The first person prefixes in South Ethio-Semitic

Abstract

Abstract South Ethio-Semitic (SES) is a genealogical branch of Ethio-Semitic (ES), a subgroup of Semitic found almost entirely in Ethiopia and Eritrea. The paper considers two features characteristic of several South Ethio-Semitic languages. Firstly, the Prefix Conjugation displays a common 1sg/1pl prefix in various SES languages. Secondly, an innovative 1pl suffix is often employed in the Prefix Conjugation. In forms with 1sg/1pl syncretism, this suffix takes over the functional load of the plural marker. Both features are innovative in SES, and their absence from a number of languages in each of the main subbranches suggests areal diffusion rather than a shared innovation going back to the Proto-SES level. In former studies, it has been suggested that the innovative 1pl suffix was borrowed from Cushitic and that its introduction has triggered the 1sg/1pl syncretism. This hypothesis is critically reassessed in the present paper, which considers in detail various patterns of 1sg/1pl syncretism and various patterns of its interaction with the 1pl suffix, and offers a tentative reconstruction of their emergence and spread in the languages in question.