examples of vocative suffixes (neutral):

1. <ínanyahay> M.sing. ‘boy!’, ‘Oh boy!’ (cf. ínan) 2. F.sing. ‘girl!’, ‘Oh girl!’ (cf. inán) 3. M.sing. ‘man!’,‘Oh man!’ (cf. nín) 4. M.coll. ‘people!’, ‘Oh people!’ (cf.dád)

5 ‘o’ tends to be arahaic where it is generally used to honor in an address.

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Noun Reduplications

In linguistics, noun reduplication is a morphological process by which a root or stem of a word is partially or completely repeated. The purpose of reduplication is to show grammatical function such as plurality in inflections; it is also used in lexical derivations to form new words. Therefore, groups of Somali nouns undergo this morphological process to form plurality.

Group A: These plural nouns are formed by a complete reduplication of the singular noun; the examples below present a derivational model:

Singular noun (CV) Plural formation (CVCV) Underlying form /áf/ ‘language/mouth’ 1) Complete reduplication afáf

Surface form afáf “languages/mouths’

Underlying form /bòg/ ‘page’ 1) Complete reduplication *bogbòg

2) Consonant onset deletion bog-óg 3) Vowel alternation boóg Surface form bogág ‘pages’

Group B: This group of plurals is formed by adding partial suffixing reduplication to singular nouns, where the first consonant of the stem (C) is followed by the first short vowel (V). In this case, consonant cluster simplification occurs because CVVCCVVC is simplified to CVVCVC. For example:

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Singular ((CVVC) Plural formation (*CVVCCVVC) → Meaning (CVV∅C∅VC) Underlying form /faas/̀ ‘axe’ 1) Reduplication faasfà as̀ 2) Consonant onset faas̀ -aas̀ deletion3) Vowel deletion faas- -ás Surface form faasás ‘axes’

The reduplication forms of ‘track’, ‘cup’, ‘milk foam’, which are ‘tracks/traces’, ‘cups’, ‘milk foams’, are formed on the same model.

Group C: These plural nouns are formed by adding suffixing reduplication to the singular noun. The nasal does occur at the end of the word in the following singular nouns, as shown in the plural formation. However, in reduplicated words, <- n> becomes <-m>. The nasal does not occur at the end of a word. Therefore, n → m, e.g., ‘branch’ becomes ‘branches’, as shown in the examples below:

Singular Plural formations(partial Meaning reduplication) (CVC) (*CVCCVC) → (CV∅CVC) Underlying form /nín/ ‘man’ 1) Reduplication nínnín 2)Consonant onset deletion nín-ín 3) Vowel alternation nín-án 4) Consonant alternation ním-án Surface form nimán ‘men’

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The reduplicated forms of ‘one hair’, ‘belly band’, and

‘strap’, which are ‘more hairs’, ‘belly bands’, ‘straps’ are formed by the same process.

Group D:

Singular Plural formations (partial Menaing reduplication) CVVC (*CVVCCVVC) → (CVV∅CV∅C) Underlying form /béer/ ‘liver’ 1) Reduplication béerbéer 2) Consonant onset béer-éer

deletion3) Vowel deletion béer-er Vowel alternation béer-ár Surface form beerár ‘livers’

The reduplicated forms of ‘fresh grass’, ́ ‘enemy’,

‘abdomen’, ‘tree’, ‘rain’, ‘smoke’, < búdh> ‘wooden bat’,

́ ‘road’, and ‘rat’, which are ́ ‘freshgrasses’,

‘enemies’,́ ‘abdomens’, ‘trees’,́ ‘rains’,

‘smokes’, ‘roads’, and ‘rats’ formed according to the derivational model.

Adjective

Adjectives are one of the major classes of the Somali parts of speech. They can occur both attributively as post-nominal markers and predicatively as complements of the copula ‘is’, as in following examples:

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A. Sentence: Gloss: boy short Trans: ‘a short boy’

B. Sentence: < wuu gaaban yahay>

Gloss: w aa + uu gaaban yahay DM + he short is Trans: ‘he is short’

C. Sentence:

Gloss: waa+uu cad yahay DM+ he white is Trans: ‘he is white’

In (a), the adjective shows an attributive construction, whereas in (b) it shows a predicative construction with a complement of the copular verb; at the sametime, the adjective , as in ‘Ali is little’ occurs between the clitic pronoun and the verb .

Adjectives are distinguished from nouns in four ways:

1. They do not occur with determiners.

2. They are not marked with gender or number.

3. They do predicatively act as complements of the coupla .

4. Adjectives occur between clitic pronouns and verbs.

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Somali adjectives often occur with the past form of the verb, <-aa> is the past tense of ‘to be’ suffixed to them.Andrzewzki (1969) described this type of adjectives actas hybrid verbs because of their characteristics, as in the below examples:

D. Word:

Gloss: small [+ past] Trans: ‘(he/it ) was small’

E. Sentence: <árday+gii wanaagsán+aa>

Gloss: student + Det.M [+past] good [+past] Trans: ‘The student was good’

Derived adjectives. Somali adjectives consist of two groups: a small number of basic adjectives such as ‘big’, and ‘white’, and a large class of adjectives that are derived from nouns and verbs by adding lexical affixation, such as

‘good’ and ‘broken’. The table below shows some examples of basic adjectives in Somali language:

‘bad’ ‘good’ ‘light/easy’ ‘far’ ‘fat’ ‘liking/loving’ <óg> ‘aware’ ‘sweet’

‘raw’ ‘small’ ‘red ‘tall’ ‘new’ ‘hard’ ‘white/clear’ ‘hot’

The suffixes <-an/-san> help derive adjectives from transitive verbs. Saeed

(1999) explains the process as follows:

[Caustive verb + <-an> or <-san> = Derived adjective]

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Causative verb Suffix Derived adjective 1. CAUS ‘to <-an/- ‘tamed/trained’ 2. badùug TRN ‘to crash in san<-an/> - - > 3. ‘cooked’ pieces’i> san<-an/> - pieces’

san> Suffixation also applies to factive (FACT.) verbs to derive corresponding adjectives:

[Factitve verb + <-an/ -san > = Derived adjectives]

Factitive verb Suffix Derived adjective 1. FACT ‘sharpen <-an/- ‘sharpened 2. FACT ‘give poison’ ‘poisoned’ san<-an/> - 3. FACT ‘put tassel on’ - n> (Data taken from Saeed, 1999, p. 149). san>

The suffixes <-an/-san> are added to inchoative verbs to form derived adjective, for example:

[Incho verb + <-an/ -san> = Derived adjectives]

Inchoative verbs (INTR) Suffix Derived adjective 1. ‘get fat’ <-an/- ‘fat’ 2. <éngeg> ‘get dry’ - /- > 3. ‘swell up’ bararán sán> ‘swollen’ san<-an/> - < /- 4. ‘to do’ ánsán/ án ‘be witched/be san<-an/> - 5. ‘to kill’ ‘be killed’ san><-an/ - done’ (Data taken from Saeed, 1999). san>

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There are some adjectives that are derived from nouns. However, there are four basic color adjectives in the Somali language. Others are formed through a derivational process, which consists of adding <-an /-san> to the root:

Noun Suffix Derived adjectives 1. ̀ ‘green’ <-an/-san> ́ ‘greenery’ 2. ‘red-brown’ <-an/-san> ́ ‘reddish- brown’ 3. ‘tanness’ <-an/-san> ́ ‘tan’ 4. ‘white’ <-an/-san> ‘whitened’ 5. ‘light-red’ <-an/-san> ‘light-red’ 6. ‘grayness’ <-an/-san> ‘gray’

A few adjectives are derived from nouns by suffixing <-e>, as shown in the below examples:

[Noun + <-e> = Derived adjective]

Noun Suffix Derived adjective 1. ‘top’ <-e> ‘upper’ 2. ‘bottom’ <-e> ‘lower’ 3. ‘front’ <-e> ‘former’ 4. ‘mid’ <-e> ‘middle’

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Noun adjectives. The suffixes <-leh>, <-ah>, and <-la> are added to some nouns to change them into adjectives. There are some distinct/specific nuances in meaning. For example, <-leh> describes an inherent quality possessed by the noun being described; <-ah> indicates the material or attribute; <-la> denotes the absence of something or being without something, as illustrated in the examples below:

[Noun+ <-leh> = Derived adjective]

Noun Suffix Derived adjective 1. ‘sense’ <-leh> ‘sensible’ 2. ‘dirt’ <-leh> <úskagleh>‘dirty’ 3. ‘spot’ <-leh> ‘spotted/speckled’ 4. ‘bald’ <-leh> ‘balded’ 5. ‘behavior’ <-leh> ‘nice’(behavior)

[Noun + <-ah> = Derived adjective]

Noun Suffix Derived adjective 1. ‘iron’ <-ah> ‘made of iron’ 2. ‘fool’ <-ah> ‘being foolish’ 3. ‘clever’ <-ah> ‘being clever’

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[Noun+ < -la> = Derived adjective]

Noun Suffix Derived adjective 1. <ìndho>‘eyes’ <-la> ‘blind’ 2. ‘sense’ <-la> ‘foolish/without sense’ 3. ‘essence’ <-la> ‘without essence’ 4. ‘shelter’ <-la> ‘without shelter’ 5. ‘reserve’ <-la> ‘without reserve’ 6. ‘ears’ <-la> ‘deaf’

Formation of compound adjectives. Compound adjectives are formed from separate words added together, as shown in the examples below:

[Noun + Adjective = Derived Compound Adjective

Noun Adjective Compound adjective 1. ‘great/big’ ‘greedy’

2. ‘throat’<áf> ‘edge’ ‘many/plenty’ ‘sharp’ 3. ‘sweat’ ‘many/plenty’ ‘sweaty’ 4. ‘play’ ‘many’ ‘playful’

In conclusion, adjectives constitute a major portion of the Somali parts of speech. They can occur both attributively and predicatively. Adjectives are differentiated from nouns in many ways. For instance, they are not suffixed with determiners, they do not mark gender or number, and they often take a past tense form of the verb “to be.” In derivational morphology, most of the derived adjectives are formed from transitive verbs by adding the suffixes <-an> and <-san>. Similarly,

53 noun-adjectives are derived from nouns by suffixing <-leh>, <-ah>, and <- la>. Banti

(1988a) identified three prefixes that employ reduplication of plural formation of adjectives:

a) CVV prefixations

b) CVC prefixations

c) CV prefixations

In Somali, morphological constructions denote comparative and superlative adjectives, as in English. Both comapartives and superlatives are maked by particles known as adpositionals (ADP). For example, the adpositional is the marker of the comparative formation. For the superlative case, the adpositioanal cluster is the marker.

Adverbs

The class of adverbs is not as complex as the other categories of the other parts of speech, but it has a major grammatical function. This means that an adverb has the sentential role of adverbial, which is very important to sentence structure. An adverb usually modifies an adjective or a verb. For example,

‘Asha dances very nicely/beautifully’.

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Derived adverbs. Adverbs do not have much morphological construction; a small number of Somali adverbs are derived from nouns by suffixing <-to> to make an adverb of time, as illustrated in the example below:

Noun Suffix Derived adverb of time 1. ‘yesterday’ <-to> ‘yesterday’ 2. ‘last night’ <-to> ‘last night’ 3. ‘tomorrow’ <-to> ‘tomorrow’ 4. ‘the day before <-to> ‘the day before yesterday’ yesterday’

Types of adverbs. Most of the Somali adverbs are derivatives, meaning they may be formed by combining two words. However, adverbs may be classified into nine categories, as illustrated in the tables below:

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1. Adverbs of time:

1. ‘sometimes’ 8. ‘later on’

2. ‘twice’ 9. ‘always’ 3. ‘afterwards’ 10. ‘before’ 4. ‘then’ 11. ‘soon’ 5. ‘sometimes’ 12. ‘tonight’ 6. ‘every 13. ‘every other day’

7. day’ ‘once upon 14. ‘monthly or every month’ time'

2. Adverbs of place:

1. ‘this way’ 7. ‘that way’ 2. ‘near place’ 8. ‘far place’ 3. ‘everywhere’ 9. ‘nowhere’

4. ‘inside’ 10. ‘behind’ 5. ‘alongside’ 11. ‘all sides’

3. Adverb of Manner:

1. ‘kind’ or sort’ 4. ‘mode or manner’ 2. ‘manner’ 5. ‘so or

3. < áad yar / qúnyar>‘slowly’ 6. thus/therefore’ ‘quickly’

4. Adverbs of Quality: the word < áad> ‘very’ is used to intensify adjectives, as in the the below examples:

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sentence: <áad bàanù necebahay> àad bàa+aan ù neceb+ahay gloss: much Foc + I ADP hating + am trans: ‘I hate her/it very much’

5. Adverbs of Quantity:

1. ‘none’ 4. ‘all’ 2. ‘many/much’ 5. ‘part’ 3. ‘some” 6. ‘enough’

6. Adverbs of Affirmation:

1. 2. ‘truly’ 3. ‘certainly’

‘yes’

7. Adverbs of Interrogation:

1. ‘how?’

/hádma?> ‘when?’ gòor?>/immisa kol?> ‘how often?’ ‘why?’

8. Adverbs of Reason:

1. < sidáas> ‘because’ 3. ‘certainly’ 2. ‘perhaps’ 4. ‘if and only if’

9. Adverbs of Comparison (comparative and superlative form):

1. ‘bad’ 3. ‘worse’ 5. ‘worst’ 2. ‘well’ 4. 6. <úgu fíican> ‘best’

‘better’

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In summary, Somali adverbs are not as complex as other parts of speech, but they play a very important grammatical role in sentence structure. By definition, they modify adjectives and verbs, as mentioned in the above examples. Morphologically, a small number of adverbs are derived from nouns by adding the suffix <-to> to form adverbs of time.

Chapter 4

NOMINAL INFLECTIONS

In general, there are two genders in Somali nouns: masculine and feminine.

For some words, the gender is clear (e.g., for ‘woman’ is feminine, and for ‘man’ is masculine). In other cases, plural gender formation of a noun is quite different from that of the singular. For instance, the word ‘women’ is feminine in the singular form, but the plural form, , is masculine. Similarly,

<ínan> ‘boy', is masculine in singular form, but the plural of <ínan> is , which is grammatically feminine.

Morphologically, a noun is comprised of a root and a single affix, which give a combination of gender and number markings. Nouns change or inflect to show grammatical information such as definiteness (definite or indefinite), gender

(masculine or feminine), number (singular or plural), and case (nominative, genitive, accusative, or vocative). The morphological complexity is that there are several nouns classified into groups known as declensions. While there are specific singular nouns and plural suffixes for some groups or classes of nouns (e.g., the plural ending for declensions 1 and 3 is ‘o’) (Lecarme, 2002; Saeed, 1999).

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Types of Inflexion in Somali Nouns

The most significant and complicated inflectional process in Somali nouns occurs in plural formation. Plural formation consists of a root noun and a single affix which marks gender and number. This can be repesented by the following formula:

Root + suffix <-ka> = Masculine noun

Root + suffix <-ta> = Feminine noun

Noun Declensions

The plural formations of nouns are divided into eight declensions or classes.

These declensions are categorized into groups according to their characteristic similarities, especially the way in which the plural is formed, the gender of the plural

(masculine or feminine), and the stress-tone pattern (occurrence). The main complication is that several declensions have the same specific singular and plural suffixes for groups of classes e.g. the plural ending for declensions 1 and 3 is <-o>

(Lecarme, 2002; Saeed, 1999). In addition, all the first three classes share the same stress-pattern. The second complication is the combination of a root noun with definite determiners (-ka/-ta). Each has a masculine <-a> from suffixing with <-k> and a feminine form suffixing with <-t> to agree with the head noun’s gender.

Many scholars have classified Somali nouns according to different linguistic approaches. For example, Hyman (1981) and Banti (1998) base their classification was totally on accentual pattern (AP) and the phonological orientation of nouns.

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Others like Andrzejewski (1964, 1979), Caney (1984), and Saeed (1993a), have determined declensions on both phonological and syntactic criteria.

The table below shows the specific characteristics which are common to any certain class of nouns or shared by nouns in a specific declension, as Orwin presented in (1995, p. 32):

1. Stress-tone pattern in singular and plural form

2. Gender in singular and plural form 3. Word shape in singular form 4. Plural formation

Declension 1. The gender polarities of the first declension are feminine in the singular and masculine in the plural. Plurals are formed by suffixing <-o> or <-yo>. If the singular form ends with <-i>, stress-tone occurs on the last mora. They undergo an accent lowering in plural formation; (accent lowering is used when the focus marker occurs before the verbal group). Finally, a phonological rule (stem contraction) may be applied for a trisyllabic stem. For example:

(C)V1C2V2C3V3→ (C1)V1C2C3V3. In this case, if the V2 in the stem is short, it will be deleted, as in ‘meat’ → (* hilibo) → (hilbó) ‘meats’:

1. ‘letter’ ‘letters’ 2. ‘woman’ ‘women’ 3. ‘meat’ ‘meats’ 4. ‘border’ ‘borders’ 5. ‘fear’ ‘fears’

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Declension 2. Declension 2 is used mostly for masculine nouns in the singular and for feminine in the plural. If the masculine singular noun ends with the following consonants: , (and sometimes and ), the suffix <-o> is added. If the masculine singular noun ends with the following consonants: , the suffix <-yo> is added. In this case, in determing the orthography, the final consonant is geminated before the suffix is added. Stress tone occurs on the last mora, and an accent lowering applies in the plural formation. For the most part, singular polysyllables do not end in <-e>.

The Tonal Pattern on Declension 2. Declension 2 can be grouped into sub- classes according to the accentual pattern of the singular noun. The major group belongs to declension 2A, which has a high tone on the penultimate mora, but a tone low elsewhere:

Declension 2A.

1. ‘fan ‘fans’ 2. <ólol>‘flame’ ‘flames’

3. ‘lad’ ‘lads’ 4. ‘chieftain’ ‘chieftains’

Declension 2B. Sub-declension 2B comprises a very small number of less than fifty words. They have a high tone on the last mora, and low elsewhere:

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1. ‘maternal uncle’ ‘maternal uncles’ 2. ‘drum’ ‘drums’ 3. ‘war’ ‘wars’ 4.. ‘vulture’ ‘vultures’ 5. ‘lung’ ‘lungs’ 6. ‘male twin’ ‘male twins’

Summary of declension 2:

1. Singular masculine root + <-yo> = Feminine plural noun

2. Singular masculine root + <-o> = Feminine plural noun

Declension 3. Declension 3 is masculine in both singular and plural. The suffix of plural formation is <-o>. If the singular noun ends with <-i>, the suffix is <- yo>. In singular, nouns have a high tone on the penultimate mora. Elsewhere the tone is low. In the plural, they have a high tone on the last mora. Most of the root nouns consist of two short syllables and undergo stem contraction in plural formations, as shown in the examples below:

1. < gálab> ‘afternoon’ ‘afternoons’ 2. ‘day’ ‘days’ 3. ‘pen/pencils’ ‘pens/pencils’ 4. <ílig >‘tooth’ ‘teeth’ 5. ‘paper’ ‘papers’ 6. < náag> ‘woman ‘women’ 7. ‘watch’ ‘watches’ 8. ‘udder cord’ ‘udder cords’

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As you can see from the above examples, morphophonological changes occur to the final consonants of the singular nouns when they form plural nouns, for example, the in < ílig> ‘tooth’ changes to in ‘teeth’. In ‘pen or pencils’ the changes to to form the plural ‘teeth’ → .

Summary of declension 3:

1. Singular masculine root + <-o> = Masculine plural noun

2. Singular masculine root + <-yo> = Masculine plural noun

Declension 4. Declension 4 consists of monosyllabic singular nouns, which are reduplicated to form their plurals. They have vowel plus consonant (V+ C) as a suffix. In singular from, they have a high tone on the penultimate mora, and in plural formation they have a high tone on the last mora, but low elsewhere. The noun

‘boy’ becomes ‘boys’ in the plural, it is feminine in gender.Thus with the definite article it becomes . A phonological process accent of lowering of occurs in plural formation:

1. <áf > ‘mouth’ ‘mouths’ 2. ‘nose’ ‘noses’ 3. ‘news’ ‘much news’ 4. ‘fire’ ‘fires’ 5. ‘cliff’ ‘cliffs’ 6. ‘stream’ ‘streams’ 7. ‘liver’ ‘livers’

8. ‘rain’ < roob+áb> ‘rains’ 9 ‘plain’ < ban+nán>‘plains’

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Summary table of declension 4:

Singular masculine root + = Masculine plural noun

Declension 5. Nouns showing this declension are masculine in singular and feminine in plural. As Orwin noted (1995, p. 48), the only distinction between these nouns in the singular and the plural is the gender and the stress tone. This difference is tonal pattern, which occurs on the penultimate vowel in singular nouns and on the final vowel in plural nouns, is seen in the examples below:

1. <éy> ‘dog’ ‘dogs’ 2. <árdey> ‘student’ ‘students’ 3. ‘male ox’ ‘male oxen’ 4. ‘young male goat’ ‘female young goat’ 5. ‘a Somali’ ‘Somalis’ 6. ‘head’ ‘heads’ 7. < órgi> ‘male goat’ ‘male goats’ 8. <ínan> ‘boy’ ‘girl’

In addition, all noun forms belonging to declension 5 are homographs because they share the same spelling but have two different pronunciations and two distinct meanings. Tonal stress is not indicated in Somali spelling.

Summary of declension 5:

Singular masculine root + tonal change = Plural feminine, i.e., strees occurs in the

penultimate V in singular nouns and on the final V in plural

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Declension 6. All nouns that belong to declension 6 are feminine in the singular and masculine in the plural. Singular forms end in <-o>, while the plurals end in the suffix <-oyin>. The stress-tone pattern occurs on the penultimate vowel in singular and plural nouns, as illustrated in the below examples:

1. ‘mother’ ‘mothers’ 2. ‘grandmother’ ‘grandmothers’ 3. ‘story’ ‘stories’ 4. ‘road’ ‘roads’ 5. ’town’ ‘towns’ 6. ‘medicine’ ‘medicines’

Summary table of declension 6:

Singular feminine root + sufix <-oyin> = Plural masculine noun

Declension 7. Declension 7 signals singular nouns that are always feminine, while the masculine plural of such nouns carry the suffix <-yaal>. Normally, the singular form of this declension does not end in <-o>. The word shape in the singular form of this group of nouns usuallly ends with <-e>. However, there are some nouns that do not end in <-e>, but are still regarded as declension 7. The stress-tone pattern of singular nouns occurs on the penultimate vowel, whereas plural nouns carry no stress-tone. There are few words that do not follow the same pattern (do not end in <- e>) but which belong to the Declension 7:

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1. ‘father’ ‘fathers’ 2. ‘hyena’ ‘hyenas’ 3. ‘teacher’ ‘teachers’ 4. ‘secretary’ ‘secretaries’ 5. ‘director’ ‘directors’ 6. ‘grandfather’ ‘grandfathers’ 7. ‘president’ ‘presidents’ 8. ‘crow’ ‘crows’ 9. < busté> ‘blanket’ ‘blankets’

There are some examples of nouns that do not end <-e>, but are regarded as declension 7:

1. ‘an old man’ ‘old men’ 2. ‘water’ ‘waters’ 3. ‘men’ ‘a group of men’ 4. ‘maternal uncle’ ‘a group of uncles’

Sumary of declension 7:

Singular masculine noun ending with <-e> + <-yaal> = Plural feminine

noun

Declension 8. The Somali language has nouns which are irregular, that is, they do not fit any of the declensions mentioned so far. Most of these words are

Arabic loan words which form the plural in the same way as they do in Arabic:

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1. ‘ship’ < maraákiib> ‘ships’ 2. ‘chair’ ‘chairs’ 3. ‘prisoner’ ‘prisoners’ 4. < járiidad> ‘magazine’ ‘magazines’

A few native Somali nouns are irregular; most of these irregular nouns reverse their gender in the plural formation. Some of them are foreign loan words:

1. <íl> ‘eye’ ‘eyes’ 2. ‘stone’ ‘stones’ 3. <úgax> ‘egg’ ‘eggs’ 4. ‘pen/pencil’ ‘pens/pencils

Somali is morphologically complex. For example, there is an additional plural form “intensive plural,”or the plural of plurals. An intensive plural has suffixes ending in <-al> or <-yaal>. Here are some examples:

1. ‘ a man’ ‘men’ ‘groups of

men’ 2. <ábti> ‘maternal uncle’ ‘maternal ‘groups of

uncles’ maternal uncles’ 3. ‘hundered’ ‘hundreds’ ‘groups of

hundreds’

Summary of declension 8:

plural masculine noun root + <-yaal> or <-al> = Feminine plural noun

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For the most part, intensive plurals are used in poetic and proverbial phraseology, for example:

“

Have ye over plains and plains gone to war?

‘songs are in hundreds” (Kirk, 1905, p. 16).

Plural Form of Adjectives

The plural form of an adjective is formed when the adjective is describing a plural noun. Martin Orwin stated (1995) that if an adjective is made up of one syllable, the syllable is simply repeated to form the plural. Similarly, if an adjective is made up of more than one syllable, the first syllable is prefixed to the singular form, as shown in the below examples:

Type of syllable Singular adjective Plural adjective One syllable sing. form < yár> ‘small’ ‘small’ (pl.) More than one syllable ‘new’ ‘new’ (pl.)

sing. form More than one syllable ‘light/easy’ ‘light/easy’

sing. form (pl.)

Banti (1988) identifies three prefixes that can be used in reduplicating to form plural adjectives, as illustrated in the below examples:

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a) CVV prefixations

Singular adjective Prefix Plural formation(Adj.) ‘tall (sing.)’ <-dhaa> ‘tall’ (pl.) ‘big/huge (sing.)’ <-waa> ‘big/huge’ (pl.) [Where the stem consonant is not changed, it is followed by a double vowel<-aa>].

b) CVC prefixations

Singular form (Adj) Prefix Plural formation (Adj) ‘easy’ (sing.) <-fud> ‘easy’ (pl.) ‘difficult/hard’ (sing.) <-dag> ‘difficult/hard’ (pl.)

c) CV prefixations

Singular form (Adj) Prefix Plural formation (Adj.) ‘broken’ (sing.) <-ja> ‘broken’ (pl.)

‘burned’ (sing.) <-gu> ‘burned’ (pl.) [In this case, the reduplicated segment (CV) is the first stem consonant followed by the first vowe].

Comparative and Superlative

There is no morphological construction that expresses comparative and superlative in Somali adjectives. Comparative and superlative adjectives are marked by adpositional particles. The adpositional ‘from’ is the marker of the comparative formation, as illustrated in the following examples:

Sentence: nin+kaas+u nin+kan waa+u ka gaaban yahay

Gloss: man-that-nom. man-this abs. DM+she less short is Trans: ‘That man is shorter than this man’

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For the superlative case, the marker is an adpositional cluster ugu ́ (← ú + kú

‘to’, ‘for’ + ‘in’, ‘at’ or (u ́ +ú), as shown in the two charts:

Chart A:

Sentence: <áf somáaligu waa áfka úgu fudúd áfaka adúunka>

Gloss: Language+Somali + the DM language+the SUPER easy languages-of Trans: world+‘the Somali the language is the easiest language of the world’

Chart B:

Sentence:

cali waa+uu ugú wèyn +yahay Gloss: Ali DM+ it SUPR old + is Trans: ‘Ali is the oldest’

Numerals

All cardinal numbers are nouns. From one to eight, they are feminine, after which they become masculine. Their gender identifications are formed by the definite articles suffixed to them, as shown in the following examples:

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1. ‘one’ ‘the one’ 2. ‘ two’ ‘the two’ 3. ‘three’ ‘the three’ 4. ‘four’ ‘the four’ 5. ‘five’ ‘the five’ 6. ‘six’ ‘the six’ 7. ‘seven’ ‘the seven’ 8. ‘eight’ ‘the eight’ 9. ‘nin’ ‘the nine’ 10. ‘ten’ ‘the ten’

All ordinal numbers are formed by suffixing <-aad> to the cardinal numbers:

1. ‘1’ ‘1st’ 2. ‘5’ ‘5th’ 3. ‘1000’ ‘1000th’ 4. ‘3’ ‘3rd’

Determiners

Somali determiners are grammatically one part of speech; they are suffixed to nouns. There are four types of determiners: definite articles, demonstratives, interrogatives, and possessives. Somali does not have an indefinite article such as “a”

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Definite articles: Masculine Feminine

<-ka> ‘the’ <-ta> ‘the’

Somali articles have two basic forms: masculine <-ka>‘the’ and the feminie <- ta>‘the’. Each basic form has several variations (allomorphs), as shown below:

Demonstratives:

Masculine Feminine

<-kán>‘this/these’ < -tan>‘this/these’ <-káa(s> ‘that/those’ (further from the <-táa(s)> ‘that/those’ (further from the

speaker) speaker) <-kéer> ‘that/those’ (at the middle <-téer>‘that/those’ (at the middle

distance<-kóo>‘that/ those’ (in the far distance) distance<-tóo> ‘that/) those’ (in the far distance)

Definite articles are suffixed to nouns such as persons and things to define the point of reference or the knowledge of the speaker. Depending on the vowel variation of the definite articles <-a>, <-i>, and <-o>, each has a different meaning:

a) are employed when the person or the thing

spoken of is actually present or seen.

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b) are employed when the person or the thing

spoken of is not in the view of the speaker.

c) are preferred in narrative and in references to abstractions.

In this chapter is dealing with definite article suffixes with nouns. The determiners show gender agreement but not plural agreement. Saeed (2000, p. 56) noted that “their initial consonants undergo the Sandhi process when attached to stems”.

The masculine and the feminine determiner suffixes that begin with <-ka> and

<-ta> may undergo changes in a number of cases, as shown by the following examples:

a) The suffix initial <-k> remains when the masculine definite article <-k> is

attached to any Somali nouns ending with , , , , ,

,, , or :

Indefinite noun Determiner <- Definite noun 1. ‘a man’ ‘the man’ ka<->ka > +ka 2. ‘a lung’ <-ka> ‘the lung’

b) Suffix initial <-k> changes to <-g> when the nouns ends in , ,

, , , , or :

Indefinite noun Determiner <-ka> Definite noun ̀ 1. ‘a time’ ( → <-ga> ‘the time’ 2. ‘a shelter’ <-ka > → <-ga> ‘the shelter’

74 c) Suffix initial <-k> changes to <-h> when the nouns ends in the vowels

<-e> or <-o> (usually vowel assimilation occurs):

Indefinite noun Determiner <-ka> Definite noun

1. <áabe> ‘a father’ ( → <-ha> ‘the 2. ‘a tooth’ <-ka> → <-ha> father’ ‘the teeth’ [Note: the final vowel becomes <-a>]

d) Suffix initial <-k> deleted when the noun ends in , , , ,

or :

Indefinite noun Determiner <-ka> efinite noun

1. ‘a cow’ (M<-ka.) > → <-a> ‘the female cow’ 2. ‘an elder’ <-ka> → <-a> ‘the

elder’ The feminine determiner suffixes that begin with <-t> also undergo change

in a number of cases, as shown in the following examples: e) Suffix initial <-t> changes to <-d> when the nouns ends in , ,

, , , ,, , and all vowels:

Indefinite noun Determiner <– ta> Definite noun (F.) 1. ‘a leader’ <-ta> → <-da> ‘the

leaders’/‘the chiefs’ 2. ‘a date’ <-ta> → <-da> ‘the

history’/‘the dates’

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f) Suffix initial <-t> remains unchanged when a noun ends in , ,

, , , or s>, for example:

Indefinite noun Determiner <-ta> Definite noun feminine)

1. ‘women’ <-ta> ‘the women’

2. ‘iron’ <-ta> ‘the iron’

g) Suffix initial <-t> changes when a noun ends in <-dh>:

Indefinite noun Determiner <-ta> feminine) Definite noun ‘a girl’ <-ta> → <-dha> ‘the [Note: cluster simplification produces‘gabádha’.] girl’

h) Suffix initial <-t> changes to <-sh> when a noun ends in<-l>.in

addition,<-l> is deleted., for example:

Indefinite noun Determiner <- Definite noun ta> feminine)

1. <úl> ‘a stick’ <-ta> → <- <ús+ha> ‘the stick’ sha> 2. ‘a female <-ta> → <- ‘the female camel’ sha> camel’ 3. ‘a female <-ta> → <- ‘the female beast’ sha> beast’ beast> 4. < híl> ‘a reel of <-ta> → <- ‘the reel of grass’ sha> grass’ [Note: <-l> is deleted and change to <-sh>also V is added <-a>]

The below chart shows a set of masculine definite determiners <-ka> and feminine definite determiners <-ta> when suffixed to nouns. The determiner’s begining consonant (<-k> in the masculine and <-t>) in feminine undergoes a series of

76 phonological changes depending on the noun’s final consonant (Sandhi rule); as in the chart below:

Macsuline definite determiner Feminine definite determiner <-ka> <-ga> <-ha> <-a> <-ta> <-da> <-sha> <-dha> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ------ ------

Chapter 5

VERB MORPHOLOGY

Before about talking the main divisions of verbs and their morphological grammatical structures, it is essential to draw a brief overview of pronouns and their classes in order understand how they are attached to verbs. This will explain how independent and clitic pronouns are reflected on the roots of positive and negative verbs.

Pronouns

There are four classes of Somali pronouns: a) personal; b) interrogative; c) demonstrative; and d) possessive pronouns.

The following are personal pronouns:

Independent pronouns: pronouns that may stand on their own in a sentence.

Grammatically they are nouns and they can also be gender marked. Syntactically, pronouns may occur either in the subjective or the objective case.

Clitic pronouns: pronouns that do not show the morpho-syntax of nouns

(Saeed, 1999). They can only go with a verb or a verbal group. Like the independent pronouns, clitic pronouns can be grouped into two groups: subjective and objective

77 78 pronouns. However, the objective has two subdivisions: first set and second set objective clitic pronouns, as illustrated in the examples below:

6Independent pronouns Clitic pronouns

English Somali English Subjective Objective Objective pronoun subjective objective clitic pronoun pronoun pronoun pronoun pronoun First class second I aní+ga me aan i káyclass you (sing.) adí+ga you aad ku káa he/it(sing.) asá+ga him/it uu ∅ ∅

Mshe/. it(sing.) iyá+da her/it ay ∅ ∅ F.you (pl.) idín+ka you aannu (aan) ka kíin we (incl.) inná+ga us aynu ina kéen we (excl.) anná+ga us ay idin kayó they iyá+ga them iyaga ∅ ∅

Examples of independent pronouns:

‘you, what has happened to you?’ The bold and underlined ‘you’ is the independent subjective pronoun.

sentences:

isa+ka maxay + baa ku dhacay? gloss: you:IPRO + the what + Foc you:CPRO happened trans: ‘you, what has happened to you’

6 Note: All independent pronouns are masculine in gender except ‘she, her’ in both cases. They are made up of short form + determiner, for example, ‘I’ = ; ‘you’ = ; ‘she’ = , and so on.

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Example of clitic pronouns:

‘he went/he has gone’. The bold and underlined ‘he’ is the clitic pronoun of this sentence:

Sentences: Gloss: wàa + uu tegay

DM + he went Trans: ‘he went’

By definition, the clitic is a morpheme that has structural characteristics of a word, but shows evidence of being phonologically bound to another word.

The below chart shows the shorter version of possessive suffixes for both aboslutive and subjective cases; the only distinction is the occurrence of the stress- pattern:

English Masculine Subject Feminine Subject absolutive absolutive

my kaý káy taý táy your kaá káa taá táa his kiís kíis tiís tíis her keéd kéed teéd téed our (incl.) keén keen teén téen our (excl.) káyo kayo táyo tayo your (pl.) kiín kiin tiín tíin their koód kóod toód tóod

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Possessive pronouns: There are two types of possessive pronouns: feminine and masculine. The table below summarizes the formation of possessive suffixes, which consist of the possessive suffix proper plus a definite article suffixes:

Person M. F. possessive Pl. possessive pro. English possessive pro Formation Possessive pro. (definitive) (definitive) pro. 1st person ká(definitive)y+ga táy+da kúwayga my

2nd person káa+ga táa+da kúwaaga yours

(sing.) 3rd person kíis+a tíis+a kúwiisa his

(sing.) M. 3rd person kée+da tée+da kúweeda hers

(sing.) F. 1st person káy+ga táy+da kúwayaga our

(excl.) 1st person kée+nna tée+nna kúweenna ours

(incl.) nd 2 person (pl.) kı́i+ná tíi+na kúwiinna yours

3rd person (pl.) kóo+da tóo+da kúwooda theirs

There are other groups of possessive suffixes, used to express position and time, which form common phrases that equate in English as prepositions:

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‘inside the house’ ‘at the side of the house’ ‘behind the < cáli dartíis> ‘because of Ali’ farm’ ‘beneath the ‘on the top of the tree’ water’

Another type of common phrase is formed when possessive suffix are added to numbers, as illustrated in the examples below:

‘the five of us’ ‘the six of them’ ‘the two of them’ ‘the hundred of us’

There is also a shorter version of common phrases with possessive suffixes formed without adding definite articles, as shown in the examples below:

‘most of’ ‘all of’ ‘some of’ ‘half of’

Verb Structure

Somali verbs consist of a root/stem to which affixes are added. Somali is an

SOV language, which means the structure order of words is:

Subject-Object-Verb

Sentence: Gloss: subject DM Verb

Trans: ‘a man went’

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Verb categories: Somali verbs can be classified in two basic ways: by their morphological structure and by their syntactic relation with other verbs. The largest class is weak verbs, which can be identified by their morphology. This class carries inflectional suffixes and in Somali grammar is known as suffix verb conjugations. The second class consists of strong verbs that take four types of prefixes, as in the examples below:

1. ‘to say’

2. ‘to come’

3. ‘to be (in a place)’

4. ‘to know’

Somali verbs carry an inflection and vowel alternation, which is an ancient

Afro-asiatic pattern. Finally, the copula verb ‘be’ is considered a verb prefix called a degenerative verb, (Andzejewski, 1975). For example:

‘I am well’ (literally, one is well) < wàa la fiicànyahay> ‘she is well’ ‘is he good?’ [Note: the underlined and the bold parts are from verb ‘to be’. In Somali, is irregular verb.]

Suffixation patterns in conjugations. A language with polymorphemic word in which the morphemes have well-marked boundaries, as in Somali, is called agglutinating. As a result of this agglutinating process, the Somali language has a morphophonological complexity associated with verbal derivational affixes, which are grouped into three major conjugation patterns as follows:

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Conjugation 1 (C1): Verbs that denote root verbs with zero lexical affixations, for examlpe.

‘wait for’, or ‘boil, ‘cook’

Verb + zero suffix = Conjugation 1(C1)

Conjugation 2A (C2A): Verbs are formed by adding the suffix <-i/-si> to the root or basic verb. When the vowel <-i> is suffixed, it makes a basic verb into causative verb, e.g., ‘get up’, ‘to cause to get up’. In addition to that, the suffix <-i> also changes verbs such as ‘boil’ into verbs such as

‘cook’, or ‘cause to cook’.

The summary of Conjugation 2A (C2A):

Verb + <-i/-si > suffix = Conjugation 2A (C2A)

Conjugation2B (C2B): These verbs are formed by suffixing <-ee/-ayn> to nouns and adjectives. Some examples of Conjugation 2B verbs are the following:

Adjective Suffix Causative verb Meaning ‘white’ <-ee/-ayn> ‘whiten/to make

‘red’ <- ee/-ayn> white’‘redden/ to make red’ ‘small’ <-ee/-ayn> ‘make smaller/to

reduce’ The summary of Congujation 2B:

Adjective or Noun + < -ee/ -ayn> suffix = Causative and Factitive verbs

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Conjugation 3A (C3A): The suffix <-so> is added to the verb root to indicate the middle voice, e.g., ‘cook for yourself’ (from conjugation 2 TR

‘cook/boil’, ‘leave for yourself or pay for youself (from conjugation 2

).

Summary table of Conjugation 3A:

Verb root + suffix <-os> = Conjugation3A(C3A)

Conjugation3B (C3B): This conjugation is the same as in C3A, but theverb is governed by the phonological stem of contraction and the Sandhi rule that we discussed in Capter 2, for example, ‘take yourself’ (from Conjugation 1)

‘take’.

The summary of conjugation 3B:

Verb root + suffix <-o> = Conjugation 3B (C3B)

Saeed (1999) formulated a basic schema which represents the morphological structure of suffix verbs as [ROOT ─ LEX ─ AGR ─ INFL], where Root is the base form; LEX stands for the type of derived verb, for example, <-si> a causative suffix;

AGR represents an affix that shows agreement with a subject nominal; and INFL represents the inflection’s ending, which identifies the tense type. For example:

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Chart A:

Sentenc e: Gloss: Ahmed eat-CASU rice + the: IMP-sing. [Root cun]–[AGR -si]– [INFL-⊘] Trans: ‘ cause Ahmed to eat the rice’

Chart B:

Sentence: gloss: 7waa +aanu [Root cab] – [AGR n] – [INFL- ay]

DM+we: excl.drink Trans: ‘we drank/have drunk’

Chart C:

Sentence: Gloss: wàa+ay [Root -Cun] – [AGR-t] – [INF -aa]

DM+ she eats Trans: ‘she eats’

Chart D:

Sentence: Gloss: name + her + the DM Halimo Trans: ‘her name is Halimo’

7 Note that is used as type of determiner or sentence marker that occurs between the subject NP and the predicate NP, as shown in the following examples:

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Table E:

Sentence: Gloss: this DM father + my Trans: ‘this is my father’

The verb ‘eat’, which is a suffix-verb, and the prefix-verb ‘to know’, are found in combination with eight subject pronouns. This gives a clear understanding of the lack of the morphological conformity between agreement and inflectional endings to the schema stated below. The examples below show (AGR.) that some verbs with the pronoun, but some do not. More research is needed to understand the cause of irregularity. In the [INFL -aa/-ay] case, it shows a continuum pattern where the [AGR –?] three affixes show, zero (I sing. 3 sing.M. and 3 pl.),

(2sing.3sing.F. and 2pl.), combine with inflectional suffixes <-ay>/<-een> and <-aa>

/<-aan>, to distinguish five personal forms, though it is seen that it may be extended to an eight-person distinction by the use of subject pronouns, as in the below examples:

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Person Full form (Clitic Present Present Past Past pronoun pro) tense tense tense tense Somali English Somali English I aní+ga aan cúnaa I eat cúnay I ate you (sing.) adí+ga aad cúntaa you eat cúntay you ate he/it (M.) isá+ga uu cúnaa he eats cúnay he ate she/it (F.) iyá+da ay cuntaa she eats cúntay she ate we (excl.) anná+ga aannu cúnnaa we eat cúnnay we ate we (incl.) inná+ga aynu cúnaa we eat cúnnay we ate you ( pl.) idín+ka aydin cúntaan you eat (pl.) cúnteen you ate they iyá+ga ay cúneen they eat cúntaan they ate

Prefix verbs (second class of verb morphology). There are five prefix verbs in the Somali language; they are also known as root-changing verbs because the person marked is added as a prefix. The five verbs are as follows:

‘to be in place’ (an inanimate subject)

‘to come’

‘to say’

‘to know’

‘to be’

Here is a Conjugation of the prefix verb ‘to know’

‘(I) know’

‘(I) knew’

‘(I) will know’

‘be’ (copula verb)

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Prefix verb < yahay> ‘to be’ is considered as third class and differ in tense.

The distinction is marked by a vowel change in the root. Saeed (1999) showed an essay schematic form which clearly describes the essence of the root-changing effect, as illustrated in the following examples:

‘(we) are’

‘(we) were’

The underlined bold <-n> is used as both prefix and suffix. At the same time, it shows the root change and tense distinction:

[ AGR + Root ]

[Where AGR stands for agreement and Root stands for the verb].

The verb ‘to know’, which belongs to the second morphological class, shows two agreement affixes, (<-y> replaces zero for 3 sing. M. and 3 pl.), as illustrated in the below chart:

Person Full form Clitic Present (‘I Simple past (‘I pronoun pronoun know’) knew’) I aní+ga aan aqaán iqiín you (sing.) adí+ga aad taqaán tiqiín he/it (M.) isá+ga uu yaqaán yiqiín she/it (F.) iyá+da ay taqaán tiqiín we (excl.) anná+ga aannu naqaán niqiín we (incl.) inná+ga aynu naqaán niqiín you (pl.) idín+ka aydin taqaánniin tiqiíneen they iyá+ga ay yaqaániin yiqiínneen

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Verbal Inflection Categories

Inflectional morphology of verbs includes the following verbal categories:

Tense: Present/Past//Future Aspect: Simple/Progressive/Habitual Mood: Declarative/Imperative/Optative/Potential/Conditional Negation: Positive/Negative Sentence subordination: main and subordinate clause

Tense

Tense is a grammatical category that shows the relation between the action and the state described by the verb and the time. Somali uses conjugations to indicate tenses.

Present tense. The present refers to an action which may or may not be happening at present. It also may be used to express something that happens habitually or repeatedly. The present tense inflectional morpheme in English is <-s>, whereas the

Somali inflectional morpheme is <-aa>. In general, the present tense has two meanings: present tense with dynamic verbs show a habitual or repeated action which still happens at the time of speaking, clauses with stative verbs express a state of feeling at the time, e.g., “the dynamic ‘when did you take the medicine?’; or the stative: ‘he is ill’ (Saeed. 1999, p. 88).

Here are some examples of two verbs ‘to bring’ (C1) and the verb

‘to cook or boil’ (C2A):

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Person Full form Clitic Verb Inflectional Present verb pronoun Pronoun stem suffix formed

I aní+ga aan keén <-aa> keénaa you (sing.) adí+ga aad keén <-taa> keéntaa he/it (sing.M.) isá+ga uu keé́n <-aa> keénaa she/it (sing.F.) iyá+da ay keen <-taa> keéntaa we anná+ga aynu keén <-naa> keénaa you (pl.) idín+ka aydin keén <-taan> keéntaan they iyá+ga ay keén <-aan> keénaan

Person Full form Clitic Verb Inflectional Present verb

pronoun Pronoun stem suffix formed I aní+ga aan karí <-aa> kariyaa you (sing) adí+ga aad karí <-taa> karisa he/it (sing.M.) isá+ga uu karí <-aa> karíyaa she/it (sing.F.) iyá+da ay kari <-taa> karísaa we anná+ga aynu karí <-naa> kainnaa you (pl.) idín+ka aydin karí <-taan> karísaan they iyá+ga ay karí <-aan> karíyaan

Simple past tense. This tense refers a completed action in the past, for example, ‘he waited for it’. Saeed (1995) pointed out that negative past tense does not show person agreement distinction, e.g., ‘I/he/you’, did not bring it’. The simple past tense has tense markers <-ay>/<-ey>, and <-en>. (C1) of the verb ‘to bring’ in the past form is:

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Person Full form Clitic Verb Inflectional Past verb English pronoun Pronoun stem suffix formed I anì+ga aan keén <-ay> keénay I brought

you adì+ga aad keén <-tay> keéntay you (sing.) brought he/it isá+ga u keén <-ay> keénay he/it (sing.M.) brought she/it iyá+da ay keén <-tay> keéntay she/it (sing.F.) brought /it we (pl.) anná+ga aynu keén <-nay> keénnay we brought

you (pl.) iyá+ga aad keén <-teen> keénteen you brought they idín+ka ay keén <-een> keéneen they brought

The prefix verb in the past tense form, meaning ‘I knew’/‘you knew’/‘she knew’; shown in the below examples:

‘I knew Ahmed’

‘he knew Ahmed’

Person Full form Clitic Prefix/person Verb Suffix Past verb pronoun Pronoun marker stem ending formed I aní+ga aan <-zero> iqiín <-⊘> iqiín you (sing.) adí+ga aad <-t> iqiin <-⊘> tiqiín he (sing.M.) asá+ga uu <-y> iqiin <-⊘> yiqiin she (sing.F.) iyá+da ay <-t> iqiin <-⊘> tiqiin we anná+ga aynu <-n> iqiin <-⊘> niqiin you (pl.) idin+ka aad <-t> iqiin <-neen> tiqiinneen they iyá+ga ay <-y> iqiin <-neen> yiqiinneen

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Summary chart of prefix verb:

Pronoun + prefix + stem verb + tense ending = Past tense

Future tense. The future tense is formed with the infinitive form of main verb and the present tense. Plus ‘want’ or ‘to wish/to will’, which conveys the future. It is created through the suffix <-i> or <-n> depending on the verb, as shownby

‘to build’ and ‘to give’, the table below shows the full pattern of the future tense of verb ‘to build’:

‘she will build’

‘we will give’

Person Full Clitic Infinitive Tense Person Suffix Appro- form Pronoun verb maker marker ending priate pronou form of n I aní+ga aan Dhisi doon <-⊘> <-aa> doonaa you adí+ga aad dhisi doon <-t> <-aa> doontaa (sing.)

he isá+ga uu dhisi doon <-⊘> <-naa> doonaa (sing.M. she) iyá+da ay dhisi doon <-t> <-taa> doontaa (sing.F.) we anná+ aynu dhisi doon <-n> <-naa> doonnaa ga you (pl.) idín+ka aad dhisi doon <-t> <-taan> doontaan

they iyá+ga ay dhisi doon <-⊘> <-aan> doonaan

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Therefore, ‘Iwill build’, the future, is formed in

the following manner:

Summary chart of future tense:

Pro + Verb + + Person marker + suffix (tense marker) =

Future tense

Aspect

Aspect is an internal structure of tense which carries information about

whether the action is seen as complete or incomplete, habitual or a single occurrence,

as in the following examples:

a) ‘Ahmed cooked (it)’

b) ‘Ahmed was cooking (it)’

Present progressive. This tense is used for actions that are currently happening

or in the process of happening at the time of speaking. It may also be used for actions

that may happen in the near future, as in, ‘I am bringing (it)’.

The below table explains the basic construction of present progressive in (C1) of the

verb ‘bring’. Present continuous is formed with the infixes of person marker

<-ay/-n/-s> and the endings of the present tense inflection suffix <-aa>, as shown in

the below examples:

‘I am bringing’

‘she is bringing’

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Person Full form Clitic Verb Progressive Suffix Verb form pronoun Pronoun stem marker

I aní+ga aan keén <-ay> <-aa> keénayaa you adí+ga aad keén <-ay> <-saa> keénaysaa (sing.) he asá+ga uu keé́n <-ay> <-aa> keénayaa (sing.M.) <-ay> she iyá+da ay keé́n <-ay> <-saa> keénaysaa (sing.F.) we (pl.) anná+ga aynu keén <-ay> <-naa> keénaynaa you (pl.) idín+ka aad keén <-ay> <-saan> keénaysaan they iyá+ga ay keén <-ay> <-aan> keénayaan

Summary chart:

Pro+ stem verb + progressive marker (<-ay/-n/-s>) + tense suffix <-aa> =

Progressive tense

Suffixverbs (Positive form):

Person Full form Clitic (C1) (C2) (C3) pronoun pronoun

I aní+ga aan súgayaa karínayaa joogsáanayaa you (sing.) adí+ga aad súgeysaa karíneysaa joogsáneysaa he (sing.M.) isá+ga uu súgeyaa karíneyaa joogsáneyaa she (sing.F.) iyá+da ay súgeysaa karíneysaa joogsáneysaa we (pl.) anná+ga aynu súgeynaa karíneynaa joogsánaynaa you (pl.) idín+ka aad súgeysaan karíneysaan joogsáneysaan they iyá+ga ay súgeyaan karíneyaan joogsánayaan

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Suffixverbs (negative form): Uncontracted negative formation ‘not’ and contracted negative formation ‘not’, (for example, , ) both mean the same thing. (‘I am not/he is not waiting for it’ also both mean the same thing), as illustrated in the below table:

‘I do not wait’

‘he does not cook’

‘we do not stop’

The formation of the negative suffix verbs is shown in the below chart:

Person Full form Clitic (C1) (C2) (C3) pro. pro. I aní+ga aan súgi maayó karín maayó joogsán maayó you (sing.) adí+ga aad súgi maysó/ karín joogsán sugi maysíd maysó/ maysó karín joogsan maysíd maysı́d́ he (sing.M.) isá+ga uu súgi maayo karín maayó joogsán maayó

she (sing.F.) iyá+da ay súgi maysó karín maysó joogsan maysó́ we (pl) anná+ga aynu súgi mayno karín maynó joogsán maynó you (pl.) idín+ka aad súgi maysàan karìn joogsán maysàan maysàan

they iyá+ga ay súgi maayàan karı́ǹ joogsan maayaan maayàan

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Summary chart:

Pronoun + stem verb + negative marker + person marker <-n-/-s> =

Suffix negative form

Prefix verbs: The infinitive prefix is used to express as base for the progressive aspect. “When this verb ‘to know’ is used in the progressive, present or past, then it means ‘recognize’ rather than ‘know’ (Owrin, Martin, 1995,

P.171). However, the meaning of < aqoón> ‘to know’ is ‘I recognize’, ‘you recognize’ and so on, as shown in the below example:

‘she recognizes’

‘we recgnize’

Prefixal verbs (positive form):

Person Full form Clitic Verb Progres- Inflectional Verb form pronoun pronoun stem sive suffix present marker progressive I aní+ga aan aqoón <-ay> <-aa> aqoónayaa

you(sing.) adí+ga aad aqoón <-ay> <-taa> aqoónaysaa

he/it isá+ga uu aqoón <-ay> <-aa> aqoónayaa (sing.M.) she/it iyá+da ay aqoón <-ay> <-taa> aqoónaysaa (sing.F.) we (pl.) anná+ga aynu aqoón <-ay> <-naa> aqoónaynaa you (pl.) idín+ka aad aqoón <-ay> <-taan> aqoónaysaan

they iyá+ga ay aqoón <-a> <-aan> aqoónayaan

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Summary chart:

Pronoun + stem verb + progressive marker <-ay> + <-n / -s-> + tense ending <-aa>

= Present progressive

Prefixal verbs (negative form): Orwin (1995) indicated that the negative form of the present progressive is formed the same way as the positive prefix verb form, except for the addition of the negative words with the infinitive (e.g.,

‘they are not knowing’). The infinitive of is , and the infinitive of ‘say’ is ‘to say’. The below listed examples show the typical progressive verb endings with the infinitive verb stems , and

:

‘they are not saying’

< odhán máysó> ‘she is not saying’

Also, we will see when ‘not’ e.g. 'I am/he is not knowing’;

‘you are (sing.)/she is not knowing’; <ḿa odhá́naysaan> ‘you (pl.) are not knowing’, as illustrated in the below examples:

I ḿaodhánayó we ḿa odhanaynó you (sing.) ḿaodhánaysó/síd you (pl.) ḿa odhánaysáan he (M.) ḿa odhánayó they ḿaodhánayáan she (F.) ḿa odhánaysó

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Past progressive. The past progressive is formed the same way as present progressive except that the inflectional past is used; it expresses actions that were continuous at some time in the past. For example:

‘I was bringing’

‘he was bringing’

Suffix verb (positive form):

Person Full form Clitic Verb progressive Inflectional Verb form pronoun pronoun stem marker suffix in past progressive

I aní-ga aan keén <-ay> <-ay> keénayay you (sing.) adí+ga aad keén <-ay> <-t8ay> keénaysay he isá+ga uu keén <-ay> <-ay> keénayay she iyá+da ay keén <-ay> <-tay> keénaysay we anná+ga aynu keén <-ay> <-nay keénaynay you (pl.) idín+ka aad keén <-ay> <-teen> keénayseen they iyá+ga ay keén <-ay> <-een> keénayeen

Prefix verb (positive form): The past continous is the same as the conjugated verbs except for the prefix form verb, as shown in the below example:

‘you were recognizing’

8 Note: the inflectional suffix <-t> changes to <-s> as shown in the above verb form in past progressive.

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Person Full Clitic Verb Progressive Inflectional Verb formed form pronoun stem marker suffix in the past pronoun I ani-gá aan aqoón <-ay> <-ay> aqoónayay you adí+ga aad aqoón <-ay> <-tay> aqoónaysay

(shein g.) isá+ga uu aqoón <-ay> <-ay> aqoónayay she iyá+da ay aqóon <-ay> <-tay> aqoónaysay we anná+ga aynu aqoón <-ay> <-nay> aqoónaynay you idin+ka aad aqoón <-ay> <-teen> aqoónayseen

(pl.)they iyá+ga ay aqoón <-ay> <-een> aqoónayeen

Summary chart of the past continous tense:

Verb stem + Progressive marker (<-ay/-na>) + tense suffix <-ay> = Past

progressive

Habitual Present (Positive Form)

This tense/aspect form expresses habitual or repeated action in the present tense. Unlike the habitual past, the auxiliary verb ‘be able’, followed by an infinitive main verb, is used instead of ‘to be (in place)’for stylistic purpose. In fact, when <9jir> is used in a sentence, it is denoted as “used to”, as shown in the below examples:

‘I am able to eat’

‘I am able to eat’

9 Note: in habitual present tense, the auxiliary ‘to be (in place)’ seems awkward. Therefore, it sounds better when is used instead of in the present form.

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Person Aux. C1 C2 C3 I kár/ jíra keéni káraa kárin karaa Joogsán /jíraa /jı́raá karaa/jíraa??

you (sing.) kar/ jíra keéni kárin joogsán kártaa/jírtaa kartaa/jirtaa kartaa/jirtaa he kár/ jíra keéni kárin karaa/jiraa joogsán karaa/jiraa karaa/jiraa she kár/ jíra keéni kárin joogsán kartaa/jirtaa kartaa/jirata kartaa/jirataa we kár/jíra keé́ni karnaa kárin karna joogsán karnaa you (pl.) kár/jíra keéni kartaan kárin kartaan joogsán karnaa they kár/jíra keéni kareen kárin kareen joogsán kareen

Habitual Past

This aspect is used to express a repeated or a habitual action in the past which is completed or no longer occurs. The verb ‘is used’ with any infinitive verb. “It is an auxiliary construction using the past of (C1), to be (in place), to exist’, with the infinitive of the main verb” (Saeed, 1995, p. 91). For example:

‘every night I used to see him/ nightly, I

used to see him’

‘she was habitually cooking/she used to

cook’

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Person Aux. C 1 C 2 C 3 I jíray keéni jíray kárin jíray joogsán jíray you (sing.) jíray keéni jíray kárin jírtay joogsán jírtay he jíray keéni jíray kárin jíray joogsán jíray she jíray keéni jírtay kárin jírtay joogsán jíray we jíray keéni jírnay kárin jírnay joogsán jírnay you (pl.) jíray keéni jírteen kárin jírteen joogsán jírteen they jíray keéni jíreen kárin jíreen joogsán jíreen

Habitual Past (Negative Form)

This construction is formed by the unchanged verb form (invariable form) preceeded by a negative marker ‘not’or ‘not’. The word ‘be (in place)’ is used as an auxillary verb in the simple past, followed by an infinitive main verb, as in the following examples:

‘I did not use to bring’

‘you did not use to stop’

‘they did not use to cook’

‘we did not use to stop’

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Person Full Clitic Neg. C1 C2 C3 form pronoun marker pronoun I aní+ga aan má keeni jirin karín jirin joogsán jirin

you adí+ga aad má keeni jirin karín jirin joogsán jirin (sing.) he/it isá+ga uu má keeni jirin karín jirin joogsán jirin (sing.) M. she/it iyá+da ay má keeni jirin karín jirin joogsán jirin (sing.) F. we anná+ga aynu má keeni jirney karín jirin joogsán jirin

you idiń+ka aad má keeni jirin karín joogsán jirin (pl.) jirteen they iyá+ga ay má keeni jirin karín jirin joogsán jirin

Summary chart:

Pronoun + negative marker + infinitive main verb + Aux past = Habitual past

(negative form) Mood

The mood of a verb expresses the attitude of the speaker about what is being said. There are five basic moods in the Somali language:

a) Declarative

b) Imperative

c) Optative

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d) Potential

e) Conditional

Declarative mood. A declarative sentence simply makes a statement. It consists of a subject and a predicate. In Somali, declarative sentences are classified into three groups according to their ability to mark tense:

a) Declarative without focus marker: this type of declarative sentence is

marked by a mood classifier instead of a focus marker. As Andrzejewski

(1975) stated, is substituted to be a verb focus particle in

complementary distribution with focus markers , , and

. For example:

Sentence: Gloss: DM + I you kill: PRES PROG Trans: ‘I am killing you or I am going to kill you’

b) Declarative with focus: Somali, as with other Cushitic languages like

Rendile (Oomen 1978), Boni (Sasse, 1981), and Diyrayta (Hayward &

Saeed, 1984), uses special words to identify words in focus. In Somali,

there are three focus words :< bàa>, and . For example:

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Sentence: Gloss: fool:M Foc + you are Trans: ‘you are a fool’

Sentence: <ín uu dílayo ayàan árkayey> Gloss: that + he is:killing Foc + I see:am Trans: ‘I see that he is killing’

c) Verbless declarative: The mood classifer identifies a verbless

declarative sentence when it occurs alone between the NP and the

predicative NP. For example:

Sentence: Gloss: Ahmed DM pilot Trans: ‘Ahmed is a pilot’

Sentence: Gloss: name + her + the DM xaliimo Trans: ‘her name is halimo’

Sentence: Gloss: that + M DM father + her + the Trans: ‘that is her father’

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Imperative mood. This form is used for making requests, giving commands and giving orders, as illustrated in the example below:

Imperative: Imperative: Gloss: eat: IMP: Sing. Gloss: bring: IMP : Pl. Trans: ‘eat’ Trans: ‘bring’

Suffix verbs (positive form): This form of imperative mood deals with the verb in three conjugations, as ‘wait’, ‘cook’, ‘make/do’,

‘stop’, and ‘take’. These occur in with the combinations of singular and plural subjects as illustrated in the following examples:

‘wait!’

‘cook!’

‘make/do!’

Person C1 C2A C2B C3A C3B Singular súg kári samèe joogsó qaadó ́ formPlural form súga karíya saméeya joogsá da qáata

Suffix verbs (negative form): The negative imperative form takes the sentence particle marker ‘not’, which occurs in the front of the sentence. It is used to tell somebody not to do something. An additional suffix <-nin> must be added in the imperative plural form, as shown in the below examples:

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‘do not wait!’

‘do not cook!’

‘do not stop (pl.)!’

Person C1 C2A C2B C3A C3B Singular ha súgin ha kárin ha samáyn ha joogsán qaadán

formPlural form ha ha karinína ha samyní ha joogsanína ha sugína na qaadanína Prefix verbs (positive form): The imperative of prefix verbs is not same as the imperative of the suffix verbs, because they are irregular verbs and therefore, they behave in a number of different ways. Saeed stated (2000) that the verb form of

‘come’ is supletive, that is, not reflecting the root shape. Similarly, the forms given for ‘place’ and ‘to know’ are not commonly used since they are stative verbs. Since these verbs are stative, speakers use dynamic verbs for replacement, such as ‘know it’, as shown in the below examples:

Pronoun ‘came’ ‘in ‘know’ ‘say’ place’ Pro. (sing.) <òol> Pro.(pl.) <óola>

Prefix verb (negative form):

Pronoun ‘came’ ‘in place’ yiqiin ‘know’ ‘say’ Pro. (sing.) ódhan(in) íman(in) óollin óqoon(in) /áqoon(in)

Pro. (pl.) imaannína

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Optative mood. This mood expresses wishes, hopes, or curses. Here are two common uses of mood:

a) Mood that expresses wishes and hopes;

b) Mood that entails curses or blessings, as seen in the below examples:

‘let him die or let him be dead’

‘may God take you’

This construction of mood, given in the below table, shows the three conjugation classes for the verbs ‘to wait’, ‘to cook’, and ‘to stop’:

‘let me wait or let me be waiting’

‘let her stop or let be stopping’

Affirmation in the optative mood (suffix verbs, positive form):

Person Full form pro. Clitic pro. (C1) (C2) (C3) I ani+ga an súgo karíyo joogsádo you (sing.) adí+ga ad súgtid karísid joogsátid he isá+ga há súgo karíyo joogsádo she iyá+da há súgto karíso joogsáto we (excl.) inná+ga aanu súgno karínno joogsanno we (incl.) anná+ga aynu súgn karínno joogsánno you (pl.) idín+ka ad súgteen karíseen joogsáteen they iyá+ga há súgeen karíyeen joogsádeen

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Negation in the opatative mood: The negative marker (NM) ‘not’ is incorporated in to the subject pronoun (SP) which occurs before the verb. The below construction shows the three forms of verb conjugations when used with a negative marker, as given in the following examples:

‘let me not wait’

‘let her not cook’

‘let them not stop’

person Neg. marker + Clitic (C1) (C2) (C3)

pronoun I yáan +an súgin karín joogsán you (sing.) yáan +ad sugín karín joogsán he yáan + u sugín karín joogsán she yáan + ay sugín karín joogsán we (excl.) yáan + an(u) sugín karín joogsán we (incl.) yáy +nu sugín karín joogsán you (pl.) yáan +ad sugín karín joogsán they yáan +ay sugín karín joogsán

Potential. Potential is a mood that expresses possibilities. It has a sentence marker ‘maybe/perhaps’ which is preceded by the inflected verbs, as shown in the following examples:

‘perhaps/maybe we bring’

< shów/sów keenteé> ‘perhaps/maybe you bring’

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Person Marker Verb stem Suffix Verb form I sów/shów keen <-ee> keenee you (sing.) sów/shów keen <-tee> keentee he sów/shów keen <-ee> keenee she sów/shów keen <-tee> keentee we sów/shów keen <-nee> keenee you (pl.) sów/shów keen <-teen> keenteen they sów/shów keen <-een> keeneen

There are some other ways to express ‘maybe’or ‘perhaps’ in Somali language.

For example:

a) ‘maybe/perhaps it is possible’

b) ‘maybe/perhaps it is not possible’

c) ‘maybe/perhaps he will eat’

Conditional. Conditional sentences express hypothetical circumstances which could be in the present or past. The verb used in the conditional mood is an infinitive followed by an adjective (contracted adjective form of the verb )

‘having’ or possessing’, as illustrated in the below examples:

‘they would/should bring (it)’

‘you would/should have brought (it)’

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Person Full form pronoun Clitic pronoun Verb Adjective I aní-ga aan keéni laháa you (sing.) adí+ga aad keéni laháyd he isá+ga uu keéni laháa she iyá+da ay keéni laháyd we anná+ga aynu keéni laháyn you (pl.) idín+ka aad keéni lahaydèen they iyá+ga ay keéni lahaayèen

In the negative form, the negative marker ‘not’ is followed by the main verb. It is used , with following verb forms:

‘I would not/should not have brought (it)’

‘we would not/should not have brought (it)’

‘she would not/should not have brought (it)’

Person Negative marker Verb stem Suffix Verb form I má/aan keén <-eén> keeneén you (sing.) má/aan keén <-teén> keeteén he má/aan keén <-eén> keeneén she má/aan keén <-teén> keenteén we má/aan keén <-neén> keenneén you (pl.) má/aan keén <-teén> keenteén they má/aan keén <-eén> keeneén

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Sentence Subordinate Clause (Main/Subordinate)

By definition, the main clause of a sentence is called an independent clause because it consists of a subject and a verb and makes complete sense. The subordinate clause of a sentence is called a dependent clause. It begins with subordinate conjunctions or relative pronouns and consists of a verb and a subject, but needs additional information to complete the sense or thought. As Orwin (1995, p. 187) described, the word is the only word used to distinguish between an appositive and a restricted clause in Somali. The word occurs between the head noun and the relative clause. When the clause is restricted, no Somali word is used and the clause simply follows the head noun, as seen in the below examples:

‘I saw the book, which Ahmed took’ ‘I saw the book which Ahmed took’

However, there are several ways to form subordinate clauses in Somali. Orwin

(1995) categorized these into two possible occurrences according to their syntactic constructions.

1. A relative clause verb forms when the head noun is not the subject of

the relative clause.

There are two secnerios for such clauses:

a) When the head noun plus the relative clause is not the head noun (main

subject): the following sentences show when the head noun + relative

clause is not the subject of the sentence:

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ínannku ku shaqynayó> that the boy is working with’

cabtay> milked’

b) When the head noun plus the relative clause is the subject of the

sentence:

‘the truck which he boarded broke down’

‘the goat which he is bringing will eat it’

Compare the above examples with the following sentences in which head noun plus the relative clause is not the subject of the sentence:

doonaa > 2. A relative clause verb forms when the head noun is the subjectof the

relative clause.

Similarly, there are two possible ways for this to occur:

c) When the head noun + relative clause is not the subject of the sentence:

‘I saw the men who are bringing it’

d) When the head noun + relative clause is the subject of the sentence:

accompany them’ (All the above data is from Orwwin, 1995, pp. 189-190.)

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Finally, Saeed (1999:208) found that there are different characteristics that distinguish subordinate clauses from main clauses:

1) Main sentence types found in main clause- interrogative, imperative,

optative, etc.are not found in subordinate clauses.

2) The declarative marker does not occur in a subordinate clause. For

example:

a)

Sentence: Gloss: Ahmed DM came Trans: ‘Ahmed came’

b)

Sentence: <*Ahmed - yimid>

Gloss: Sentence Ahmed no DM came Trans: ‘Ahmed came’ :

The example above (b) is an ungrammatical sentence because it lacks

any declarative marker.

Every main clause must contain one and only one focus marker

(, , or ), which are not found in subordinate

clauses.

There are two (and only two) grammatically acceptable ways to correct

it, as illustrated in the following examples:

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c)

Sentence: Gloss: Ahmed Foc came Trans: ‘Ahmed came’

d)

Sentence: <*Axmed - yimid> Gloss: Ahmed no: Foc came Trans: ‘Ahmed came’

The example above (d) is an ungrammatical sentence because it lacks

thefocus marker marker .

e)

Sentence: Gloss: Ahmed Foc meat + the ate Trans: ‘Ahmed ate the meat’

1) The negative marker ‘not’ does not occur in the subordinate

clause, but is replaced by ‘not’, as illustrated by the

following examples:

f)

Sectence: Gloss: old man + not tongue English in speak you saw:PAST Tran: ‘you saw the old who does not speak English’

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g)

Sentence: <* odayga af ingriisiga ku ma hadlin waad argtay> Gloss: old man + the tongue English in not speak you: 2sing. saw:PAST Trans: ‘you saw the old man who does not speak English’

The same process is applied when a negative subordinate occurs at the

beginning of the relative clause>. It may be negated only by using the

negative marker ‘not’, and never , as the following

sentences illustrate:

h)

Sectence: Gloss: that + Neg. farax come I want Tran: ‘ I do not want Farah to come’ (literally: Farah that notcome I want)

i)

Sectence: <*in Farax ma imaanin waan rabbaa> Gloss: that farax not come I want Tran: ‘I do not want Farax to come’ ( Literally: that Farah not come I

want) j)

Sentence: Gloss: that+Neg.+ he aware thing + the one told Trans: ‘he was not aware that the thing I was told’

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To sum up, a negative subordinate clause is formed by replacing the negative marker ‘not’ by ‘not’ after the NP in a main clause and changing the form of the verb into the negative form, as illustrated in the above examples.

Derivational Morphology of Somali Verbs

In derivational morphology of verbs, the derivation of verbs from nouns and verbal stems will be discussed.

Verbs derived from nouns. Inchoative verbs are derived by suffixing <-ow/- oob> to a noun (N), forming an intransitive verb meaning ‘to become N’. For example:

Noun Suffix Derived verb 1. ‘truth’ <-ow> ‘become true’ 2. ‘fool’ <-ow> ‘become a fool’ 3. ‘infidel’ <-ow> ‘become an infidel’ 4. ‘rain’ <-ow> ‘become rain’

As Saeed (1999) presented, the affix has two allomorphs: <-ow> occurs before a consonant or the end of a word, whereas <-oob> occurs before a vowel, as illustrated in the below examples:

A)

Sentence:

Gloss: DM+ it: M cold + INCH + 3sing. M: PAST Trans: ‘It (M) became to cold or it (M) froze’

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B)

Sentence:

Gloss: DM+he: M old + INCH+ 3sing. M: PAST Trans: ‘he (M) became to an old’

Verbs derived from adjectives. The affix <-ow/aan> is added to adjectives to derive intransitive verbs that mean ‘becomes adjective state.’ These impersonal verbs are not conjugated with any personal pronouns except with “it”:

Adjective Suffix Derived Verb 1. ‘red’ <- ‘become/get red’ 2. ‘small’ yaràan/ yaròw> ‘become/get small’ ow/aan<- > < 3. anaagsán> anaagsanòw/wanaagsàan> ‘become ‘nice’ wacannàan/ nnòw> ‘become nice’ ‘good’ good< ’ wac

ow/aan> Summary chart:

Adjective + suffix <-ow/ -aan> = Derived Verb

Derived experiencial verbs (EXP V). Another suffix, <-ood> is added to form a derived intransitive verb when attached to nouns describing a state of experience:

Noun Suffix Derived verb 1. ‘dream’ <- ‘have dream’ 2. háxan> ‘cold’ dhaxamòod> ‘feel cold’ < 3. ícil ‘siding with’ ficilòod ‘to align oneself with ood<- > < > 4. álmo ‘sexual allmòod ‘have an affair’ ood<- > somebody’somebody

affair’ ood>

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Summary chart:

Noun + suffix <-ood> = Derived experiencial Verb (EXP V)

Derived factive verbs (FACT V). The suffix <-ays> forms verbs from both nouns and adjectives. Saeed (1999, p. 136) writes that the suffix <-ays> has several allomorphs. It has the principal forms is <-ee> in the imperative. However, it changes to <-ayn> or <-eyn> in the infinitive form:

‘make’

‘do/make’ (IMP.)

‘to do/to make’ (Infinitive)

Noun Suffix Derived factitive verbs 1. ‘poison’ <-ee> ‘make poisonous’ 2. ‘grease’ <-ee> ‘make greasy’ 3. <áf> ‘edge/blade’ <-ee> ‘sharpen’ 4. ‘needle’ <-ee> ‘inject/prick’

Summary chart:

Noun + suffix <-ee> = Derived factitive verb

In some cases, the derived factitive verbs show a state of accomplishment/achievement:

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Adjective Suffix Derived factitive verbs 1. ‘hard/strong’ <-ee> ‘strengthen/harden’ 2. ‘red’ <-ee> ‘make red’ 3. ‘sweet’ <-ee> ‘make sweet’ 4. ‘small/little’ <-ee> ‘reduce/make smaller’ 5. <-ee> ‘truth’ ‘make truth’ 6. <-ee> ‘big/huge’ ‘make big/make huge’

Summary chart:

Adjective + Suffix <-ee> = Derived factitive verb

Causative derive dverbs (CAUS V). There are two suffixes that create causative derived verbs.The first is <-i> which changes an intransitive verb to a transitive verb. This suffix <-i> means to “casue/accomplish.”

Verb (TRN.) Suffix Derived verb (INTRN.) 1. ‘boil’ <-i> ‘cook’ 2. ‘go/be out’ <-i> ‘make it out’ 3. ‘grow/raise’ <-i> ‘rear/bring up’ 4. ‘become/be soft’ <-i> ‘soften’

The second causative affix is <-sii>, which can be suffixed to both intransitive

(INTRN) and transitive (TRN) verbs. This suffix is mostly attached to activity verbs, provided the subject of the sentence is [+ an animate], as illustrated in the below examples:

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Sentence:

Gloss: boy + the eat caus: IMPERATIVE rice + the Trans: ‘ make the boy eat the rice’

Sentence: <Àxmed ayàa wiila+shii cun+síiyey Gloss: Ahmed Foc boys + the ate: caus: 3Sing: PAST rice bariìs+kii>

+ the Trans: ‘Ahmed made the boys to eat the rice’

Passive voice. Basically, Somali does not have a definite syntactic formation, but some constructions are formed when the affix <-am10> is added to causative verbs, as shown in the below examples:

a)

Sentence:

Gloss: Axmed door + the Foc + he open + Past Trans: Ahmed opened the door’

b)

Sentence: Gloss: door + the DM open + PAST Trans: ‘the door was opened/the door opened’

10 In the above examples, a) shows a passive voice whereas b) shows middle voice. Saeed has the suffix <-am>, but in my dialect the suffix is <-m>.

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Secondly, the non-person pronoun/non-specific pronoun <-la> ‘someone’ is used to form a passive construction when it occurs between the head noun and the predicate. For example:

c)

Sentence: Gloss: Lion + the DM someone kill + PAST

Trans: ‘the lion was killed by someone’

d)

Sentencs: Gloss: bag + the DM someone steal + PAST Trans: ‘the bag was stolen by someone’

The below listed casuative root verbs may form derived passives (where word ending m → n):

‘be shaved’ ‘be smoothed’ ‘be broken’ ‘be open’ ‘be picked’ ‘be scratched’ ‘be injected’ ‘be killed’ ‘be repaired’

Verb Reduplications

Plural intensive verbs express emphatic, intensified, or repeated action and are formed by a complete reduplication of the stem verb. As Saeed (1987) stated, reduplication in Somali literature is basically a copying of the first syllable of the singular form on to the the beginning of the singular to form the plural.

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Morphologically it is described as a reduplication of linguistic constituents (i.e., words stem, and root). All these verbs belong to (C1). Full reduplication involves a duplication of the entire syllable or word, as shown in the below example:

Singular verb Reduplication/Plural verbs 1. ‘tell’ ‘tell many times or tell word by word’ 2. ‘tear’ ‘cut in pieces or cut repeatedly’ 3. ‘open’ ‘open many times’ 4. pick up’ ‘pick up repeatedly’ 5. ‘cut’ ‘chop up or cut in pieces’ 6. ‘want’ ‘want repeatedly’ 7. káb> ‘repair/mend’ ‘repair many times’ 8. ‘move’ ‘move back and forth’ 9. ‘fold’ ‘wrap may times or coil’

Summary chart:

Copying of the first syllable + the beginning of the singular form = plural

verb Middle voice

In English, the middle voice is voice which describes the subject doing an action for himself/herself. It is usually expressed with reflexive pronouns as in the examples below:

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a) Ahmed killed Ali Active voice

b) Ali was killed by Ahmed Passive voice

c) Ahmed killed (himself) Middle voice

Jeffrey explaining this English structure: “In form, middle voice sentences, unlike passives, are not signaled by any special grammatical morphemes. They are marked by the intransitive use of a basically transitive verb” (1995, p. 184). In Somali, the middle voice is derived when suffix is added to a verb stem, creating middle verb.

The verb stem is often a causative verb. For example, adding the suffix <-o> to the cassuative verb ‘fold/bend’ produces the middle voice ‘turn back’.

As Saeed (1999) noted, there are several forms of middle voice affixation:

 An imperative is suffixed by <-o>; as in ‘open for oneself’

 An infinitive is suffixed by<-an>; as in ‘get opened’

 In any other cases the affix <-at> become <-ad> before a vowel;

Many Somali authors have studied the literature describing the affixation of middle voice verbs have given them different linguistic names. Moreno (1955) classifies some as riflessivo, Burno (1984) medio-riflessivo; Andrzejwski (1968) and

Plugliell (1984) both gave the same label of autobenefactive and Saeed called it middle voice.

According to Saeed (1999), there are six types of middle voice in Somali verbs:

1) Reflexive action: this denotes that the subject acts as an agent of the action

or by doing the action for one’s own benefit:

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Stem verb Suffix Derived middle voice 1. ‘warm’ <-so> ‘warm for yourself/oneself’ 2. ‘nourish’ <-so> ‘nourish for yourself/onself 3. <-so> ‘sell’ ‘sell for yourself/oneself’ self’ 4. <-so> ‘verify/make ‘verify for yourself/oneself’

sure’ 2) Body action (movement): This denotes middle voices that affect body

gesture, posture movement it is formed by adding the suffix <-o/-so> to

the verb stem, as shown in the below examples :

Stem verb Suffix Derived middle voice 1. ‘cause to bend’ <-so> ‘bend over’ 2. ‘braid (hair)’ <-o> ‘braid oneself’ 3. < gúr> ‘pick’ <-o> ‘pick oneself

3) Emotional state: This middle verb expresses the emotionality of the subject:

Stem verb Suffix Derived middle voice 1. ‘mourn’ <-o> ‘mourn (women)’ 2. ‘conscious/ aware’ <-so> ‘gain consciousness’ 3. ‘swing’ <-o> ‘swing for oneself’ 4. ‘win’ <-so> ‘gain a win’

4) Reciprocal: As Saeed (1999) described this type of middle verb expresses

actions that are reciprocal and at the same time shows bi-directional

activities, for example, ‘exchange’, ‘play

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oral riddle’. The sentence below describes the reciprocal activity used by

middle verbs with the reciprocal pronoun:

Sentence: Gloss: DM + they reciprocal pro killed

Trans: ‘they killed each other’

There is a certain group of reciprocal verbs which mainly describe

becoming a family unit or arriving at unity, and they are transitive verbs:

1. ‘marry/make a family’

3. ‘make in-laws or admit one as an in-laws’ 4. ‘give present/dowry to in-laws/make good relation to your in-laws’

5) In voluntary state of change: As Saeed (1999) stated some middle verbs

express an involuntary state of change where the subject

(animate/inanimate) has no control at all. For example:

1. ‘grow teeth/get teeth’ 2. ‘become mad/insane’ 3. ‘go into labor’

4. ‘go in death/die’ 5. ó ‘get gray hair/be grayed’

6) Autobenefactive: These verbs express actions which are productive and

also beneficial to the subject. This type of middle verb is very common in

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Somali, where middle affixation reflects that the doer (subject) does the

action of the verb for his or her benefit; thus, these are called

autobenefactive middle verbs:

Stem verb Mid.voice suffix Middle verbs

1. <-o> ‘cultivate for ‘grow/cultivate’ oneself’ 2. <-so> ‘preserve for ‘preserve/store’ oneself’ 3. ‘do/cultivate’ <-o> ‘do/cultivate for oneself’ 4. <-so> ‘marry for ‘marry’ oneself’ 5. <-o> ‘pick/collect’ ‘collect for oneself’ self’

Summary table:

Stem verb + suffix <-o/-so> = Imperative middle verb

In summary, Somali is an agglutinative language that uses a number of affixations and particles to agree on and change the meaning of words.

Morphologically, verbs consist of a stem or root to which affixes are added. Basically,

Somali verbs are divided into two classes.

The first class, weak verbs carry inflectional suffixes. In Somali verbs there are suffixes that maybe added to the basic form verbs in order to alter the meaning in some predictable way. This process is known as verb Conjugation. For example,

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Conjugation 2 (C2) is formed by adding the suffix <-i> to the basic form, for example, when <-i> added to to the verb ‘to get up’ becomes , meaning ‘to wake up/to cause to get up’. Similarly, Conjugation 3 (C3) is made up of verbs that end in the suffix <-o>. For example, ‘to take’ changes to ‘to take for oneself/to take yourself’. The meaning of the suffix <-o> is ‘doing the action for one’s own benefit’; for that reason, this ending is called autobefactive.

The second group of verbs, known as strong verbs consists of a small number that take prefix. Verbs are inflected in four tenses: present, past, present progressive, and past progressive, in addition to a subjective mood form for present and future tenses.

In derivational morphology, verbs are derived from nouns, adjectives and verbal stems. There are four types of moods in Somali verbs: imperative, potential, optative, and conditional.In addition, there are three voices in Somali verbs: active voice, passive voice and middle voice.

Chapter 6

IMPLICATIONS AND FINDINGS

In the previous chapters, aspects of Somali Phonology and Morphology have been briefly outlined. The discussion began with Somali consonants, vowels, stress patterns, and tonal features. The entire study is aimed at giving ESL/ ELL teachers a brief background of Somali phonology and morphology in order to help them understand aspects of Somali structures. With this background, they may be able understand issues of transfer when their Somali students speak or write.

Even though I am a native Somali speaker; I have not studied my language in any formal way, but rather I studied it in a self-oriented way. As a result, I cannot consider myself a Somali language expert. I have language competence compared to non-native speakers. My personal weaknesses have been originated by reliance on the previous linguistic literature written by Somali experts such as Saeed, B. W.

Andrzejewski, Krik, and Martin Owrin. The research of Somali is only in its beginnings, even though the language is rich and well known for its poets and proverbs: it is known as the “language of poets.”

In spite of the caveats, my research has shown that transfers between Somali and English may be anticipated not only phonologically but morphologically as well.

An understanding of transfer in second Language Acquisition is vital. Gass and

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Slinker (2001, pp. 65-66.) noted that “The acceptance and/or rejection of language transfer as a viable concept has been related to the acceptance or rejection of the specific theory with which it has been associate”. In order to better understand the notion of language transfer, it is very important to address the idea of contrastive analysis of the native language and the target language (CAH). This entails comparing

L1 and TL in order to find their similarities and differences.

There are two types of language transfer. One is positive (also known as facilitator/correct) and the other is negative (also known as interference). My research led me to conclude that there are several areas of negative transfers.

Inflectional Mistakes (Negative Transfer)

There are many differences in the grammatical rules of Somali and English that can make learning English difficult. For instance, the tense/aspect inflection of

Somali verbs may pose difficulties for Somali English Language Learners. John Saeed

(1999, p. 79) stated “Verbs as a category are identified by the tense, aspect and mood information they carry, which are signaled largely by affixes, but also vowel alteration and accentual patterns.”

Verbs can be subcategorized in two intertwined (intersecting) ways: by their morphological formation and by their structural (syntactic) relationship with other verbs. However, three classes of verbs are governed by their morphology. The largest group is defined by its inflectional suffix; these are also known as “weak” verbs. Then there are four prefix (or strong) verbs: ‘say’, ‘come’, ‘be (in place)’ and ‘know’. The simple past tense/aspect form is used for an action

130 that was completed in the past. The tense markers of verbs in Somali are represented with the inflections: , , and . The tense markers reflect both past tense and whether the sentence is in first or third person. Let’s illustrate a possible case of morphological transfer by examing the four sentences below:

‘I waited for it’

‘you/she waited for it’ ‘we waited for it’ ‘they waited for it’

This could be confusing to learners of English, because English does not inflect of verbs according to gender or number, except in the third person singular, such as to . I have analyzed writing samples and have found. Through analysis of the writing samples, I as sample collector found that many Somali writers made errors in verb inflection in the past tense by not changing any of the verbs in a sentence. For example, one Somali writer wrote the sentence:

A.

The student writer showed the correct inflection on the verb , but did not show inflection on the other two verbs in the sentence. When asked what they did the night before, another student wrote:

B.

These samples begin to show the common pattern followed by students. They skip the parts of English morphology that are confusing. When unsure about how to show the inflection of the verb, these students left the verb in the simple form.

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Another difference in verb inflection between Somali and English is the use of double past tense verbs (Somali nominal past). This phenomenon is found in the

English writing by Somali students, because Somali has nominal tense morphemes.

This means that the tense is carried on the nouns, which are not a subset of the tense forms that appear in verbs. There are some illustrative examples of nomial predicates:

1.

Sentence:

Gloss: Problem- the Gulf-Det [+nom] still permanent is

Trans: ‘the crisis in the Gulf still persists’

2.

Sentence:

Gloss: Problem- the [past] Gulf- the [+nom] ended [+past]

Trans: ‘The crisis inthe Gulf has ended’

(Lecarme, 2002)

When writing in English, Somali writers make the mistake of writing two verbs in the past tense. The following example came from writing samples of a high school student; it was in response to the essay question, “What did you do last summer?”

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C.

The student correctly used the past tense form of the verb and the past tense form of , but then added the present tense to the sentence as well.

The use of double verbs in past tense sentences is a direct result of the double tense markers in Somali.

Phonological Challenges

In this section I will focus on negative phonetic/phonological transfer without going into details. I will only mention sounds that are most troublesome to Somali speakers.

Somali ELL (English language Learner) students encounter several morphological difficulties while acquiring English as a second language (L2):

1. There is no real distinction between the voiced /b/ bilabial stop and the

voiceless /p/ bilabial stop. So, is commonly pronounced and

spelled as .

2. The past tense morpheme [-ed] is pronounced as [-id] irrespective of

whether it should be pronounced [t] or [d].

3. Somali ELL students face a great deal of confusion both in the spelling and

the pronunciation of

and because in the Somali alphabet, there is

no difference in spelling or pronunciation; e.g., → and

→ .

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4. Similarly, the grapheme is not used in Somali spelling. When students

encounter it, they tend to pronounce is [s ].

5. The grapheme is used both in Somali and English, but the represent

two completely different sounds. in Somali stands the pharnyngeal [ʕ].

If a Somali student encounters the word , they will pronounce it

[ʕɔʟ] it sounds to non-native speakers that there is not consonant at the

beginning of the word, < call> sounds like [ɔʟ].

6. Consonant cluster simplification is a common problem because the Somali

language does not allow consonant clusters.

English orthography is oblique, whereas Somali spelling is transparent; that is, every word is pronounced as it is written. For this reason, Somali students tend to pronounce every grapheme they see. Therefore, they would say the following English words:

Words Pronouncitions ‘knife' is pronounced as ‘knee’ is pronounced as

‘phase’ or is pronounced as ‘enough is pronounced as

Consonant Cluster Simplifications

A common error that Somali ELL students make is consonant cluster simplifications because their native language does not allow constant clusters.

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Therefore, they will simplify clusters when they see them in English. The following

English words are typical examples:

Consonant cluster Cluster simplifications ‘fifth’ is spelled as ‘sixth’ is spelled as .

Stress and Tone Challenges (Negative Transfer)

Stress placement is unpredictable because the Somali language is a tonal language. Therefore, Somali Ell students put stress where no stress is needed, for example, “I cAN do that.”

Analyzing Somali ELL writings, conversing with students, and asking their teachers, I found out that Somali speaker add /i/ to the end of words with a voiceless stop /k/ or /t/. I asked the following words to Somali ELL students to test this error

(epenthesis):

English words Spelling spelled as < lasti> < past> spelled as spelled as spelled as

spelled as spelled as

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Somali ELL student use epenthesis because their native language has syllable restrictions against final position of /t/, /k/ and /m/, which leads an addition of vowel

/i/.

In polysyllabic words, Somali ELL students may have problems distinguishing the frontness and the blackness of the vowel, e.g., low front [æ] for bat; and low back

[ɑ] for Bob and [ɒ] for bought.

Implications

English Language Learners from all backgrounds will have unique issues when they begin learning English. As educators, it is our job to realize and understand these issues and adapt our teaching accordingly. One problem for teachers of Somali students is that most people in the United States know very little about Somalia, its people, and its culture, and even less about Somali as a language. A basic knowledge of the Somali language and grammatical rules will make teaching students easier and will, hopefully, lead to greater success of the students.

Knowledge about certain sociolinguistic factors is also important when teaching Somali students. Almost all Somali students come from a restricted code environment now that they are living in the United States. As new citizens in the

United States, most are from lower income families without access to books and other academic materials. Many Somali parents do not read or write in Somali, and therefore lack an understanding of how writing systems work. Many are struggling to learn

English themselves, and others have learned little to no English. This leaves students

136 translating for their parents, rather than receiving outside help from them. Over a long period of time, this may lead to a strong ability and understanding in both languages, but until they have mastered the English language, both languages will suffer, because the students will not have a strong hold on either and will constantly be switching between the two.

For students who do have some experience in writing, learning to write in

English can be much more difficult, because English has opaque orthography, meaning that the spelling of words is not directly tied to the phonetic representation.

The Somali writing system, however, is transparent, meaning the spelling is directly related to the phonetic representation of the words. This leads to difficulty in spelling and pronunciation of English words for students who are already literate in Somali.

To understand about Somali student writing in English, knowledge about the findings explained above can help ELL teachers to give extra time and focus on the unique needs of Somali students. Explanations and discussions about understanding phonological and morphological structures are important, because these aspects are widely used in everyday English as well as in academic writing. If these issues are not addressed, it can lead students to avoid using these grammatical units, which will make their English seem “broken.” Ungrammatical usage often causes teachers to question the intelligences of their students.As a result, I believe that the findings in this study will help ELL teachers understand some of the sources of errors made by their Somali students.

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Conclusion

With the large numbers of new citizens from Somalia, the United States has had to make some adaptations, especially in areas with larger numbers of new immigrants, such as Minnesota. Education is a major issue because the systems in the

United States are very different from those in Somalia and in refugee camps. Teachers of ESL students will have to adapt their teaching styles and lesson plans to enable them to cater to the unique needs of Somali students. It is hoped that the information in this thesis will help teachers who have Somali students in their classes.

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APPENDIX

143 144

The Months

The Somali year is divided into four seasons: ‘rainy season’,

‘windy season’,‘the cold season and the ‘the dry and hot season’.

Months corresspond to to both Arabic and English, and they are named as follows:

Somali Arabic English Dago Moharram January Bil duráh horé Safar Februray Bil duráh dambé Rabia al Awal March Rajal horé Rabia al Akhir April Rajal dhexé Jumad al Awal May Rajal dembé Jumad al akhir June Saboox Rajab july Wàa baris Shabáan August Sakaád /Sòon Rammadàn September Soonfur Shawwáal October Sidataal Dulqáda November Arafo Dul hijjah December (Data taken from Hunter, 1880).

The days

The names of the days in Somali are borrowed from the Middle east (Arab countries).

Somali Arabic English Sunday اﻻﺣ ﺪ Axad Monday اﻻﺛ ﻨ ﯿﻦ Isniin Tuesday اﻟ ﺜﻼﺛ ﺎء Salaaha Wednesday اﻻرﺑ ﻌﺎء Arabca Thrusday اﻟ ﺨﻤ ﯿﺲ Khamiis Friday اﻟ ﺠﻤ ﻌﺔ Jimce Saturday اﻟ ﺴ ﺒﺖ Sabti

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The Importance of Proverbs

Somali has a rich tradition of proverbs and poems, passed on from previous generations and embellished by individual speakers. Proverbs play a very important role in everyday speech. Here is an example of Educational: Aqoon la'aani waa iftiin la'aan.‘Being without knowledge is to be without light’.The reason I selected this proverb is to show how educatuion is so important in Somali culture.