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 <gh>, <ph>, <f>. Because Somali does not have /v/, <fan> and <van>, may be spelled the same. iii 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