Valency Decreasing in South Ethio-Semitic Languages

Abstract

The current paper focuses on a descriptive approach to valency decreasing in five SESL (Amharic, Kɨstane, Məsqan, Harari and Endəgaɲ). As a result, a simple descriptive viewpoint does not compel the data analysis to comply with an explicitly theorized framework. By using the elicitation method, native speakers were consulted to access the data. It has been debated whether the value is a semantic or syntactic concept. As a syntactic concept, it is used to denote the number of arguments in construction and, semantically, to refer to the participants in an event. Since SESL is spoken in Ethiopia, we can identify various transitivity classes of verbs: verbs that are intransitive; those that are transitive; and verbs that are used ditransitively. Aside from these, verbs can be used in transitive or intransitive sentences. The existence of grammatical relations in the language is clearly demonstrated, which is essential to the examination of the concept of valency in SESL. Similar to many other languages, SESL has morphosyntactic tools for changing the valency of verbs. The valency of verbs changes depending on how these morphosyntactic processes are used. Passivization, reflexivization, and reciprocation are the main valency-decreasing techniques in SESL.